SNITU e T Falepnietgsensnaatoete tna solos hong core gnaabeonpietige app ecnepealpsomemarennent poreoenpigenrephne paperegereeres : ae are ‘ : Se ee Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/americanjudaismrOOleis me bl BS ae my vO : “sR fF BQ Ih mesh & ' ’ . ¢ IN 30 ] AMERICAN JUDAISM: THE RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES A HISTORICAL SURVEY BY JOSEPH LEISER NEW YORK BLOCH PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. “THE JEWISH BOOK CONCERN”? 1925 CopYRIGHT, 1925, By JosEPH LEISER re ‘ i i j j . ' 1 \ ' F { ae e nn fi ¢ - 5 iy , iy 3 Ms ; j P ¥ F , j AP } Ls . - 4 yd - thy : yt i ‘ 4 : a ' ' na ; SA ly Printed in the United States of America To My Teachers MAX and MIRIAM LANDSBERG and EMIL G. HIRSCH Tavis r CONTENTS PAGE RAPALA CEN Mei ee Cote kareccice nso faseeeha ING ele. ek bss, Hee teal sMancmaar glee tee 6 7 MI EEEIL UIC ELON b uic coed ecatahs thee ters dein oe thin os ofa! 2 PRET areas ele Gos 11 MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM.........-.-.0005- 49 THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM.............. 92 AMERICAN JUDAISM ........... Pow eta yD at eta ete states 123 AMERICAN JEWISH INSTITUTIONS.............0020000- 143 Peta Ee MER ICANN Dab CVV ESS 5 ti ccs \al'y al el 2. 4 Wie ol a wie aia adele whale atale 174 ORGANIZATION OF RELIGIOUS ENTERPRISES............. 204 REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN AMERICAN JUDAISM...... 242 THE NEXT STAGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN SETI Ee NT eee rah at alae Ley OP tale eC cat AG i URC iS Mr en 269 ¢ a AANA ny a a ! " ' 4 J ott im Pai! pile\ie Ae 6 fas a % . ohh 5 ah) a ‘ \ J 7 } : i y? i i A! a1 1 i i whe 7 his ize it Si : 4 ny ‘A D om a es gild Pos at oe 8 1) PEP a j j a y I a Pata 4 i : wok f © RY ae * it u “gf Lies ae iP gs Pe Ng by tid te a ait ata we ry p LYCRA Pit vat 1, a f » MAN a Mm H bhi fl f = , i ? Nie bee EA ; a Rae We Pry PREFACE The Jewish people of America are developing a group con- sciousness. They are beginning to envisage themselves as American Jews. Many are longing for the speedy advent of that day when all distinctions between the various geographical classes of European and Asiatic Jewries that migrated here, will disappear and such terms as orthodox and reform, wholly abandoned. In their stead, it is anticipated that the more acceptable designation, American Jews, will be used when refer- ring to them as a religious people. Now, indeed, is the accepted time for the adoption of that designation as substitute for the previous labels wherewith the various factions of Jewry on this continent were wont to be classified: orthodox, conservative, reform. Zionistic, nationalistic and atheistic. For this reason, a survey of American Judaism has been essayed, as an organic unit, possessed with democratic potentialities. This is no vagrant phantasm but is becoming more articulate yearly. There is a well directed and definite tendency to ignore pre- vious differences of interpretation which heretofore divided the house of Jacob, in order to foster a more perfect union of the various Jewish sects in America. A greater uniformity is desired to the end that more unity may be obtained. But uni- formity and unity are two different things. An increasing definiteness of purpose is likely to animate all the Jewish inhabitants of these United States. The need of coercing the various groups into a strait-jacket of conformity, either of doctrine or construction, is not so imminent. Conformity will come to pass by the process of evolution inherent in the Jewish spirit, since at its core Judaism, however practiced, is essentially identical, The ambition of the following chapters is to outline in a measure the content of this American Judaism. These pages intend to afford a plausible statement of that aspect of the Jewish religion come to consciousness in this country now with more distinctiveness than elsewhere—in fact with more unique- ness and more responsive to the contacts and situations of democ- racy than in any other country. 7 8 PREFACE To project this statement it was necessary to survey the field of Jewish consciousness historically. There is a vast his- torical background to American Judaism, the condition prece- dent to the settlement of the Jews on this continent, without which their destiny here would have been cast in totally dif- ferent lines. To ascertain the permanent values of American Judaism now vigorously challenged by the racial groups is the outstanding purpose. The approach of this consummation has been through the antechamber of Reform Judaism. In proffer- ing the content of American Judaism due recognition is herewith made of the presumption of the task and inadequacy of the projector’s ability to clothe it in proper vestment. American Judaism shares with all phases of Judaism in the application of concreteness. To illustrate in life the dictates of conscience is the Jewish way, even as God is represented as both saying and doing. The deeds of loving kindness, those benefactions wrought in behalf of humanity, identify Judaism here and elsewhere. As doctrine, Judaism is incomplete. Nor is Judaism an abstraction of philosophy, ethics, metaphysics or science. Judaism is more than a religion. The Jews are a people immersed in a historical purpose. Encompassing and incarnating them is the duty to labor for the establishment of the kingdom of God, a Messianic ideal which can be interpreted in modern sociological terms as social welfare, social conscious- ness, or the commonwealth. The American Jews have been forward looking and positive. But it were futile to deny the recoil of those progressive mea- sures which initiated the Reform Movement in this country. Judaism in America is in the throes of reaction. Whether war’s aftermath or disillusionment, it is no longer denied that the ideals of the XIX century have proven sour grapes for the children of the Twentieth. Evolution, education, democracy, individualism have each in turn evoked doughty opponents. Even political government has not escaped critical examination and censure. Could Judaism, so interwoven with the zeitgeist, be unaffected by the chilly blasts of reaction? Attention is directed to the reactions evident in American Judaism in pre- cept and in practice. Complaint has been registered against the shifting of leader- ship in Judaism. In ages past, the prerogative of the scholar, poet, philosopher, theologian and rabbi was to lead. Study PREFACE 9 was considered of greatest importance because study leads to practice, Rabbi Akiba observes.* This situation is analyzed and the endeavor made to explain the “advent of the layman” (an un-Jewish term), who by inject- ing business methods in the administration of Jewish activ- ities, subordinates the religious content and intent of Judaism to the financing of his philanthropies. The unique feature of American Judaism is in all likelihood the American Jewess. Without currying favor with a spurious gallantry, it may truthfully be said that America has accorded the Jewess greater opportunities than any other country. Ameri- can Judaism released her for self-realization and service towards her humanity. It is now generally admitted that her works do praise her in the gates. A historical movement enduring as long as Judaism can well afford to project the next stage of its development. This forecast is the veriest conjecture. But this, one may confidently state: Judaism in America tends to become identified with the national consciousness, since the two are twain, flesh of its flesh, and bone of its bone. And now, as these declarations go forth, let the reader bear in mind that the ulterior motive has been to “write a story” about Judaism in America, as if it were a newspaper assign- ment the writer had to “cover.” There has been possibly a background of scholarship but no library has been available, no “research” after accepted academic standards followed. The endeavor has been to fill the heart of American Jews with a love of their heritage and a pride therein, and also to implant in the hearts of their fellow American citizens a respect for the descendants of those poets, prophets, lawgivers and martyrs, who throughout all ages strove to establish peace, justice and the love of man for his fellowman. 1 Kaddushin, 40B. ‘ Wa lee a Ey vats Taint yt an tH ” , ba iil f f id se Cents OMT F ¥ r Pe att, " tal ARS A INTRODUCTION The Jews of America are in the throes of a critical situation, as some allege, by reason of the resurgence of anti-semitism in this country. Race-hatred combined with religious prejudice is becoming as bitter and menacing here as Jew-baiting in Europe. Our circumstances and conditions of living have not yet paralleled the horrors suffered by our Jewish brethren on the continent, yet calamity is predicted to befall us here as an inevitable reaction of war’s aftermath. Its frenzy victimizes the Jew because he is unlike his fellow men, albeit in the last war his blood flowed as freely as theirs in that wasteful and needless holocaust, and because he has always proven to be a handy scapegoat. The out-cropping of anti-semitism in the United States, whatever the source of its origin here, is a frightful disillusionment as well as un unforeseen deflection from American traditions and democracy. American Jews had ac- cepted with certain literalness the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent right of religious freedom which Jefferson had incorporated in the Constitution. The Jewish people of America concluded that these declarations were the laws of the land, enacted in a sincere effort to wrest man from the handi- caps of racial and religious prejudices. Until the Civil War, America was reasonably free from the stigma of race-hatred such as prevails in Europe and even now in Asia. So far as the Jews were involved, there was slight evidences of it, although the American people were not entirely unbiased in their attitude toward other races, the Irish for example.1| But from Civil War times to our present era the Jews of the United States are conscious of an increasing dislike of them on the part of their fellow-citizens, for no reason that can be accu- rately tabulated, although many theories have been set forth to explain it.? _ This blight is disheartening, and overcasts the future of Ameri- can Jewry with ugly clouds of forebodings. Yet anti-semitism *The “Know-nothing” party, forerunner of the Klan, was race-hatred directed against German immigrants, chiefly. * Roots of Anti-Semitism, by Horace M. Kallen. “The Nation,” March, 1923, 11 12 AMERICAN JUDAISM is not the most serious affliction of American Israel, since it is admitted that the lot of Israel in America is not an unmixed blessing. This prejudice may become a fatality unless the dire forces of persecution are stayed. When race-hatred links arms with an economic boycott in the sinister manner organized agencies of violence now rampant in this country propose, the Jewish people here may become as economically imperilled as their brethren of the faith are in Poland, where measures of a similar character are instituted. Stealing one’s livelihood approaches the category of assassination. It is the craven trait of the buzzard feeding on the carrion slain by other. hands. Any phase of race-hatred, no matter against whom directed, is un-American. Yet Israel confronts a peril of greater proportion than the ugly hulk of anti-semitism. The possibility of this latter peril becoming an actuality instigated the composition of these chapters of exposition relative to the content of that religious heritage which gives the Jew his name and habitation in the spiritual as well as material realms. How that religious spirit is being manifested in this country at the present time is the burden. The term, American Judaism, is a fortuitous expression, geo- graphically descriptive of its physical area with scarcely any more significance. It is therefore, merely rhetorical. The religion of the Jews has been unfolded in sundry ways in various quarters of the globe, and in widely separated ages: Alex- andria, Egypt; Andalusia, Spain; Safed, Palestine. From the compilation of the Mishna, 200 A. D. to the adoption of. the Pittsburgh platform in 1885. The “shelsheles hakkabalah,” the chain of tradition, has never been broken, albeit severely strained. All Jews are bound together by this mystic: cord,’ wherever they wander their religion follows, a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night. Always employing the terms vital to the age and locale where it comes to consciousness, Judaism is explained in the idiom current in whatever country the. Jews sojourn. It is not now an original product of inspiration in any country under the sun. It is merely a manifestation of that spiritual urge upsurging from the heart of Israel wherever they happen to be. Hence, to speak of a particular national Judaism, * This bond of union applies to those members of Israel’s household who accepted the “yoke of the Torah” and abided by the decisions of rabbis and the popular codes of Rabbinical laws. INTRODUCTION 13 such as American Judaism, however felicitous and chauvan- istic, is merely provincialism. For, strictly speaking, there is no American Judaism of local invention. There is a Judaism manifested in the consciousness and illustrated in the conduct of Jewish people living in America. This very carelessness of speech, an error into which many of us fall, is symptomatic of the superficiality characteristic of our period. How is it likely to be otherwise, when our minds are fed by the hasty and inconsiderate items usually of a nationalistic or Zionistic coloring, which appear in our Jewish papers? These random items do not exceed the importance of gossip accorded conversation in a cafe. Instead of thought- provoking and scholarly material, the readers are provided with a sort of pabulum of no more value than mere conversation. These journalese collections are an extension of alleged “human interest” topics into trivialities. Readers are told that certain prominent personages in art, theatricaldom, commerce, litera- ture, even commercial sports, are Jews, and this fact is suffi- cient warrant to publish any statement about them. Whatever happenings are reported in the Jewish papers gain the light of publicity for the sole reason that certain persons involved are Jews by birth. To some of these, this is, as Heine said, their misfortune. The thing cited is not mentioned because it illustrates a principle or ideal of the Jewish religion, which is more important than the accident of birth in a Jewish family. Quite the contrary. Nothing of a philosophical character, with rare exceptions, and little that pertains to Jewish literature as a depository of the expanding tradition of Judaism is printed. This very essential material is, for the most part, ignored, in favor of frivolous persiflage on man and events. Men and women and events are trumpeted because, by the hazard of chance, one or the other happens to be Jewish, or are con- sidered to be so by reason of their birth. Whether any one is vitally concerned in Judaism does not matter. Such inconsequential tidbits of information as this, that a noted moving-picture actress was confirmed in a synagog, or that the champion light-weight pugilist is a Jew, (granted that it is important in this era’of violence that there be among Jews men handy with their fists) are given wide publicity, but these picayune trifles do not add to one’s appreciation of the Jewish religion, nor give one a penetrating insight into the vision of 14 AMERICAN JUDAISM Judaism. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” said Hosea,* and in this age there is a woeful deficit of ignor- ance in Jewish religion, theology and ethics. There might be a wider, at least a more assuring. understanding of the inten- tion and profession of Judaism in this country, were the sources of information more abundant.’ Were mere racial allegiance and social station less essential to the editors of Jewish papers than the ideals and visions interlocked with the Jewish people, there might be a more enduring knowledge of Judaism. While there will always be differences of interpretation, the several divergences of opinion and ‘construction—and these will be shown directly—there might be a fortuitous concurrence of interpretation on the underlying intent of that manifestation of Judaism now unfolding and developing in this country. Whether as race Jews or a religious people, we have a common destiny here. Whatever service is exacted of us by the state, political government is not a finality, but a process, also through which the spirit within us seeks to corporealize and materialize the ethical urge toward right doing, which is the very essence of Judaism. For the end of Judaism is to sanctify, to hallow life, and all that is involved in and pertains to the human being. Judaism in America is our American Jewish method of applying the intent of Judaism to our daily lives here. It is assumed that a reasonable concurrence of opinion on the general content of Judaism might fortify the Jews of this country in hours of peril. It is further presumed that the per- manent value of Judaism in this country will be compatible with our national institutions and ambitions. To explain this harmonization or functioning, and what has been wrought to illustrate the application and operation of the Jewish spirit in this land has occasioned these studies. The danger the Jews of America face is the menace of dis- unity in the central concept of their purpose and mission. There does not prevail a tenacious grasp of the fundamental purpose of the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. Lack of def- initions is not serious, nor is a definition of American Judaism even desirable. No miracles were ever invoked to establish the plausibility of a commandment, our sages observe, and one “Hosea, 4:6. *In his address before the Jewish Congress, Zangwill spoke in a sim- ilar vein. INTRODUCTION 15 does not require the crutch of a definition to sustain Judaism. It is not necessary to define it. In fact, Judaism cannot be defined, any more than poetry can be stated in axiomatic terms. In truth, Judaism is more than a religion, and more is embraced by this term than the usual connotation associated with the word, religion. This inability to define in unvarying phrases the essence of Judaism is not a short-coming. It is its great- ness and grandeur, since it permits a renewal and re-statement, in other words a constant growth. Therefore the lack of defini- tions is not the peril of the hour. ~The most ominous peril arises from the incoherence of con- struction. There is no inner agreement anent the function of Judaism in the survival of the Jew and his struggle for exis- tence. The interpretations of Judaism current are not so many different view-points as they become contentions in which one construction is personified as a menace to the other. A liberal Jew is now held up to ridicule by nationalists, conservatives and the neo-chassidim or pietists. The desire on his part to be American and to permit the spirit of his religious heritage to work through him, as he constructs it, is regarded as a species of apostacy by the nationalistic Jews. Race Jews deplore all adaptations of local customs, all unconscious assimilation of environment, which is one of the most outstanding psychological traits of the Jewish people, and has ever been their wont. This antagonism is not confined to nationalistic or anti-Zionists, but persists among other groups, it will be shown. When the youth of American Israel, college graduates, in many instances, of either sex, stigmatize Reform Judaism as the greatest menace in the history of Judaism, opposition reaches its worst. It is unblushingly charged by some of those intel- ligentsia that Reform defiles the tentacles of mysticism whereby man “cleaves unto God.” It is well to survey the contention and profession of this religious interpretation and ascertain what are the formulas of faith underlying the synagogs of America. If it chances to be the tremendous menace averred, Reform Judaism is fatal. But is it? There is at present no alignment of purpose among Ameri- can Jews. They are thus deprived of the operation of a morale such as they experienced in older countries and in other days. Orthodoxy, in former historical periods, furnished a morale. It had a set program of conduct. But such a program is not 16 AMERICAN JUDAISM possible now amid the conflict of destinies. For the construc- tion put on Judaism by each member of the covenant directly affects his or her life. It matters much how one projects life. It does matter what one thinks. In the end it matters a whole lot whether one regards the religious inheritance of his fathers as a refuge from the storm of life such as Zionism or a high- way through the world as Reform Judaism. It matters much whether one believes in fellowship with men as historical Juda- ism postulates, or segregation therefrom as the nationalistic councils of Jews prescribe. There have always been various religious parties among the Jews: without mentioning obscure references to sects in Bib- lical days such as the Rechebites in Jeremiah, there have been within historical periods: Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Mas- sorites, Saborayim, Sopherim, Karaites, Chassidim, Rabbinites, Mystics, Kabbalists, Messianists. In our day we have Zionists, conservatives, orthodox, reform, ethical culturists, “Jewish sci- entists’—even this list is by no means exhausted. Among the various groups there persists a coherence of identity: all are fractions of a larger historical group, having in proportionate measure, a certain residuum of likemindedness whereby each respond to tradition and react to the complexes of their com- mon ancestry.© This inheritance, shared by each, enjoins cer- tain practices by means of which one group recognizes the other as was the wont during the Diaspora through the medium of rabbinic Judaism. Among all therefore stretches the blue cord of their Jewish ancestry; body and soul; religion and people. Under pressure all Jews announce their affiliation with the people of Israel. Persecution tends to congeal them as cold blasts of oppression, invariably draw together people oppressed. In periods of peril the harassed phalanxes are concerned in breasting the foe. Theirs the business not to argue nor to ask the reason why. Theirs the business to stand shoulder to shoulder and not question the policy of formation or analyze the origin of the tactics. These manoeuvers do very well in imminent peril. But it would be hazardous to perpetuate a policy of indefiniteness of purpose. To rely solely on this resid- uum of tradition and common memories as the bond of union °This is due to the acceptance of codes and rabbinical decisions of the Jews throughout the Diaspora. INTRODUCTION 17 among the Jews of America would in the end produce no united statement of purpose nor evolve a technique for the discharge of duties in accordance with American idealism and democratic concepts. And that is the most essential need. Now is the appointed hour to set forth the contents of Judaism as constructed in this country not as an apologetic but as an exposition of ideas, principles, doctrines and attitudes that con- stitute American Judaism.’ It would be well for American Israel to know the elements compounded in that nourishment which has kept them and the spirit within them alive, and it would also be well were their fellow-citizens to know the technique now being developed by American Jews to apply the lofty idealism of their religion to the operation of the demo- cratic principles of government. All streams of Jewish tradition have flowed in one direction. There is danger, however, that in America this phenomenon may not be duplicated. There are indications that the convergence of purpose induced by the technique of rabbinism and all phases of legalistic Judaism will not be maintained. Various groups are now actively engaged in undoing the endeavors of another. Rather than conspire to effect a new content for the rapidly exhausting formulas of reform and orthodoxy, alike, there is an avowed reactionaryism, a sort of Jewish “fundamentalist” movement which clamors for the “piety of the father’s” and his rigorous orthodoxy. It is not likely that there will ever be a uniformity of ceremonial here. Conformity in ceremonials the country over is not desirable. But if a solidarity of Israel is desired, the solidarity should rest on the broad basis of com- monly accepted technique whereby the American Jew can sur- round himself as with an aura. Such a commonly accepted tech- nique would provide the morale, which is of course the com- pacted pressure of public opinion in the group, the voice of tradition, and all that enters into the complexes of the Jew. A unanimity of morale is needed to the end that an interpre- tation of Judaism may be deduced that will explain the mean- ing of life to every son and daughter of Abraham in terms of American democracy. This unification of destiny has not been evolved because of the conflicting tendency of each group located here. These various groups subsist on the marrow of their heritage: their Jewish consciousness. Out of this common heritage there has 18 AMERICAN JUDAISM now emerged an American Jewish morale, inspired by their American environment and as a result of their occupation in this new land and participation in the function of government. The elemental substance for an expression of Judaism, indige- nously American, are here. The Jewish spirit manifesting itself in this new land, would, judging from previous experi- ences, take on the semblances and complexion of American environment. But there have been thus far too many cross-cur- rents in the stream of tradition to enable formulization of those concepts predominant in the religion and life of American Jews. This is due, so it is opined, to the fact that various groups here fail to endorse a common program, and resent the professions of an American construction of Judaism. A large number, in fact the largest group, are the indifferent, unaffiliated men and women who belong neither to one faction or another; who are neither reform nor orthodox, Zionist, Yid- dishist or Hebraist; who are, in a word, nobodies. These camp-followers have always pitched their tents behind the tabernacles of Israel. If they have not perished it is due to the heroism of the remnant, whose martyrdom has vitalized them. They were found in the days of the Babylonian Isaiah, men and women perfectly content to build houses and dwell therein, and let the fanatics return to Jerusalem. It is a remnant like the Gershonites who do service and bear burdens in the tent of meeting, to whom we are indebted for the rebuilding of altars here. It is absurd to fancy that all Israel has been mightily agitated over the problems of ritual, philosophy, destiny, save in the days of stress. For the greater part of the year, seed time and harvest, one’s daily occupation, whereby those who do the work of the world, obtain the world’s reward, com- pose the anxieties of Jewish people. That there are men utterly indifferent and careless to the compulsions of their religion are factors with which one must deal. Despite the fact that this host are ineffectual and inconsequential, it is a pity that American democracy has produced such a bumper crop of them, The material advantages offered by this coun- try have stimulated the perpetuation of this group, whose existence is rounded by the satisfaction of the physical appe- tites and cravings of creature comforts. In political com- munities of other lands and generations, the spirit of the hive, “the mores” of the land, public opinion and social station INTRODUCTION 19 enforced a certain religious morale on all members of the group. To separate one’s self from the synagog even in earlier cen- turies invited excommunication. This act of expulsion was no verbal terrorism, but a fatal hazard equivalent to a legal execution. In this country there is no effective community of opinion, a secondary manifestation of morale, to stigmatize the Jew for lapses in his moral or civic conduct. If one so desires he may depart entirely from his brethren and no one can stay his course, save his own conscience. If this has not been disciplined, he is lost. America has her share of “lost Jews.” In pre-Revolutionary days, and continuing unto this very hour, intermarriage has claimed a large share of Jewish men and women who have been blotted out. Intermarriage is often a means of escape from the “yoke of the Torah” for some. There are instances where intermarried couples have followed Jewish practices and allied themselves with Jewish people. Rabbinical pro- cedure establishes as the natural lines of affiliation in cases of intermarriage this rule: that the offspring follows the reli- gion of the mother. There are more cases where women of non-Jewish birth have been converted to Judaism in case of intermarriage than that of men. Still intricate as the problem remains for us as it does for Ibanez in his “Luna Ben Amor,” intermarriage has not been encouraged by precept or practice. Isolation in unsettled sections of the country has been another means of withdrawing Jews from the fold. Yet efforts to overcome this drift constitutes one of the achievements of Ameri- can Israel, and will be detailed in the proper place. Inadequate educational institutions, poverty, perversity and downright pugnacity in the large cities, to matters Jewish, have all com- bined to estrange an increasing number from the main army of Judah, to which may now be added the least excusable of all deserters and apostates the host of Jews who have gone over into Christian Science. This class have merited the severest contempt, because their apostacy is rooted in cowardice. Christian Science members are thus far free from persecution. Christian Scientists are the only Christian sect that have not butchered Jews for a Christian holiday. Entrance into this sect is often assumed to be an entry into social circles of the faithful. This, more than the doctrines, it is inferred, has captivated many American Jews 20 AMERICAN JUDAISM and Jewesses. And these “meschumadim’’ forget that in Judaism there is a wholesome means of healing. The religion of the Jew never exalted healing as the end of existence. To do well, not merely to be well, was the Jewish injunction.® Health followed worth. A life worthily spent was one with God and shared in the goodness of God, who is without error, and hence free from the defilements, imperfections and mortal error of the human being. Christian Science, as a doctrine, has noth- ing startling for the Jew, lest it be the privilege of putting one’s feet under the dining room table of one’s non-Jewish neighbor. The attempts are many, it is true, to link the Jews of this country with their Judaism. In due sequence, the efforts put forth to rescue the drifting unaffiliated Jews with their separate communities, and the organized endeavors now functioning to revive Jewish and religious culture in all classes of Jews will be detailed. Yet there persists a large number to whom the heritage of the house of Jacob makes no appeal. For the first time in centuries, there is an open revolt against the synagog, as is the case with certain elements within the working classes.° The number of men and women who are unaffiliated with any Jewish organization, no matter what its nature, is appalling. In larger centers of population, it is ventured that fifty per cent of the Jewish inhabitants maintain no affhliation with a synagog. Smaller communities are more favored in enforcing affiliation with the synagog, and often rate as high as 100% membership. Still, small communities admit that many among the brethren refuse to join a congregation, for financial reasons in some instances, and sheer indifference in others. While membership in congregations has always been a primary con- dition of social existence and standing for the Jew, it is now becoming a matter of personal caprice. Men and women, the fathers’ and mothers’ sons and daughters of those who suffered martyrdom for the cause of Israel, now forswear the synagog without compunction or remorse. ‘The separation of church and state may be responsible for this cleavage between the " Apostates. § Fully explained in Chapter IX. ®Many among the Jewish laborers regard the Synagog as a symbol of class distinction. To them it represents the bludgeon of oppression yielded by the employing group to suppress the worker. Its liberalizing power is denied. INTRODUCTION 21 unaffiliated and their spiritual shelter. Yet it is one of the saddening circumstances of American Jewish life that here, where the Jews have a larger measure of freedom and oppor- tunity for development than in any of the twenty-seven countries of Europe, there should be this voluntary estrangement. The example of Soviet Russia is no criterion. Conditions there are so alien to our own situations that they are not applicable. No parallel can be made nor deductions drawn therefrom.’° The indifferent group enjoy the re-enforcement of another segment of Jews living in this country, namely the Jewish %a- boring men and women who have come upon the stage of action in the last two decades, or within the present century. Industrialism is a new development of humanity, and there- fore our present age being chiefly commercial and industrial has brought to pass conditions entirely new in the historical experience of Israel. For centuries the Jew occupied the posi- tion of middleman. According to Prof. Warner Sombart in his “The Jews and Modern Capitalism,” the predominant features which distinguish modern capitalism from mediaeval trade and _ industry are directly due to Jewish influence. Whether or not the Jew can lay this flattering unction to his soul, it is none the less true that he has quickened international trade by the large scale of their trade, and the variety of wares and the introduction of new commodities. In Jacob’s “Jewish Contri- butions to Civilization” a full description of the routes taken by Jewish merchants in the Middle Ages is given. The Jew, as it is shown, was an intermediary, carrying the produce from the east to the west and transferring the products of the west to the east, going as far as China. Emerson said that commerce consists in transporting things from where they are made to where they are needed. This function was reserved for the Jews as a result of historical circumstances. Hence, at the opening of the Nineteenth Century (as far back historically as necessary to retrace) industrialism was in its infancy. It too displaced other forms of economy, as Beatrice and Sidney Webb show in “The Decline of Capitalistic Civilization.” At the establishment of the American Constitution, 1789, the Jewish settlers, retaining their economic status from the Middle Ages, ” The Soviet Republics recognize the class struggle—in which economics, not ethics, dominate and control conduct. 22 AMERICAN JUDAISM were in the parlance of modern business, “retailers.” There were professional men among them, scarcely any farmers and probably among mechanics only tailors, locksmiths, jewelers, shoemakers, carpenters and cigar makers. In the evolution of industrialism throughout the nineteenth century, manufacturing tended to engross the attention of Jews instead of commerce. Industry in general experienced many changes, and each affected the economic status of the Jew. At the beginning of the Twentieth century it is evident that the manufacturer who hitherto depended on the merchant to distrib- ute his products can also act as distributor, and these two economic functions tend to merge. That is to say, the maker is now organizing his “plant” so that he, too, may be qualified to sell, thus dispossessing the distributor, or middleman, and eliminating his services in the exchange of commodities. Hence the rise of the large mail-order houses, department stores, co-op- eratives, chain stores. Often these are the distributing depots of the manufacturer. The middle-man is being gradually uprooted by the interplay of these economic forces that seek a level of lesser resistance. Just as language tends to abbreviate words, syntax and sentence, so commerce and industry seek an economy of action. The significance of this process of eliminating the entrepeneur, so far as the Jews are concerned, is self-revealing. it means that the role of middle-man hitherto assigned him in the eco- nomic drama is being discarded. Like Othello, they find their occupation inherited from the Middle Ages gone. In all parts of the western world, from Lodz, Poland, to Cleveland, Ohio, and westward to the Golden Gate, the Jews are being shunted into manufacturing and industrial lines. There is now a class of Jewish working men and women. Adequate statistics on this score are not available. Dr. G. Deutch attempted to compile some statistics on the subject in his essay, “The Jew in Economic Life, with Special Reference to Poland.1 Therein one finds that the organizer of the Cloakmakers’ Union authority for the statement that out of a total of 140,000 people employed in that branch of work fully 110,000 are Jews. There are Jewish carpenters, bricklayers, paper-hangers, plumbers, bakers, stove- makers, auto-mechanics, truck-drivers, printers, bookbinders, oe SreBkac, Ci Ar Ri Vol; xX Mae pescos ie INTRODUCTION 23 even motor-men and conductors, also policemen and letter carriers.?? The Jewish working man and woman is now a considerable element. And yet this class in many instances announces openly secession from the synagog. The function of the synagog, so the organizers and leaders argue, is now supplanted by their trades’ unions, their “arbiter band,” their locals. These labor organ- izations substitute the services rendered by the synagog, the Jewish worker now contends, and hence they forego that insti- tution. The locals of the Trades’ Union are enlarging the scope of their organization. Originally these were wholly concerned in problems arising from their craft, such as wages, conditions, and hours of labor, superintendency, hazards, compensations, black-listing, enforced unemployment, child-labor, apprentice- ship. A trades’ unionist had accepted the dicta that labor was not life, but a part of life, a commodity that could be bought and sold. The assumption that a man’s labor is a piece of merchandise, salable like any commodity in the open market, is now being abandoned. More people concur with John Ruskin, who posted the dictum: “There is no wealth but Life.” At least the restrictions that hedged in the activities of a union within the limits of its craft are being lifted, and they now assume functions previously delegated to other professions. They edit newspapers (The New York Leader), establish colleges, maintain banks, engage the services of physician, dentist, lawyer, nurse; establish summer camps and recreation resorts; build houses. They are experimenting with grocery stores, dairy depots and meat shops. As it is they care for their sick, feed the hungry of their group, clothe the naked and bury their dead. In discharging these and kindred functions, the spokesmen of the Jewish working classes content that they are fulfilling the function of religion enjoined on them by the synagog in so far as the synagog insists that of the three pillars on which the world stands, study, worship and benevolence, they are dis- charging two, namely benevolence and study. And furthermore, so they argue, in their pilpulistic casuistry, they appropriate even the function of prayer in the formula quoted from Simon the Just (Abot. 1.2.) by showing that to labor is to pray; the “To this host must be added an increasing number of Jewish farmers. 24 AMERICAN JUDAISM word which in Hebrew means prayer, “abodah,” likewise means work. Hence all three functions of the synagog, they allege, are now incorporated in the locals. These labor leaders avow that they have outgrown religion as a function essential to man’s discipline, and claim that in economic determinism relig- ion, history, art are explained and expounded. The Jewish working man forgets that the application he is making of his trades’ union or local was first inculcated in the synagog as reported in the morning service of a Singer’s Stand- ard Prayer Book.* It was there that he learned “honoring father and mother, the practice of charity, timely attendance at house of study morning and evening, hospitality to wayfarers, visiting the sick, dowering the bride, attending the dead to the grave, devotion in prayer and making peace between man and his fellow; but (and this is overlooked usually) the study of Torah is equal to them all.” In other words, the synagog implanted these ideals of service toward humanity he now attempts to realize through the medium of his “local.” It is the source whence he draws the waters of benevolence. The “local” furnishes an organization to effect ends previously functioned through the organizations attached to the synagog. He has not evolved a new source of energy. He has changed his organization which, in order to be energized depends on a central dynamic source, and this central source of energy is the synagog. If he cuts himself off from it his spiritual energy will slacken. He will wither and become seared in the dry winds of his own selfishness, forgetful of his humanity. For the synagog always rolls up the curtain of the universe and insists on each member of the covenant of Israel beholding the entire world whereon all peoples are struggling and striving. It reaches out in love to their fellow-men and labors with them for bread of life14 The vision of the “local” gradually dims when it becomes separated from the spiritual group whose tradi- tion is sweetened by the honey of humanity. It becomes self- centered to the verge of brutal selfishness, and converts man into a clod without a throb of compassion. It is now so class- ** Singer’s Standard Book of Prayer, p. 4, ff. %* No Jew to-day regards his fellow American as a heathen or pagan. The fact that all their fellow American citizens worship the same God as the American Jew is a basis of mutual respect. INTRODUCTION | 25 conscious that the larger concern of humanity is lost in the clash of sordid craft interests and mere physical satisfactions. While “poverty becomes the Jew as a red ribbon a horse,’ impoverishment has never been the badge of his tribe. Poverty has never been extolled as a virtue whose reward will be allocated in the future world. On the other hand, gluttony, indulgence of any sort, has been severely condemned. Chastity, moderation, self-control have been enforced by innumerable precepts and examples. Neither poverty nor riches have been vaunted. These conditions have not been the ends of existence. Rather the study of Torah exceeds them all. And by Torah is implied culture, art, education, and the refinements that effect justice and promote opportunities and benefits for all. This has been the striving and ambition of Judaism—to hallow life. Fancy a trade’s union setting up as the acme of its achievement the hallowing of life for all humanity. From the days of Moses unto our own hour, the Jew has been made aware of this, that man does not live by bread alone. This the local forgets. The working class increases from year to year. Their influ- ence may now be infinitesimal. Barring immigration, the Jewish workers, using the term descriptively, are bound to become greater in number and significance. Unless the influence exerted by those other locals is counteracted and another policy pursued, their estrangement from the synagog is bound to ensue. What- ever religion has been to other peoples, Judaism has never been an opiate’® to Jews, as Soviet Commissioners insist on stigmatiz- ing religion. Through his Jewish heritage the Jewish worker will be led into the path of life and, willingly following therein, find that reward which is allotted to each mortal. In their present attitude, the workers constitute a formidable group, whose antagonism to the intentions of American Judaism are openly hostile, frank, and often violent. Another group whose aim is in direct conflict with that of the liberals are the nationalists, that is, the Zionists. They, as well as the trade union locals, are not in sympathy with Ameri- can Judaism, and find in the idea of Israel’s mission which forms the very soul and life force of the Jewish people as illustrated ’ % It must ever be borne in mind that Judaism is more than a religion. An ampler destiny is assigned the Jewish people as will be explained and shown. 26 AMERICAN JUDAISM in its history and religious literature one of the ridiculous “pre- tensions of Reform Judaism.” Zionism is a familiar topic among all Jewry. There is no need to disguise or minimize the redemptive features of this movement. It has been the means of restoring many who had strayed from the fold to their brethren of the faith. It has given purpose to those who walked in the dark places of doubt; dignity and self-respect to those who fawned and cringed before alleged superiors. All this is now so familiar that. to repeat it is boredom. And yet Zionism is at heart a movement that is incompatible with American democracy. It sets up the fiction of a Hebrew race which Dr. Fishberg, in his volume, “The Jews” disproved beyond all peradventure, and seeks to launch in the diplomatic waters a Jewish ship of state. Both creations are discredited in science and literature, in history and the liturgy. The con- tention of Reform Judaism that the Jews are only a religious people is a deduction, the Zionists say, of German metaphysics with which they will not pact because they hate the Jewish people and their descendants who hail from Germany no less vehemently than they despise any metaphysics evolved in the brain of a German Jew. The Jews are a race, is the primary assumption of Zionism. An accident, or the circumstances of history, deprived them of the patrimony of their ancestral homeland. They are the vic- tims of outrageous misfortunes and more so because they have failed to girdle themselves with the cord of a warring Judah, and chose instead the thorny path of missionary to humanity, unbidden and uncalled. So long as Reform Jews insist on foisting their metaphysics on humanity instead of their militia, they will be hounded across the continent of Europe and prob- ably America, say the Zionists. Convinced that the Jew belongs to his Hebrew people more than he does to his own Jewish religion, the Zionists began to summon the host to storm Zion’s hill. It was originally a political adventure, of this there is no doubt now that the record is written. Many pilgrimmed to Palestine to restore her waste places. It has become a home- land for many who are now satisfied to sit beneath their own vine and fig tree, even if this be an eucalyptus. The fortunes of the world war decreed that Palestine remain a mandatory INTRODUCTION 27 of the British Empire to which the Jews might migrate as they may, if they see fit, to New Zealand, Australia, Canada, or Ireland. Subjects of the British Empire, they will be accorded the civil rights of any accredited British subject of the realm. And that is all there is to the political status of the homeland of the Jewish nation. Zionism, therefore, occupies the status quo of a lost cause. The Jews, long the guests of the nations of the world, if that is the position they hold, are now destined to remain so and not hosts in their own country. For two thousand years, political nationalism for the Jews has been superseded by the far nobler service, that of servant of God. This is the insistence of Reform Judaism. Interweav- ing the historico-philosophical destiny of Israel as conceived of in exalted vision of the Deutro-Isaiah, with their conception of a world mission as developed through the centuries, they have clung to the notion that humanity is more than nationality. These views merge with the solemn aspirations voiced in the Afternoon Service of the Day of Atonement. Therein it is said: “That we might give witness unto Thee and glory into Thy name, Thou hast sent us unto all countries of the earth. Not as a sinner burdened with the penalty of his iniquity did Israel go forth unto the wider world, but his was the mission of the suffering Messiah. Leaving behind him his old home, the Temple, and its sacrificial cult, the pomp of the sacerdotal services, giving up the symbolism of the age of his preparation for his larger historical duty, he marched forth to found every- where temples of a truer worship and a deeper knowledge of God and to lead by his self-sacrificing devotion all mankind to the spiritual altar of atonement.’*® To this end all sons of men are called. | And yet Palestine still spells hope for the martyred sons of Jacob. The “Hatikvah,”?? the national song of Zionism, reverberates with the undying hope of myriads who agonize for Zion. Even in this new land where Israel assumed that the new birth of freedom bestowed tolerance for all men, lo, we are now witnessing the onflow of hatred rising as a tide against us, and as ominous. Who can stay its dirty waters? Who *“QOlath Tamid,” by D. Einhorn, Eng. translation, p. 198. ™ Literally, “The Hope,” by Naphtali Hertz Imber. 28 AMERICAN JUDAISM knows but that pogromism and hooliganism may overwhelm us as they flayed our brethren in other lands? It is manifestly absurd as it is impossible to curb the long- ing of those who seek a respite in this visionary realm of their spiritual ancestors. As Goethe sought refuge from the distress of the finite by a plunge into the infinite, so those embittered by the last full measure of brutality meted out by their various governments, set up their own throne. There are scores of cultured men and women who have foresworn all the comforts of our sophisticated society and pilgrimmed eastward the main travelled roads of yesterday, suffering all the privations and discomforts of a pioneer. Hungry and athirst they repaired the breaches in the wall of desolation. They are beginning to restore the waste places, whether to their former splendor or not, depends on one’s enthusiasm and then on the reliability of the account which attributed unusual luxuriance to a land that never did overflow with milk and honey. The dreamers never cease in Israel. I{ there are among American Jews those who wish to become Palestinians, no one can stop them, nor should they! But this desire rests on the assumption that the Jews are merely an ethnic group who have been despoiled of their nation- ality and country. In an age of fascism Zionists are reviving nationalism. Amid the terrific reactions of force and violence, and the insolence of race superiority, the Jews have a right to their own country, the Zionists allege, as other nations have to their own parcel of soil.1* This view the Reform Jews never sealed with approval. They proved that nationalism was merely a state in the development of Israel and had in this age been outgrown. ‘They styled themselves servants unto humanity. The medium of service was their national group with whom they are identified. They therefore lent nationalism a worthier goal than rabid patriotism. It was a means to an end, not an end in itself, which is often compounded of race-hatred and national pride. Man uses nationality to serve humanity, not to exalt his nationalism. The Judaism of the Jew was to draw the Jew out of his religion into a larger humanity in the later days. ** All Zionistic debates are becoming rather passé. Zangwill and Weiz- man are still thrashing it out to amuse the intelligentsia. Humanity has passed on to more vital issues. INTRODUCTION | 29 The Zionists reject this messianic consummation. They were a nation, they said, whose homeland was Palestine and whose language was Hebrew. National existence long denied must now yield to self-determination. He must secure a legally estab- lished home. In the wake of that will follow the pride and self-respect of a dignified burgher. Whatever America meant to German Jews, to Zionists, America was merely a stepping stone on the journey to their own independent national real- ization. The movement has now subsided. As a political adventure it has ceased. Even their leaders concede that. What remains is the “Keren Hayesod,” an American project which is making it possible for those wishing to live in Palestine to do so. By practical schemes of engineering, such as the Ruthenberg electri- fication project, it may become possible to introduce small manu- facturing and industrial plants there. Any one who wishes to dwell in Palestine ought to be allowed that privilege. Sentiment is stronger than reason, and sentiment often dictates vital courses. Zionism has become a sort of philanthropic enterprise. In the effort to make the land of the fathers a refuge for those who seek it, as an escape from the brutality of Christian Europe, a generous support has been evoked. Whether the creation of a British mandatory in Palestine, with the consequent subordination of national self-determination, as originally intended, in the establishment of a legally secured home-land, will result in disarming Zionists of their zeal for things Jewish, is speculation. Rewon to the cause of the Jew, the Zionists who no longer see the possibility of a nationally secured home-land in the British mandate may now champion Israel’s age-long battle for justice. No definite statement has been issued, however, nor have any movements been inaugurated whereby one might infer that the Zionists in America have undertaken any other task than that of supporting the philan- thropic scheme of rehabilitation in Palestine. The Zionists have been active in this country for a quarter of a century. Within that time there has come to the fore another group numerically smaller, but to a slight extent an offshoot of them. There is in the biological field aberrations from normalcy known as “sports.” There are also in religion, Jewish and non-Jewish, similar deflections. There has been 30 AMERICAN JUDAISM freakish formation in the Jewish organism, so to speak. The natural unfolding of the spirit is recorded in history and in the literature produced by the Jews—prayers, poems, piyyutim, homilies, ethics, commentaries, diaries, “responsa,” apologetics, fiction—these compound the organic substance of Judaism. As an index of the Jewish spirit, the literary productions of the Jew must be surveyed as a Leopold Zunz surveyed them, in a scientific attitude. With a methodology such as he and Abra- ham Geiger used, Jewish literature will reveal an unfolding of the genius of the people. The many varieties of literature produced by Jews have this in common: through all runs a red and blue cord, vivid with the martyrdom of Jewish heroism and the consciousness of priestly appointment to service at the altar of humanity. The main thesis of all this literature is the hallowing of life and confession of the realities of life excepting in the case of the Kabbalah. The mystical strain in Judaism dates back as far as Ezekiel, it may be. Among all mystical literatures there are evidences of attempts to escape reality. A group, coming to consciousness in our own day, is of the mystic gender, and like their predecessors are endeavoring to flee from the wrath of the world of the actual. There have been mystic sects among the Jews, as is intimated, of which the Essenes are probably a type, and the “Anshe Maaseh” mentioned in the Talmud, another. “Jewish mysti- cism,” says J. Abelson in his book on the subject, “is really noth- ing but commentary on the Jewish Bible, an attempt to pierce through to its most intimate and truest meaning, and what is the Bible to the Jew but the admonisher to be loyal to the tra- ditions of his fathers ?’’!* . This ambition, while it may explain mystics in Galicia and other European countries during the 16th, 17th and 18th cen- turies, does not characterize the modern Jewish mystics. While these modern mystics claim that mysticism is a consciousness of the indwelling of God in the soul (which is not mysticism at all, mysticism being psychologically a repudiation of the stimuli and the setting up of impression independent of reality)—the force of this movement has its inception in a protest against Reform Judaism. The religious construction put on Judaism by the Jews of * Jewish Mysticism, by J. Abelson, p. 32, ff. INTRODUCTION 31 German antecedents is now abused by a third generation, as a movement sterile and cold as a haughty beauty who is conscious of her charms. Reform Judaism, say these critics, lacks fervor, warmth. It is barren of emotional elation, and anaemic, and like Rachel refuses to be comforted, much less bestow comfort and consolation on hearts sorely troubled. Rationalism and intel- lectualism, they say, has despoiled the venerable mother of her adornments, which are her ceremonials. Science and the dreaded truthfulness of knowledge has used the scalpel of psychoanaly- sis to rip the seams in the fair gown of devotion. How can a true mother in Israel retain veneration for the home ceremo- nies such as kindling the Sabbath lights when the irreverent mind of science exposes the rite as an emotional elation so closely akin to sensualism as to invest the rite with unholy aspects? How can Israel’s Torah be piously exalted as it is on the Sabbath when the women of Israel who “bring religion into the home” and “spiritualize the synagog” are told that this law God did not give to Moses. This is a fiction, disproved by Biblical criticism beyond the peradventure of a doubt! The law is an evolution of centuries.”° In like devastating manner, other ceremonials (dietary laws, circumcision, ritual baths, etc.) have been deflowered of the aroma of veneration leaving these ceremonials as empty as shells. Reform Judaism is thus guilty of actually robbing the Jews of ceremonies which have been tabooed or outlawed. In thus depriving them of an amulet, there has been a vacuum caused in their souls. This gap must be filled by the reality or con- sciousness of God, who must be brought back into their lives from some external source, super-imposed, not evolved or out- drawn. This modern coterie of mystics would isolate Judaism in the Jew and distill it to a spiritual essence which can be imbibed like a narcotic. In this state of ecstacy induced by an injection of distilled spiritual essence, the addict is uplifted on wings of religious fervor. High enthroned he, or in most instances she, is able to “cleave unto God” and, forgetful of the world out- side, wallow in waves of emotionalism and hysterical excitation, all induced by this intoxicant or soporific of mysticism. In this act the addicts are utterly oblivious that this indul- ® Folk-Lore and the Old Testament, by Frazer, p. 435, ff. 32 AMERICAN JUDAISM gence is undisguised paganism. Reform Judaism protests against this debasement of Judaism, and has always insisted that the function of religion is social service. Religion is a natural me- dium in man, it holds, and insists that we are in part what God is in amplitude. By worship we recognize our kinship with our Father and our duties toward man. These obligations towards our humanity are social appeals for collective action, and coop- eration in all affairs of humanity. Mystic sects have been germinated in Judaism at various periods. The composition of a book like the Sefer Yezirah (Malter’s Life and Works of Saadia Gaon, p. 180) indicates that there was a tendency to invest speculation with mystical ele- ments in the early centuries of our era. But mysticism has never taken root in Israel, no more than the saints of Sefed during the 16th century”! influenced the hosts of Jacob. Mysti- cism is individualism gone to seed. The vitality of the Jewish revelation, its resiliency and flexibility, is the continuity of the appeal addressed to the group in behalf of the community. Mysticism inculcates a selfishness that is antagonistic to the primary assumption of Jewish ethics, namely, loyalty to their covenant with God, which enjoined service of loving kindness in behalf of man. “May we never forget that all we have and prize is but lent to us, a trust for which we must render an account to Thee—that we may consecrate our lives to Thy service and glorify Thy name in the eyes of all men,” is a Jew- ish aspiration found in Union Prayer Book.*? Hence mysticism has never found wide acceptance among the Jews who will have none of its “spirituality” so often allied to sensuality and often induced by emotional excitation of the sort the mystics new and old cultivate, as Davenport explained in his “Primitive Inhibi- tions in the Religious Revival’ and James in his “Variety of Religious Belief.” Suspecting that mysticism is a necessary ingredient to infuse in the religion of American Jews, it is finding staunch advo- cates among those who in this late day are stirred to spiritualize the synagog, an endeavor as closely approaching a monstrous absurdity as any movement ever initiated in the fecund genius of the Jew. Spirituality in the sense employed by the mystics = Studies in Judaism, by S. Schechter, Vol. I, p. 3, ff. * Union Prayer Book, p. 67. INTRODUCTION 33 is pagan, neo-platonic and Paulianian. It presumes a disunity of matter which the Jew never accepted. The world created by God is a totality not bisected into things of the spirit and that which is not of the spirit; of the earth, and therefore earthly, and of heaven and therefore heavenly. All God’s acts are just and done in uprightness. “The work of His hands are truth and justice” (Psalm III:7). This world created by God is full of His spirit and this is revealed in man. In the words of Isaiah this spirit of God is the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord (Isa. XI, 2). By the spirit of God man is given mastery over material things and provides wings for his imag- ination. Thus is released the creative impulses wherewith man constructs a world of ideals and holier splendor, as poet, archi- tect, scientists, as teacher, statesman, lawgiver, journalist, author and worker. In the eighteen Benedictions, one directly following the three praises of God is devoted to wisdom and knowledge; “Thou favorest man with knowledge and teachest mortal under- standing. So favor us with knowledge, understanding, discern- ment, from Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, gracious Giver of Knowledge.” This world, then, is God’s creation, His spirit is in it. Matter contains the impress of His spirit. Matter is therefore ensouled and to be used for the welfare of man. This is the only sort of spirituality that Judaism knows: the spirituality lodged in the act of laboring together with one’s humanity to establish peace, beauty, happiness, here on earth. The piety of the fathers, so vaunted these days, consisted in their conformity to the ritual of practice. The pious Jew is he who obeys the commandments and does them. There was virtue in the fulfilling of these commandments. Those practicing them were enabled to live clean, chaste, healthy lives, in mind and body. They rejoiced in the fulfilling of the Lord’s commandments, enjoining as it did, the service of loving kind- ness. They clothed the naked, fed the hungry, and set the imprisoned free. They who did these things with a willing heart were far more spiritual than the modern detractors of Reform Judaism who would not lift a finger to serve their humanity lest it disturb the gusto of their emotional revel. This group prefers to cleave unto God in mystic embrace rather than soil 34 AMERICAN JUDAISM their hands in joining with humanity in the work of the world. Deplorable as all this is, the saddest note is the implication that Reform Judaism, having stoutly resisted this aberration, is a baneful influence and “the most serious menace to the Jews of America.” These revivals wherein ecstacy and frenzy overlap benevo- lence and social welfare are not unknown in the religious history of the Jewish people, a phrase by the way that is not tauto- logical. The surprising feature of the religious revival among Jews, on the plane of individual elation, is not the phenomenology of the excitation and resurgence, but the locale of its manifes- tation, namely in the large centers of American Jewish popula- tion. In the old world, the hinterland, Galicia, Bessarabia and Safed, Palestine—obscure hamlets hidden in mountain fastnesses —harbored the illuminati of mysticism. It is now apparent that the upbreak of the Zionistic program as a political adventure, the shifting of aims from politics to philanthropy has been in a degree the cause of the revival of mysticism among our Jewish youth. These who have been deprived of the realization of their alleged nationalistic aspirations, their racial self-determina- tion, although this may not be the exact nomenclature employed, are now constructing within a world disassociated from reality, in order that they may experience in ample measure “the con- sciousness of the indwelling of God.” Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does Judaism. The Jew must be busy with one ideal or another. If he is ever so fortunate as to be without persecutors, he arises and lashes him- self for his sins. And yet the more he was persecuted the more he flaggelated himself on the eve of Atonement. ‘The Jew can not be contented with his lot. He is not by nature phlegmatic, and it is well that a driving energy pushes and drives him. His mind usually seethes with designs and inven- tions, wherein a fraction of that nervous energy wherewith he is endowed may be used to benefit and bless, be it the organ- pation of an international agricultural bureau, after the order of David Lubin, or the organization of cotton, tobacco, fruit, wheat and corn growers, after the design of Aaron Shapiro. The mind of the Jew is ever directed in channels of organization and concerted effort for a larger good,—for the commonwealth, in a word. The ambition of Zionists was commendable in the INTRODUCTION 35 highest degree. It is a movement of heart as much as head. Now that the political Zionist is dead there is a hiatus, a vacuum. In the interim mysticism enthralls with its modicum of reason and the largeness of its fiction. From all accounts that have come to us of mystical practices in other eras, many rites and ceremonies of this cult did violence to Jewish tradition. Mysticism is individualistic instead of social; secretive instead of public, and inclined to cater to the subdued tones and dimness of cavernous depths instead of the frankness of all phases of Jewish worship. Picture a service in the synagog or home without the symbolic radiance of light and joy. Then conceive of the violation to the sanity of Judaism when a service is conducted in somber gloom! Such ritualism is more conducive to the seance with its charlatanry of spirit- rapping, gently rapping, than to the wholesomeness of a Jewish service. Then again: “The Shema should never be recited where it can not be heard by the ears of the worshipper,” says the Sifre.2* Hence the synagog has established regular prayers and appointed the special hours wherein not one, but a group, constitute the validity of the act of worship. Mysticism is, however, in keeping with the un-Jewish clamor for spiritual consolation, following the transit from life morta! of a dear one, that now invades most Jewish households. There has been of late undue concentration on the phenomenon of death among the Jewish people in the United States. Death is as natural as life and a manifestation of God’s wonders,” also. No man lives forever. Our little lives are rounded by an eter- nity, and yet each is so to live, in whatsoever way possible, that his life adds a mite to the common wealth of humanity. In living according to this construction, no labor is then com- monplace, no matter how commonplace it be. None is so exalted that it remains impervious to the common deeds of the masses. By their labor the mass of humanity redeem themselves because action makes destiny. No one lives in vain, no matter how he lives—even a negative colorless existence by indirection points to a career of service as a model. Every one is needed by some one else, and so long as one is a friend, one is indispensable, said. Robert Louis Stevenson. The value of life is relative. * Midrash on Deuteronomy, commenting on Deut. 6:14. * The Function of Death, by George B. Foster. 36 AMERICAN JUDAISM All life is holy and sacred. Life being so highly venerated among Jews, death is not an awful void and desolation, but a continuance of the spirit released according as one labored among men. Life and death both serve beneficent ends, just as night is as necessary as day, and cold as well as heat. It seems ridiculous to revamp hackneyed themes of this sort, but these reflections troop to mind when one examines the arguments that are now advanced to convert the service of the synagog which has ever been a stimulation to noble living, into a solace of somnambulency for the dead. Modern Jewish “laymen”, a word that cannot be acclimated among the Jews, who venture to counsel the rabbis and teachers of Israel in the gospel of American Judaism as they conceive it, insist that a rabbi should not console a mourner by reminding the bereaved that all God’s ways are just. Nor tell them in the sublime diction of the burial ritual that the Lord is a God of truth without iniquity, just and upright is He who loves man with an unbounded love and none whom can say unto Him, What doest Thou? The consolation of the Jewish prayer book may not be “spiritual,” in the commonly accepted conno- tation of this un-Jewish term, but it is Jewish and that is far better. The “laymen,” however, venturing to impart homiletic instruction to rabbis would have the teacher of Israel soothe the sorrowing heart of his congregants by lifting up the cup of Christological salvation, and in doing so “spiritually”, renaind his congregation that they who mourn may confidently expect to meet “Their Pilot face to face When they have crossed the Bar.” Many among modern saviours of Judaism, such as the “lay- man”, would have the rabbis convert Judaism into a kind of Christianity when death visits the home of any member of a Jewish congregation. They would have the rabbis discourse not on “Mishna” as was the fashion in orthodoxy Jewry but on the possibilities of the grief stricken family being reunited with the loved one now lost to them in this life and to tell them how this reunion may be effected. Judaism does not deny immortality. The righteous will not rest from labor, neither in this world nor the world to come, said the rabbis of the Talmud, but they will go from strength INTRODUCTION 37 to strength.” The immortality the rabbis forevisioned was not developed along philosophical nor the scientific lines of a Sir Oliver Lodge. Theirs was an immortality conditioned in right- eousness. The righteous of all nations share in the bliss of the future world. Immortal life God implanted in us as He made His eternal law the portion of Israel and man. But this is not the sort of immortality preached by modern “laymen.” Being reunited with one’s loved ones is not immortality. It is a crude eschatalogy in which the aspects of resurrection prevail over immortality. As late as 1869, the Central Conference of Ameri- can Rabbis resolved that: “The belief in the resurrection of the body has no religious foundation in Judaism and the doctrine of immortality refers to the after existence of the soul only. The Union Prayer Book following the precedent of Einhorn in his ‘Olath Tamid’ changed the traditional formula of God as the Reviver of the Dead into the far nobler expression, ‘Who has implanted within us immortal life’,’ as Kohler shows in his “Jewish Theology.” This is the position of Judaism in the matter of death: a natural event as true and unfailing as the ebb and flow of tides. It is not within man’s power to stay it, therefore he must adjust himself to it and be unafraid. Death casts shadows of sadness over all, but life must therefore not remain sad. Judaism was never a religion of sadness. Laughter was never deemed sinful among Jews. Joy accompanied every ceremony. Hence the cup of wine and the light used in the ceremonials are symbols of joy and held in sufficient esteem to be signalized for a bless- ing. In consonance with the tradition of Judaism it comes with somewhat of a shock when the Kaddish recited usually in con- nection with bereavement, should be degenerated into an incan- tation for the dead on the part of those who are so superstitious as to recite it as a dirge. Such an act is unpardonable. The Kaddish is a segment of the daily service and has been styled an “exuberant doxology.” Herein Israel registered a trust in the eventual triumph of God’s kingdom which (it is now gener- ally recognized) is a Messianic phrase for what in modern term- inology might be called “A more perfect union”, a saner and more equitable social order than that which now fills the world > Berokot, 64a. 38 AMERICAN JUDAISM with penury. The Kaddish recognized that no one lives in vain and that each one in his efforts to establish peace adds to the final consummation of this distant achievement. The orientation of the Judaism is messianic in this sense, that eventually a more perfect humanity will emerge from the con- flicting elements warring in the world today. Economically and politically, more democracy is to be the constitution of the social order, and to this end every one must strive, that a collective good, not an individual wellbeing alone, may prevail. Let it also be borne in mind that among the Jewish people, to acquire property is right and just, for in so doing man testifies to his own dignity and the value of labor. But nowhere and nohow is property, valuable as that may be, set above the worth of human life. Even the generation of the flood were granted a week wherein to repent ere Noah and his retinue repaired to the ark, and had they repented, so the rabbis inti- mate, the Lord would not have destroyed the world. To jeopar- dise or debase life in preference to property is and always has been sinful. “For this reason was man created one and alone in the world: to teach that whosoever destroys a single soul is regarded as though he destroyed a complete world, and whoso- ever saves a single soul is regarded as though he saves a com- plete world.’’® Each one of earth’s children hastens the advent of the Kingdom of God in so far as he bends his individual selfishness to the general good. Not to digress, let it be here recorded that the Kingdom of God mentioned by Jesus is a fore- shadowing of this messianic advent. Dedicating life to a general good instead of an individual acquisitiveness lends purpose to each one’s labor. He who so lives invests his or her existence with godliness. One then becomes an instrument, or in Biblical terms, “A servant unto God”, for the ultimate realization of that which God symbolizes. And what God symbolizes is a more perfect humanity—a humanity free from the brutality and hatred, the penury and perplexity which degrades us now. A rabid nationalism, fanatical patriotism, “hundred percentism”, all these vicious reactionary conceptions of outworn creeds and exhausted dogmas so rampant in our day, retard the advent of that fellowship of mankind to which all peoples are eventually to render homage. 7° Mishna, Sanhedrin, 5b. INTRODUCTION 39 These then being, by and large, the aspiration and outlook of Judaism, certainly those essential principles of American Juda- ism, the deflections from the stream of tradition which flows through us as exhibited in these groups thus far analyzed, are far from comforting us. Political Zionism being declared “dead” as Zangwill in his speech before the Jewish Congress (Oct. 14, 23) announced, there is imminent need for another interest to substitute the upbreak of the Zionistic movement. There is as urgent a demand for the participation of all Israel in America to counteract the inroads of race hatred, bigotry, alien- ism, hundred percentism, and the propaganda of half-truths hounded across the continent of Europe. There is need to-day of united effort grounded in a consistent theology, if you please, of American Judaism to generate an effective morale. The liberal group gave promise in early days of effecting this morale. They have not been reenforced by the younger generation who charged them with divesting the Judaism of tradition of the poetry hymned by that tradition. Reform Judaism is fully as poetic as traditional Judaism. It dreams dreams and sees vis- ions. What can be more poetically visionary than the messianic dream of a Utopian world purged of the dross of selfishness, race-hatred and rabid nationalism? Reform Judaism has modi- fied the metric beat of traditional Judaism and replaced it by a free versification, a poetry nevertheless keyed to the measure and beat of our own era, and uplifting as any poetic emotion come down to us from yore. The nationalists denied this and their denial is now sustained by a new group of romantically-minded young men and women who see in the advocacy of an historical development of Judaism an implied protest against the glamor of their racial grandeur. To this alleged grandeur they burn the incense of their mysti- cism and inhaling its fumes suffer the effects of a narcotic. The nationalists denied the priority and supremacy of the religion of the Jews. This recent group of malcontestants denies the process of continuous growth maintained by those who interpret Judaism historically. The last-born group regard growth as a fatality. The sublimity of Judaism among this group of intelli- gentsia lodges in the finality of the product, not in the process of its growth or evolution. The religion of the Jew is not to them an “ewige werden” 40 AMERICAN JUDAISM but a status quo, as revealed in the Torah given at Sinai. This Torah, so argues this youngest group of Reform Judaism prot- estants, was a guide-book of direction. Its paths were paths of pleasantness and all its ways were peace, the peace of submis- sion. Being a divine revelation, it contained guidance for uncer- tain feet. It was authoritative and issued commands like a military dictator which men and women had to obey. This Torah did not permit any one to do his “own sweet pleasure” but organized a program of duties which had to be discharged. Reform Judaism, the latest opponents claim, divests Judaism of authority. It provides no guides to direct weak and mortal man in the path that he should go. It catalogs no codification of rules and regulations which control conduct and behaviour in the minute details of contemporaneous daily existence. It has not published a blue-print of moral duties outlining what each man, woman and child should do. In other words, Reform Judaism is devoid of authority and consequently the Reform Jew having had no one to discipline him, is in the position of a child who has grown into adulthood without proper training. Reform Judaism will never be anything more than a meta- physical speculation of German trained rabbis and cantors, so these opponents avow, until it accepts the authority superim- posed by external beings, when it casts aside as a baneful influ- ence and a menace, the historico-philosophical visions of the prophets of Israel. It may then be in a position to accept the divine revelation which staked the course wherein each is to run in the game of life. See now how the Reform Jews go astray for lack of moral leadership. What American Israel needs above all other spiritual assets is moral dictatorship, a fascisti of legal- ism, revived to keep the sheep within the Jewish folds. There has been too much license, too great a leniency with the hal- lowed traditions of the fathers, too little mysticism and a certain laxity of ritualism which ended in a general weakening of the moral fiber. Thus say the young romantic orthodox fascisti. That in our modern world, 150 years after the bonds of ancient tyrannies had been sundered, there should now be a clamor for the mailed fist of dictatorship is a dismal exhibit of our vaunted civilization. Yet it is one of the glaring reactions of our own decade. History attests to similar reactions. The present decade is reactionary in the extreme, politically as well as economically. INTRODUCTION Al The most astonishing situation today is the repudiation of the philosophy, political, social and economic, of the XIX Century. Dictatorship is displacing democracy. There is an evident mis- trust of man and his ability to govern himself. He is suspected of innate disqualifications for self-control and education, The mass-minded hordes constituting the bulk of the nations must be “bossed,” it is claimed. In the light of that statement, wit- ness the mobs that are swayed by false prophets and the rise of the dictator lashing the sheep-minded followers into submis- sion the world over. That the religion of the Jews reflects the atmosphere and attitude of the world at large has been observed by many writ- ers.27. Renan and Leroy Belleau and even the anti-semitic cote- rie admit it, so it is natural that some of our younger set thrust themselves into the outspread arms of force and violence. They are like the trees that went forth once on a time to anoint a king over them. The trees said unto the bramble after other more favored varieties had been consulted, “Come thou and reign over us.” So the bramble said unto the trees: “If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shadow; and if not let fire come out of the bramble and devour the ‘Cedars of Lebanon’” (Judges 9:15). In the course of its unfolding historical Judaism abrogated the binding authority of rabbinical codes. For a century this deci- sion was unchallenged. Yet this present generation witnesses the rise of those who demand a restoration of the binding author- ity of the rabbinical codes as a means of guiding and directing them. Within a century Judaism in America has for this group exhausted the appeal of the reform pioneers who endeavored to eradicate the legal formalism from the religious revelation. These early leaders sought to avoid the perfunctory discharge of a set of prescribed commandments the outward performance of the letter of the law and advocated instead a sanctification of the whole of life. All transactions, all activities, the employment and conduct of each one testified to the glory of God and extolled Him. Reform Judaism professed not a certified or prescribed set of behavioristic routines, namely, precepts and practices such as legalistic Judaism ordained. 27 There is a rabbinical observation that to the children of Israel at the Red Sea, God appeared as a warrior; in the Beth ha Midrash, i. e. acad- emy, God appeared as a student of law. 42 AMERICAN JUDAISM This was the ambition of the pioneer: to adjust himself to a political democracy by outdrawing the democracy in his relig- ious heritage; to extract the universal ethical applications of Judaism from the racial setting. Judaism was to him only national in origin. Its orientation and outlook, its purpose and destiny was universal. And Judaism as an abstraction is un- thinkable. Without Jewish people to enact and live it, Judaism, a metaphysical system, cannot prevail. The universal element was stressed that the ghettoism of the Jew might be ironed out of his soul. In the United States the Jew was brought nearer to his fellowmen and became one with them in citizenship. What Reform Judaism purported is outlined by Samuel Hirsch in his “Catechism.’** The purpose of a man’s life is to be the image of God here on earth, to give the fullest play and devel- opment to the divine energies of his mind. Since God is the fountain of all things and He called the universe into being, in the fullness of His love and wisdom, it behooves us, His co- workers, to engage in all good work from pure and unselfish motives. The farmer who tills his soil and causes it to yield its produce; the mechanic and artisan who transform the raw materials, the gifts of God in nature and fit them for the uses of man; the merchant who by his toil lightens the burden of others and helps to supply their wants; the scholar whose researches finds new truths and kindles the light of reason in others, all of these are creative. They realize their divine like- ness, if in their work they strive to fulfill the purpose of their life. Religion embraces the whole of life and thus the entire scope and compass of life passes under the control of moral law which is the basis of the “Ethics of Judaism,” as Lazarus shows.2° Our religion embraces the whole of life, as the religious pioneers showed. It was not merely a discharge of special duties, but a life dedicated to a service, not ourselves, and makes for right- eousness among men. It is the common, collective good of the political group in which we live and have our being. This robust stimulant is rejected by the younger group, who find that Reform Judaism cultivates an ever increasing laxness. They want instead, as an American Jewess wrote in the London Jewish Chronicle of May 3, 1923, “faith.” “Reform Judaism,” * Reform Advocate, Vol. XLIX, No. 16, p. 523. *“The Ethics of Judaism,” by M. Lazarus, § 175. INTRODUCTION 43 so they say in the glib gibber of hysteria, “has extracted all the substance, the rare sweet kernel of absolute faith, faith which orthodoxy brings, the fashion of giving one’s inner soul and heart and life to one’s faith. In the great temples of Paris one finds unswerving allegiance to the old rites and customs of the faith. In observing these old rites the observer becomes imbued with the enormous value of their Judaism, be it archaic or old- fashioned, as its modern reforms would so coldly deem it.” This attitude is typical of the intelligentsia of our day. Granted this group is interested in Judaism at all, it is not in the concep- tion of a dedication of one’s life to the hastening of that day when ignorance, superstition and hatred are banished. This does not form the basis of their interest. Religion is to them the extraction of the sweet kernel of absolute faith. The bland self-sufficiency and ignorance of this characterization of Juda- ism, such as the modern orthodox craves, is staggering. The old rites practiced by our fathers were never discharged as a matter of faith, but as a matter of duty in which they took par- ticular delight. As Schechter in his “Aspects of Rabbinical Theology’®® describes them: There was a certain rejoicing in the fulfilling of the commandments. They bore the yoke of the kingdom not as a matter of faith but as a mission whereby they, in their fulfilling the law, rendered holy the earth and all that was thereon. In common with many of the group who are pining for a res- toration of the dear old rites and ceremonies so impressive, none of which, it might be said in passing, would be carried out by any of the sentimentalists rhapsodizing them, the correspond- ent just quoted is hankering after the strong arm of the law. She and her school belong to the weaklings who must be “bossed,” and this squad is not confined to the political category alone. The movement is quite apparent. It is natural that an inter- pretation of Judaism in nationalistic terms leaves one without direction the instant nationalism is exploded. Reform Judaism is rejected because this school champions prophetic Judaism which made man supercivic, a servant of humanity laboring in a cause which was not himself, that made for righteousness as Matthew Arnold phrased it. Having no destiny, the group under examination clamor for something to engage them. They *® “Aspects of Rabbinical Theology,” by S. Schechter, p. 148. 44 AMERICAN JUDAISM are not content with the program of democracy. They seek force and tyranny—the tyranny outgrown by Judaism they would | restore. That movement within the Jewish people which was labelled Reform Judaism is a direct continuation of the prophetic spirit which in turn was transmitted to the apocalyptic authors who transmitted it to the Pharisees and the rabbis of the Talmud. In substance, it is a protest against the dogmas of materialism and the anti-social deification of the individual but the forevis- ioning, instead, of the eventual destiny of humanity in the estab- lishment of what has been called from of old, “the Kingdom of God.” It means then that history has meaning. According to that conception, Israel is destined to play a definite and distinct part in the shaping of men’s minds and conduct, to the end that a reign of justice be brought to pass here on this earth. Into this task the Jew is born according to a divine plan. He, in association with his brethren, the Jewish people, labors for the realization of this achievement. There is more to this task than the formulas of a creed or the articles of a belief, because Judaism is not merely a religion; it is the historic assignment of a people to a cause in the {fulfill- ment of which they must preserve their identity. Being a group, a religious people, however, is not coextensive with nation. A nation connotes a political entity and Jewish nationalism has been politically extinct since 172 of the common era, while its revival expired in 1923. Reform Judaism stresses the mission- idea which is by no means absent in the sermons of the prophets or the homilies of the rabbis. It is sounded as well in the philos- ophy of the mediaeval thinkers. Reform gives it a stronger emphasis, and Reform Judaism developed its own theory of Jewish history in contrast to that put forth by the orthodox synagog. To them the exile of the diaspora (“golath”) had to be endured resignedly, God alone had decreed the trials and deprivation which Israel suffered, and in his own good time would end it. Against this view and interpretation of history, Reform Judaism advanced the counter proposition that Israel was sent into the world to witness to the truth for which this people of Israel had been identified, namely, the moral law, the Torah, that he, through his life, must glorify God or so live that his every act testifies to the living God. INTRODUCTION 45 The fundamental conception of Rabbinical (orthodox) Juda- ism is legalism, normism. Judaism, the rabbinical orthodox claim, means obedience to the law as revealed on Sinai and pre- served in the Pentateuch. To this basis of orthodox Judaism there was this modification, the law revealed on Sinai had to be read in the light and by the aid of a second Law also revealed but orally transmitted. For the rabbis contended that all the commandments and statutes incorporated in the Mishna were also foreseen by Moses when he received the tablets of the stone. In this, as in Reform Judaism, religion is made coextensive with all human life. Religion, whether orthodox or reform, includes and embraces the totality of human existence. In that sense Torah was the sacramental term of the synagog and still is in reform synagogs. Every phase of life is under the sway and domination of religion and is inspired and inspirited with relig- ion. In other words, this means that every human being must be conscious of responsibility, human dignity, freedom and jus- tice. Justice is the keystone in the triumphal arch of Judaism. The content of the Jewish God-idea is compounded largely of justice. Through man God manifests his decree. Man and God are therefore not alienated but co-workers or partners, as the rabbis said, “Shutaph le ma’ash Bereshith.” To effect through this impelling thought and confliction the affairs of man is the historic task to which the Jew is called. Reform Judaism affirms the doctrine of man’s freedom which is a recognition in consciousness that God abides within us, a power able to master nature and superior to it. On the basis of a covenantal relation between God and Israel, responsibilities are postulated which are to be conscientiously carried out. The essential convictions of Judaism are rooted in this consciousness of God’s presence being manifest to us in all His works and in our own. It is thus a principle, not a precept, that man being endowed and enjoined to be a creator must work as, verily, God works. In work man realizes his creative destiny. Work is therefore not a curse. It is the “co-efficient of human dignity.” Work, as God works, “not for reward or to secure means where- with to buy pleasure, but work without looking to the fruit, work inspired by the consecrating purpose to increase the sum of human life and love, to subdue earth to the intentions of man’s destiny. So to live is the proclamation of Judaism as con- 46 AMERICAN JUDAISM structed by the teachers of Reform (Samuel Hirsch for instance). The peculiar task is laid on the Jew to teach these universat principles of human conduct whereby men may live together in peace and enjoy the fruits of their labors, Thrilled by visions of his mission, the Jew finds in American democracy the medium whereby he lends himself to his human- ity. Humanity and Judaism are synonymous. There is nothing specifically Jewish which is not essentially human, and in the United States the Jewish people are liberated to verify this truth. Among the various groups that are now striving for mastery there are few championing that construction of life and Jewish destiny set forth by the reform leaders; and yet, paradoxical, if not quixotic, as it may appear, the liberal, prophetic or reform movement is the most compatible with democracy and is in fact an ally to it. For, as Walter E. Weyl shows in his New Democ- racy,** democracy is not in a final analysis a state at all but a mere direction and so is reform. As in Reform Judaism: “The social goal is the advancement and improvement of the people through a democratization of the advantages and opportunities of life and health, a democratization of education, a socializa- tion of consumption, a raising of the lowest elements of the population to the level of the mass.’’*? This is also the social program of American Judaism—it is in fact the social conscience of Judaism that inspired a “new” democracy. There is, it is true, an imperative need for a reconstruction of Judaism in terms of democracy, industrial as well as political. Democracy is by no means fulfilled. The despair now occa- sioned by the lamentable failure of democracy can be traced to its limited application. Political democracy alone cannot save the world from famine, war and penury. Democracy has need to be industrial and economic also. The new constructions of industry are destined to be more democratic, collective, co-op- erative, consolidated from the capitalistic side as well as the labor side. Here, then, is the task imposed on the Jewish people of America: to use the technique of democracy for the exercise and discharge of their Judaism. Political Zionism is dead, and territorial Zionism, such as the ITA is not functioning. Defunct * “The New Democracy,” by W. E. Weyl, p. 354. * Opus cit., p. 320. INTRODUCTION AT nationalism now craves employment in other domains—why not let American Jewry become democratic and American? What democracy offers the Jew of the United States is a tech- nique wherewith to convey or apply their Judaism. Democracy is a technique wherein to exercise the religious consciousness. It affords application for the urge or impulse inherent in relig- ion. Orthodox Jews in their codification of the laws and com- mandments, the ordinances and statutes, 613 in number, were obliged to fulfill, in order to merit sanctification, created a pro- gram. It was a mechanicalization of life in behavioristic terms. But it provided an outlet for the performance of activities in set formulas or ordinances. It soon became apparent that life could not be so regimented. Still orthodoxy maintained for centuries its technique and effected a morale, the result of that discipline enforced in the fulfilling of the law and command- ments, in all their detail and minutiae. Within the ghetto and Jewish pale of a monarchy orthodoxy could prevail. Contact with larger national groups in democ- racies forced the Jew to discontinue considerable ceremonial. It also enjoined conformity to the procedure of trade and social manners acceptable to the majority. One of two situations now confronted the Jew: either assimilate racially with national groups or evolve a new technique. This technique in a measure Reform Judaism provided. The Reform Jew of America now discharges his religious obligations through the medium of democracy with this additional obligation that upon him is laid the historical duty of illustrating these essential principles of democracy inherent in his religion, before all men. If Reform Judaism is bereft of the application of religious motivation, that is to say, if worship, prayer-service, temple- attendance, and ecclesiastical ceremonial or an estheticism alone constitutes religion, then such aberrations would muddy the stream of tradition and would be as fatal as any act whereby force and violence, manned by national bigotry, deported the Jews from certain geographical eras of earth. The groups ana- lyzed in the foregoing paragraphs have been guilty of groping for a technique and that technique is now provided in the fullest realization of democracy. Yielding himself to this task and spending himself in behalf of democracy wherein his Jewish brethren have now cast their lot, they bear witness to the vis- 48 AMERICAN JUDAISM ions of their ancestors of the spirit who first proclaimed liberty throughout the land. Thus their historical mission is, in a meas- ure, functioning. Their exalted hopes for the eventual triumph of justice and the dignity of man are the brightness of that illu- mination the Jew has been assigned to kindle in the world. He, more than any other national group, is the living expression of ethical monotheism and ethical monotheism corresponds to democracy. The aptitude for this democracy as historically traced in the literature of the Jewish people harmonize with what may be styled their genius. To save life and enhance it involves social conscience, and the social conscience the teach- ers of American Judaism have been quickening as did their fathers. The Jews who sought these shores brought with them the instinct for liberty and the heritage of freedom as an expression of life and a realization of one’s genius and career, which is the basis of democracy. They have labored with their fellow men for the commonwealth that this nation conceived in liberty may never perish from the earth. That this conception of Israel in America may be better understood, it. behooves us to examine in detail what American Judaism comprises and comprehends. The thesis whereon this examination is directed follows the simple outline of this interpretation, that democracy is a tech- nique most acceptable to Judaism, of which it is in the main Synonymous, and that in the abandonment of political Zionism as untenable, unattainable and unreal, the Jewish people of America need address themselves to the rehabilitation of Judaism in democratic channels. How the Jew has contrived so to live an American Jewish life and what instrumentalities he wrought whereby he attains this expression of his religion and citizen- ship, with its inevitable reactions and mistakes, is the burden of the succeeding chapters. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM Judaism, in retrospect, projects the main travelled roads of the Jewish spirit, as well as the career of the Jewish people. Ob- viously no survey of American Jews or the religion thereof is complete or intelligible without a background such as historical retrospect. This is the purpose of the following pages, out- lining the main currents of thought that have been so identified with the Jews in their varied pilgrimages across the face of the earth as to be now regarded as their own heritage and particular possession, Briefly, it is a mere skeleton of Jewish history that is now essayed. The warrant for more elaborate details of those events in the history of the Jews from Biblical days to our own is not forthcoming in lieu of the abundant material extant on this subject. The outline given by Geiger in his “Allgemeine Ein- leitung in die Wissenschaft des Judenthums” is accepted? Jewish history, he says, is segmented into four distinct periods: The first is the free, untrammelled, unbroken revelation from within outward of the creative spirit manifested in the conscious- ness of God as recorded in Scripture. This Biblical period came to an end at the time of the Babylonian exile, although many influences therefrom permeated the successive generations that had been germinated at that time. The second period is the further development of the entire biblical heritage in which the spiritual content of the foregoing era provided the spiritual direction for the traditional fulfill- ment and expansion of those commandments and ordinances that were to make up the Mishna and Talmuds. The third period reworks the spiritual heritage of the fore- going era. It is the period of rigid legalism dominated by cas- uistry, the codification of transmitted laws and the whole scheme of life directed by ecclesiastical decisions. It is that historical period antecedent to our own, which emerged gradually from it and constitutes the present or fourth cycle. * Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. I, p. 63. 49 50 AMERICAN JUDAISM The last period is that era of enlightenment which we in our conceit attribute to our present era, whose benefits the present generation is enjoying. It was initiated by breaking the ban of authority and the fetters of submission inherited from previous generations. It sanctioned and sponsored free scientific inves- tigation and its characteristic method is a critical examination of man’s intellectual inheritance in whatever realm these endow- ments have been transmitted. Yet, withal, there is a conscious relationship and dependency of the present on the antecedent periods. Through all ages in which Jews have sojourned, there is a tenacious unity in which that illumination of the spirit formed in the dawn of Jewish history still reflects its glow on the peaks towering in this present decade. The American Jews are thus linked to a long ancestry. Their historical lineage is so pronounced that, without a conscious- ness of this ancestry of which the present generation are direct descendants, American Judaism cannot be understood. Surely no one presumes to interpret events of any sort, political, eco- nomic, literary, without deference paid to historical forces. No man is what he is save through the influences that moulded his ancestors. Every one is what he is as the result of what his ancestors were, and this is particularly true of the Jew, whose continued historical existence is stretched over longer periods than any other group in western hemispheres. In appropriating, then, the phrase, American Judaism, to char- acterize that development of Judaism which has taken place in the United States, one must not let the impression prevail that a unique and totally unusual phase of the religious conscious- ness of the Jewish people has been evolved. This is not the case. The content and intent of Judaism evolved by the group dwelling in this country came to pass according to natural laws of growth, and in accordance with the historical unfolding of the religious revelation of Israel in the three preceding eras. American Judaism is a sequence of historical events, not an aberration, as the Jewish nationalists contend, and a shortcom- ing of “Golath” or exile from Palestine. Historical studies force home the conclusion that the Jews have always been susceptible to the influences of whatever environment they chanced to be situated in. This is true of the Biblical era (1 Sam. 8:5 seq.), and holds true today. Wherever the Jews live as integral parts MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 51 of a nation, a Judaism reflecting that nation’s characteristics will be germinated. Realms as far apart as China and South Africa have each produced phases of Judaism distinctly paro- chial, as travellers testify who have visited either locality. Referring to the thirteen exegetical principles? whereby the Torah is expounded, the first rule holds good in this connection, namely, the inference from minor to major. One is therefore justified in assuming that if changes pronounced and distinctly manifest in the sparsely settled communities of Kai Fu Chang and Johannesburg, the greater will be the radical variations of ritual and doctrinal construction developed among the three to four million Jews of the United States.’ The method of logic, however, need not be impaneled to verify this process of adaptation and adjustment in the ceremonial oi Israel. Traced to their sources, all the ceremonial formulas of Judaism are foreign. Judaism imparted a new content to the formula, such as the Sabbath, Babylonian in origin, and invested it and other religious rites borrowed from surrounding peoples with a new spirit. On the side of religious ceremonial Judaism is a composite where these distinctions are made which Renan insisted were needful regarding the Jews. There is no Jewish type, he said. There are Jewish types. There are many types of Judaism. An “only” Judaism is as unattainable as a hundred per cent. Americanism.* The adaptability of the Jew to his environment is a well recognized characteristic, if not a trait of the Jews. In his “Israel among the Nations,” Leroy Beaulieu accounts for the readiness with which the Jew merges with his political environment. This French apologist of Israel adduces these facts to disprove the notion that the Jews are alien to that nation among whom they happen to dwell. He points out that assimilation prevails among the children of Abraham with the result that they absorb their environment and reflect it just as the student of intellectual movements is able to trace the various fashions of philosophy by® consulting the literature of the Jews. ~ *Singer’s Prayer Book, p. 15. ’ Brief compendium of Rabbinic law was prepared by Moses Isserles (1520-1572) for the practice of the German Jews, thus showing that seg- ments of Jews had special ritual rites and ceremonies. *The Religion of the Semites, by Robertson Smith. 5 The Reform Movement, by D. Philipson, Chapter I. 52 AMERICAN JUDAISM With more detail, and according to the labyrinthian devices of the laboratory, Dr. M. Fishberg has in his volume “The Jews,” proven by skillful measurements that the Jew in al! ages becomes a reflection of the peoples among whom he dwells. Says he, “We have seen that today the bulk of the Jews who have lived for centuries in Africa present predominantly an African physical type; those in Asia are mostly of Asiatic type, and the European Jews are mostly of the anthropological types met with among the European races.° The children of the third and fourth peneranien of American Jews are, by photographs and measurements of skull and limb, of color of hair and eyes, reproducing the lean, lithe physique of American youths. The anthropologists whom Dr. Fishberg quotes, claim that the athletic build of American youths is in turn a national atavism, and that the present generation of American children is reverting to the stature and figure of American Indians. That the children of American Jews should resemble Ameri- can Indians might lend support to the curious legend circulated in the hinterland of this country among the scriptural literalists, who nourish the delusion that the alleged lost ten tribes of Israel were the remote progenitors of red men whom Columbus found possessing the land.’ The justification of American Judaism according to biology is invalid if not superfluous. The religion of Judaism is a cause. It is non-material, and cannot be explained by the rules of natural science nor by rationalistic methods. It is a spirit, to be brief, the not-self. Judaism represents the ascendency of spirit over matter. Physical laws cannot explain the phenome- nology of Judaism. An American Judaism has been engendered not merely by reason of the Jewish population dwelling here, which would be a purely physical outcome, but from causes operating from within the soul of Israel. The Jewish religious consciousness drawn out and exercised in this country is the result of natural historical processes which have always been operative among the Jews. To accuse Ameri- can Jews of perpetrating a whimsy in evolving their American *“The Jews,” by M. Fishberg, p. 515. This is the dogma of a sect calling themselves Danite Israelites. They like the “Adventists” keep the Sabbath and Passover, but in theology are Christian. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 53 Judaism, as the Jewish nationalist argues, is to display an ignor- ance of history ill-becoming those who seek to lead people. In the light of their origin, and by the very nature of their Jewish consciousness, conceived collectively, the American Jews have taken on the aspects of this country to which they now profess, and justly, a sacred devotion. Correctly construed, which is to say, reading Judaism in terms of a spiritual revela- tion instead of a nationalistic excursion, the religion of Judaism is supercivic. A national American Judaism is no confession of weakness, no admission of backsliding. The Jew in America illustrates the ideology of his religion by his loyalty to the national ideals, or what passes under the general term of patri- otism. He is the better Jew because of the effectiveness of his citizenship which he is able to manifest by obeying his religious teachings since Jewish ethics stress the ideals of American democracy. In his essay on “The Philosophy of Jewish History,’® S. M. Dubnow shows that Jewish history has suffered no interruption during thirty-five hundred years. In the first chapter of its existence, the Jewish religion is created, as Geiger explained. Obviously Jewish history begins with the biblical period. Here is recorded the emergence of a Semitic tribe from the barbarous background of crass, superstitious, nature-worshipping folk with rites common to all Semites.® But the spiritual indi- vidualism exhibited by the Jews of later generations is in part manifested early in their career. This emanation of sel{-deter- mination in terms of love is their distinct individuality and contribution to humanity. There is no intention of tracing the divine afflatus of Israel, whereby these crude tribesmen who figure in the early chapters of Genesis become the forerunners of idealists who introduced the God-idea of universal application and upheld a concept of social righteousness which is the foundation of the social order today. But this is the miracle of Israel. The God whom they worshipped in crudest guise became in time more than a national deity. He is the God of all mankind, Creator and Preserver of the world. Even the laws of morality exacted by the God of Israel are obligatory upon all mankind. Their observance spells *“Jewish History,” by S. M. Dubnow, p. 12, sqq. ° Kinship and Marriage among the Arabs, by Robertson Smith. 54 AMERICAN JUDAISM salvation and blessing to all who lay hold thereon. (Deut. 7:7-8, xlix: 1-6). The ideal upheld by the Bible consists in a recognition of God and its logical corollary or application, a life of rectitude. Coupled with this is the vision of a time when all nations will be filled with the knowledge of God and all mankind actuated by motives of brotherly kindness.’° The fulfillment of this con- summation is the messianic era. In that day brotherhood will be more prevalent and good will among men will cover the earth as the waters cover the depth of the sea. But until the realization of that messianic state, Israel is called or “chosen” as the ensign to the nations, and sponsor of this" ideal.1 Bearing aloft this banner inscribed with God’s purposes, he is destined to mingle among peoples the world over. In the course of ages the whole of humanity will become transformed. Israel is therefore, by right of his priestly appointment, a mis- sionary among the nations. He has a cause to serve and a philosophy of history. These lofty teachings were inculcated ere Judah met its doom at the hands of Babylon. But the ponderous hands of this mighty empire could not destroy him. The rod of Babylon punished. It also chastened Judah. Judah emerged purified and reformed for a new life, when as martyr, stoic, thinker, the Jew began the other phase of his career which has not yet been exhausted or completed. All this happened before 476 B. C. It marks the conclusion of the Biblical era and makes way for the Talmudic period. This period attained full sway about 135 C. E. At that time the tragic ending of the Bar Cocheba rebellion destroyed the hope for the restoration of the Second Commonwealth of Israel and established instead a kingdom of the spirit, whose throne is the Torah, an invisible empire of Ideals and Ideas. It is the beginning of the second great’® era of Jewish development and is an outgrowth of the Bible. The Talmudic period provides a basis for future expansion. — 10 Tsaiah, Chapter 6. 4 Tsaiah, 60:1-3. “% Thus begins that era known as the Diaspora, or exile, or “Golath” (in Hebrew), which according to the Jewish Nationalists has not ended nor will it, until the scattered remnant of the house of Jacob are foregathered in their ancient patrimony, Palestine. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 55 The phase of Judaism must not be regarded as merely an era when the volumes of the Talmud were composed. Strictly speaking, the Talmudic era represents a spiritual attitude or a discipline enjoining on the Jew unalloyed obedience to the word of God revealed at Sinai. The commandments given at that time were expanded by the pressure of contracts within the national domain and beyond. These laws were the means of control set up when the political authority vested in the nation was destroyed by the Roman legions. The seat of authority was transferred to the moral laws, which guarded the Jews’ every step. These religious provisions of the Talmud aimed to unify the behavior of the Jews and enabled one to distinguish a brother in faith throughout the vast area of the diaspora by the similarity of practices and social customs. Despite the vast extent of the Jewish diaspora, the brotherhood of Israel was knit together by bonds no less tenacious because they were invisible. The code that regulated their conduct was embodied in the Talmud. This spiritual dictatorship which arose after the downfall of the Second Commonwealth was formulated in the Mishna, and represents the legislative activity of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai, Jehuda Hannasi, Hillel and Shammai and their followers. The binding authority of these laws is obtained from the Pentateuch. All laws in the Mishna had to be derived, whether by logic or by forced interpretation, from Scripture, and were the second or oral law of the revealed law given on Sinai. As an illustration of the susceptibility of the Jew to his environment, the Talmudic era is a complete phenomenon. It shows how the Jews, robbed of their political home, created a spiritual domain for themselves. Through the instrumentality of innumerable religious rules set forth in the Talmud, the Jews were moulded into a corporate body. Scattered far and wide, individual fragments cleaved to their common heritage, and thus made Jewish people a religious group held together by a common heritage of hopes, memories, ambitions and visions. With this equipment the Jews were prepared to withstand the rigors of their disenfranchisement, or “exile,” as they styled it. But in America the authority of these rabbinical regulations is denied.1* The law of America is law. According to Talmudic #® The Pittsburgh Platform, Central Conference of Am. Rabbis, 1885. 56 AMERICAN JUDAISM legislation the common law of America, as of every country where the Jews reside, is binding. But this is beside the point. What is at issue is the example of how Talmudic Judaism responded to an historical process, and in the course of centuries evolved an American Judaism. There have been other phases of Judaism evolved by the historical process, as previously stated. Talmudic Judaism, however, has been the most influential. It prevailed for a thou- sand years and still holds sway over the largest portion of Jewry. It provides the background from which American Judaism emerged. Hence its importance and significance in a study of the origin of this latest phase of the Jewish spirit. This compilation of the Talmud was completed at the begin- ning of the sixth century. At that time Babylon was still the intellectual center of Jewry. The law governing conduct, as well as the word of God, went forth from this new Zion, Babylon to the Jews in all known lands. Thus the Babylonian Talmud was elevated by the Jews to a position of importance second only to the Bible.* About the tenth century two events gave another turn to Jewish development. One was the appearance of Islam and the other the rise of Karaism. The religion of Islam, a daughter religion of Israel, stirred the slumbering East and gave to the devotees of Mohammed an unconquerable thirst for action and a lust for conquest. The followers of Allah engaged in a succession of religious wars resulting in consequences affecting the status of the Jew. For example, the Jews were no longer surrounded by heathens but 14Tt is a mystery history possibly will never be able to explain that no mention or reference in Rabbinical literature, so far as one is able to detect with any degree of certainty is made of Jesus. References to a heretical sect, the Minim, are found in Talmud Berakot, for example. Whether these Minim are Christians there is no assurance, and yet Jesus was a contem- porary of many illustrious rabbis, Hillel for instance, and Paul mentions by name Gamaliel. The early Christian church was being organized in this period of Talmud compilation. Christianity is a direct offshoot, or daughter religion of Judaism. The ethical message of Jesus is rabbinical in source, intent, and application. Jesus the modern Jews look upon as a human teacher (Judaism, Christianity and the Modern Social Ideals, by George Fox). While Christianity is a product of the synagog and in early period the “Jew-Christian” was a Jewish sect the daughter religion did not affect the Jews. That was left for the Christians. They made themselves felt in blood and iron, in murder, rapine and plunder. The rise of Mohammed is of more importance. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 57 by Mohammedans, who believed in a God fashioned in the image of the biblical conception of late periods, and who accorded the Jews the deference due them as the “People of the Book.’* The influence of Arabic culture appeared with the Jews, following the tendency among the Mohammedans to split up into religio-philosophic sects, gave birth to an anti-rabbinical sect, namely, the Karaites. The followers of this sect represent a new departure from rabbinical Judaism, as American Judaism is from the legalistic rabbinism of traditional orthodoxy. The Karaites launch a protest against the Talmud as the regu- lator of life and thought. They urge instead a return to the bibli- cal laws in their unadulterated simplicity. The adherents of this sect applied themselves to the rational study of the Bible, which had come to be the object of casuistic interpretation and legen- dary adornment among the Talmudists. By the cultivation of grammar and lexicography as applied to the Bible, they revived the Hebrew language which had been supplanted by the Aramaic. By the same means they precipitated discussions among the Talmudists and their own school on subjects of religious and philosophic interest. Aiter the tenth century the center of gravity in Jewry shifts from Asia Minor to Western Europe. The immigrants of those days carried with them westward the same intellectual curiosity and philosophic activity which they had displayed in the cradle lands of the East, and brought the Jews in direct contact with Islam—a contact that was vastly more important for them intel- lectually than their unhappy association with the followers of the “lowly” Nazarene. Judaism is the mother of Christianity and the religion of Islam. This is one of the commonplaces of history, but less is made of the contact of Israel with Mohammedanism than of that with the followers of the Nazarene. And yet the stream of Jewish life has washed the shores of many countries. It has been the fate of Israel to mingle with peoples of a strange tongue and so Jew and Arab have also met, and as an outcome of their encountering, the religion of a large part of the human race pays tribute to the ethical ideals embodied in the Ancient Hebrew Scripture. Mohammedanism is figuring in the newspapers in recent years *% This phrase is attributed to Mohammed. 58 AMERICAN JUDAISM with greater frequency than ever. The prospects of direct con- tact with Islam has made some timid people apprehensive lest a new faith be injected into western countries that would jeopar- dize, they frantically proclaim, the foundations of civilization. This religion has been a mighty influence in Israel and it behooves one to examine the contact of Israel with Islam. Mohammedanism does not spell ruin of social order nor invite the downfall of humanity. In fact, the religion of Islam has been regarded by the leading spirits of Judaism to be charged with the historical mission of working with Jews and Christians in building up the Messianic Kingdom, and thus making straight the path for the ultimate triumph of the belief in one God in the hearts and souls of all men and nations. This is a view entertained by Jehuda ha Levi, for example, in his Cusari. An opinion of like tenor was corroborated by many enlightened rabbis of later eras. Both Christians and Mohammedans believe in God and His revelation to man, and in the unity of the human race. The knowledge of God has been spread all over the world as a result of a sacred literature that is based on the Bible of the Jews. The commandments, as these are worded in the Decalog, form the basis of the ethical laws for the largest portion of mankind. The influence radiating from the central spiritual source of these two world religions emanated from Judaism. The Jew, therefore, entertains no serious misgivings regarding the religion of Islam in the modern world. Islam owes its origin to Mohammed, who was an Arab camel- driver of Mecca in his early years, but one who became possessed with an idea of saving his country-men. It is said he was devoid of learning, but came under the obsession that he was sum- moned by Allah, the God of Abraham, to wage war against the idolatry of his Arabian kinsmen and restore in its place the pure faith of Allah. In Mecca, where he first announced his revela- tion against the fetishes of stock and stone assembled there for worship, he was hooted and persecuted. Finally, in desperation, he fled to Medina in the year 622, the year of the Hegira, a year sacred in Mohammedan theology as the Birth of Christ is among the Christians. His doctrine began gradually to find favor, particularly since he was a prophet who was a new-comer among them and all prophets are given a hearing in a new place. They are without honor only in their own home town. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 59 Mohammed had at first offered the Jews to whom he sought refuge, inducements to recognize him as the last of the prophets, the last link in the chain of that remarkable group of men who had come forth from Zion. He had promised to adopt some of their religious practices, but the Jews refused to accept certain gross and sensual features of his preachment. Incensed at their refusal, Mohammed showed himself a true son of the Bedouins by revenging himself on the Jews with fanatical zeal. From the sources of information we have of the life and revela- tion of Mohammed, one is safe in saying that the origin of the belief in Allah, the God of Abraham, can be traced to an early period when Jewish tribes settled in the south of Arabia. Among these Jews were traders, goldsmiths, warriors, and knights endowed with a gift of song. Poetry was cultivated among them, and there was a certain Jewish poetess who wrote one of the earliest Arabic poems extant, an evidence of the advanced state of their culture in that early era. Obsessed with hallucinations regarding the divine origin of his mission, Mohammed set forth. This belief in Allah possessed his fiery soul with all the ardor of his intensely passionate nature. In these visions he received sublime conceptions of the one God and His creation; of the world’s Judge and Allah’s future Day of Judgment. These theological aspects were in part familiar to the Jews who had in fact evolved certain like concepts. These beliefs made him effective in his preaching against the idolatry practiced by his country-men, their cruelty and uncontrollable lust and appetites. Mohammed began his career as a preacher of repentance, following in this devotion the model of the great prophets of Israel who intruded on the riotous dwellers of the city with a proclamation of repentance: “Wash you! make you clean! put away the evil of your ways!” Threatening drastic consequences of the last Judgment, Mohammed tried to force the idolatrous Arabs to return to Allah in true contrition. But few of his townsmen in Mecca believed in his mfssion. The leading men of the city of Mecca derived a large income from the sales of “ecclesiastical goods” in connection with the service of the local sanctuary, and opposed him with fierce and violent measures, just as a certain family in Jerusalem, at the beginning of the common era, alleged to have held the monopoly of the doves 60 AMERICAN JUDAISM required in the sacrifices of the temple of that day, is said to have opposed the fiery, denunciatory speeches of the Galilean carpenter. The opposition enkindled against Mohammed in Mecca forced him to flee to Medina, and he sought refuge in a Jewish colony, as intimated. He had hoped to obtain recognition from the Jews, especially after he had made certain concessions, such as the turning the face towards Jerusalem in prayer and keeping the Day of Atonement on the tenth of Tishri. In addition, he empha- sized the Unity of God, which forbade any encroachment upon this belief by the interception of a mediator in the guise of a “Son of God.” Liberally as Mohammed had borrowed from his Jewish asso- ciates, they could not be induced to recognize this uncouth, illiterate son of the desert as a prophet after the order of an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, or an Ezekiel. Again the great refusal of the Jew—as in the beginning of Christianity they were alleged to have refused the divine sonship of Jesus—occasioned Mohammed to turn his feigned friendship into deadly hatred and relentless revenge. His whole nature underwent a great change. His former enthusiasm and prophet zeal, it is said, were replaced by calculation and worldly desires. He who was the preacher of repentance at Mecca, who called upon his Arabian brethren to forego some of their lusty blood- thirsty ways, became himself a lover of blood-shed, robbery, and lust. Instead of Jerusalem, as he had promised, he chose Mecca, where of old had been located the idolatrous sanctuary of his religion, The power of this son of Ishmael is difficult to grasp. For within seven years he had gained a following of sufficient number to win the Arabian tribes to his divine revelation. Full of energy, these tribes stepped out of the desert to conquer the world. But unlike Israel of old, these swarthy sons of the desert bore the faith of the One God to the world by the sword. They too, like Israel, confined their divine revelation within a holy book, but sought to impose it on their subjects by the brandishing of the sword. Sword in hand, Mohammed and his followers conquered the Christian lands of the East, then the northern coast of Africa, and finally unfurled the green flag of Islam over the lands MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 61 of the west, in an effort to free the peoples of these countries from the thrall of a fanatical church. Within a century, the followers of the crescent had penetrated as far west as Gibraltar and invaded Spain, where they remained until the capture of Granada, when the last Moorish stronghold in Spain fell in 1492. That year commemorates epochal events: the discovery of the western continent by Columbus, who, some modern historians claim, was a Maranno; and the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian peninsula. Islam, as Mohammedanism is often styled, is a religion that demands blind submission to the will of God. Whatever happens, it is the will of Allah. That is the final and ultimate edict of the Moslem. A doctrine of this character paralyzes the sense of freedom and is responsible for their deference to fatalism. Whatever is to be, will betide men whether they weep or laugh, is their conviction. Hence fanaticism, which treats every other religion with contempt, has crept into the faith of the Mussul- man. Their religion has remained national in outlook and never attained that broad outlook on the whole human race which reflects from the orations of the prophets of Israel. The afterworld, which figures very little in Biblical literature —although greatly amplified in the apocryphal and rabbinical writings—is a glorified paradise reserved for the faithful. Yet the Day of Judgment, which plays an important part in Moham- medan theology, is without any trace of divine mercy, in glaring contrast to Judaism, where God is often called Father of Mercy. These doctrines, briefly mentioned, indicate in part that the religion of Islam fostered the intellectual side of humanity, in contrast to the church, which placed unqualified emphasis on the emotional phase of the human being. Islam relied on reason and not on intuition for corroborations of belief. As a result, the cultivation of philosophy and science was encouraged in the mosque, whereas it was either banished or contemptuously neglected by the church. Damascus and Bagdad became centers of learning, of philosophic study and scientific investigation, uniting Nestorian (Unitarian), Jew, and Mohammedan in spread- ing general enlightenment. Greek science and philosophy, which the church had put under the ban, were revived by Mohammedan rulers, and additional studies made in them. Judaism felt the fructifying power of this revival and made possible the trans- 62 AMERICAN JUDAISM lations into Syrian, Arabic, and Hebrew the scientific treatises of the ancient Greeks and their immediate followers. It is due to the contacts of the Jews with Arabic Moham- medans in Mesopotamia that the Jews began to understand the language of the Arabs. Their sciences and philosophic studies were influenced by them.*® The center of gravity, however, was shifting from Babylon to the west, and naturally it is in Europe, particularly Spain, where the greatest achievements of the Jews in the Middle Ages were consummated. This Spanish period of contact on the part of Jew and Arab has often been called the Golden Age of Hebrew letters. The list of writers who rose to immortality, scores upon scores— Dunach ben Labrath, Bachya, Solomon Gabirol,* Jehuda Halevi, Maimonides, Nachmanides, Moses and Abraham Ibn Ezra, to mention a few illustrious names. These poets, philosophers, physicians who experienced this spiritual flowering, lived in a condition of political well-being. Life in the “Juderias,” as the Spanish Ghettoes were called, was not wholly a bed of roses, but the circumstances attending the daily existence of the Jew- ish residents was a vast improvement over the reign of terror that prevailed under the Visigothic dynasty which the Moorish invaders overthrew in 711. Under their Christian masters the Jews had suffered untold cruelties. All mediaeval disabilities, such as segregation in certain quarters, had their origin under the Visigoths. The overthrow of the Visigothic oppressors at the hands of the Moslem in 711 was viewed not unnaturally as the signal for enfranchisement of Israel. Under the new Arab regime, all Jewish disabilities that had been imposed by the Visigothic dynasty were swept aside. A new political status was established, and the Jews found them- selves living amid fellow-monotheists whose language resembled the idiom of the synagog, and who were racially (in remote antiquity) fellow-Semites. Their Visigothic oppressors were a rude, ignorant rabble, compared to the learned and cultured Moor who brought with him into Spain luxuries of adornment and conveniences of living. He reared mansions exquisitely tiled, well-ventilated, and warmed by tubes of caked earth and * Life and Works of Saadia Gaon, by H. Malter, p. 137, sqq. “English Translation with Text of Religious Poems, issued by Jewish Publication Society of America, 1923. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 63 cooled by fountains of running water. In brief, while Europe weltered in the Dark Ages, these Moslem invaders brought with them science and philosophy, architecture, mathematics, and the refinements of life. In the word, “algebra” we have still preserved a testimonial of the Arab’s venture in mathematics. “Alkali” and “Alembic” are chemical terms derived from Arabic influence, and it was Arabs who brought our present numerals from Hindustan. Astronomy originated in Babylonia, where they had ardently studied it for centuries, as they did geography. The Spanish Jews were the beneficiaries of these cultural con- tributions, and avidly assimilated these sciences. In the Spanish cities of Granada and Toledo, dwelt many Jewish families. Other Spanish towns were thick with Jews who came under the influ- ence of the learning and tolerant spirit of the new-comer. The Jewish intelligentsia was largely absorbed in interpreting the science and philosophy of the conqueror. The Jews were the main translators into Latin of many Arabic philosophers and scientists. The introduction of Arabic culture into Spain from whence it was distributed to other countries, was one of the turning points of European history—a real Renaissance—accepting the word in its truest sense. It is of interest, and at the same time of great importance that the Jews should have been one of the mediums of spreading the science and philosophy of Greece throughout the continent, chiefly in the monasteries, where learn- ing was often meagerly pursued but not wholly ignored, as it was in the comfortless stone castles of the barons. Through Maimonides, the conceptions of Aristotle were presented to the thinkers of his period, while to Ibn Gabirol it fell to revive Platonism among the scholastics of the thirteenth cetury.*® Vital as the spiritual activity of the Spanish Jews, we may readily imagine that they played no small part in those vast material activities of the Moors. While Spain was conquered by them in turn the Moors covered the country with palaces, hospitals, and aqueducts. It was the Moor who, in conjunction with the Jew, mined the copper, planted sugar cane, and built factories for manufacturing paper, silk, cotton and reworking the leather imported from Morocco. *% Opus cit. 64 AMERICAN JUDAISM This prosperous era did not long endure. Gradually the Moors were defeated, and with each foot of soil rewon the policy towards the Jews altered. In 1481 the Inquisition was estab- lished and 2,000 Jews in Andalusia alone, were burned. In 1492, Granada, the last Arabic fortress, fell, and in the same year the Jews were expelled from Spain. The day of Arabic culture was over and the cross was again restored. The eleventh and twelfth centuries marked the heights of intel- lectual attainment of mediaeval Judaism, as has been shown. It was a veritable renaissance, signalizing the rebirth of science and philosophy. The pollenization of Arabic with Jewish culture gave birth to poetry, philosophy, science. As in the fifth century the union of Judaic with Hellenic culture’® brought in its train a number of new ideas in Alexandria, Egypt, so here in Anda- lusia, and so later in America, a similar situation brought similar consequences. A new viewpoint and attitude resulted from this amalgamation of Jewish with Arabic culture. The Jewish people dropped their misanthropy. Their inclination to retire within their own shells was arrested for a while, but revived again in the latter part of the 18th and 19th centuries. All careers were at that time open to them, as in America today. Side by side with their influential statesmen stood their Jewish poets. The study of medicine, physics, mathematics, astronomy, went hand in hand with the study of the Talmud and the Bible. This period is luminous with the glow of great personalities among the Spanish Jews. But of special interest is the model that Spanish Judaism affords the Jews of America. During the five centuries of Spanish Jewish culture, a distinct phase of Judaism was evolved reflecting the freedom and tolerance of Arabic civilization. But in 1492 bigotry and ecclesiastical tyranny drove the Jews from Spain, and in 1496 from Portugal. After experiencing an effervescence of the spirit the Jew was again compelled to grasp the staff of the wanderer and enter countries unknown and decidedly unfriendly. The expulsion of the Jews from Spanish domains under the fanatical control of the church scattered the martyr people over Europe. In each country they inhabited there was developed in #” Philo-Judaens of Alexandria and also Hellenism, by N. Bentwich. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 65 course of time a phase of Judaism characteristic of the geo- graphical division in which they lived. In Holland, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Poland, where the Jews settled, a ceremonial or ritual of Judaism was developed peculiar to those countries. In Holland, a liberty-loving people created a tolerant government and enabled the Jews to prosper. Fortunate it was that Holland favored the cause of Israel. When the Netherlands shook off the control of Spain under Philip II, an era of culture and industry was inaugurated which the Jews, driven there by the scourge of the inquisitor, began to share. What Cordova had been for the Spanish Jews in the twelfth century, Amsterdam became for the Jews of the sixteenth. Freedom broke down the national exclusiveness of the Jews. Contact with his liberal neighbors enabled him to carry on his intellectual pursuits. An advanced state of culture was developed in Holland, not equak to Spanish culture, but continuing the splendid traditions of their former home. But in Germany and Austria, by very contrast, the economic circumstances of the Jews were appalling. The Protestant refor- mation might have illumined the minds of the people, but it did not soften their hearts towards the children of Israel. Luther harbored no kindness towards the Jews. The humanists of that period were powerless to allay the prejudices of the populace, still steeped in ignorance and foulest superstition. Unbearable conditions in Germany and Austria forced the Jews to emigrate in masses to Poland, where they were at that time offered the boon of a comparatively secure life. Poland had been a resort for Jewish immigrants from Ger- many since the outbreak of the Crusades. In the sixteenth century it rose to the position of a Jewish center. Asa national center of the Jews it contained both the necessary numerical strength and organization of social and industrial activities to foster a distinct Jewish life and morale, In this century Poland assumes the hegemony over the Jews of the world of that day. The ascendancy of Poland marks the displacement of the Sephardic, the Spanish-Portuguese element, and the supremacy of the Ashkenazic or German-Polish element. Being the entrepeneur or merchant class, the Polish Jews were legally protected. Numerous privileges were granted them. 66 AMERICAN. JUDAISM Their peculiar circumstances in Poland left an impression on their inner life which called forth an intense mental activity. This activity, while German in origin, contained many original elements, particularly the formation of the, “Kahal.”?? Thus there is again projected on the screen of history another phase of Judaism, the Polish, where in a few centuries a distinct cul- tural group develops whose importance to America is incalcul- able, since the 20th century marks the ascendancy of this group in America. . It is said of this Polish-Jewish culture, by those competent to judge, that it enjoyed an inner autonomy similar in administra- tion to the authority exercised by the Geonim. This was due to the system of Talmudic academies scattered over the land, irom which graduated rabbis who were formed into guilds and endowed with a certain legislative power. Entrusted with sov- ereignty by the Polish authorities the rabbis exercised control over Israel. The organization of the Synods of the Four Countries, it is said, constituted the keystone of this intricate social and spiri- tual hierarchy. Thus rabbinism obtains fullest sway in Poland, breeding a new variant of Judaism, one which put secular knowl- edge and philosophy under the ban and isolated itself completely from its Christian environment.?2 This exclusiveness had the virtue of its shortcoming. It gave a peculiar stability and completeness to the life of the Jew as an individual and as a member of society. By means of this isolation another phase of the religion of the Jew was evolved unlike that of his Spanish forebears, but none the less distinct, a positive reaction from environment on the one hand, and again a projection of its inner vitality and dynamic potentialities. The importance of this Polish-Jewish cult is its verification of the continuous unfolding of the Jewish spirit, which in the eighth, twelith and sixteenth centuries perfected new facets of its truth. That the rabbinism of Poland became arid and the fertile source of aberrations, such as Chassidism,?? and of Messianic extravagances, does not alter the fact that a distinct phase of *” Community organization. See Dubnow’s The Jews in Russia and Poland, Vol. I, p. 106, sqq. “Dubnow’s History of Russian-Polish Jews is authority for these statements. * Treated in detail in a later chapter. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 67 Judaism was evolved there, a continuation of antecedent tradi- tions and of elaboration thereof; just as American Judaism linked with the past, is a conscious projection of inspiration towards the realization of a newer adjustment to the ideals of democracy, political and economic. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth®® centuries the night of Israel was darkest. Bloody persecutions were replaced by restric- tive laws to degrade the Jews, who were now hounded from pillar to post. But this very moment Europe realized the error of its ways and began to repent. The barrier reared against Israel and the outer world was too high and thick for the liberalizing forces at first to break through. But a breach was gradually made, and the Polish Jews, enveloped in mediaeval darkness, turned their faces towards the new light shining in the West instead of to the mythical glow of the traditional East. The period of enlightenment then dawning was the child of the French Revolution. Reason was resurrected in this period and liberal minds do not ask whether men are Jews or Christians, Sufficient for them is the fact that they are human beings. This period which opens a new era in Judaism focuses atten- tion on Germany, where dominant personalities “laid down a barrage” against superstition, ignorance and despotism. The spiritual and social regeneration which ensued among the Jews of Germany and later penetrated into benighted Russian Poland, in the guise of the Haskalah movement,* resulted in forming again a distinctly national phase of Judaism in Germany, namely, a German Judaism. But it must not be forgotten that in its absolute state there is no German as there is no American Juda- ism. Judaism is universal, and credit is due to the rabbis trained in Germany under the influence of that era, who announced this truth made known of old. But we are not treating absolutes. Our aim is to show that in each country where the Jew dwells a certain residuum of the spirit peculiar to that country is depos- The Reform Movement, by Philipson, p. 5. *“The Haskalah or ‘enlightenment’ indicates the beginning of a move- ment among the Jews about the end of the eighteenth century in Eastern Europe towards abandoning their exclusiveness and acquiring the knowl- edge, manners, and aspirations.of the nations among whom they dwelt. It is identified with the substitution of the study of modern subjects for . the study of the Talmud, with opposition to fanaticism, superstition and Chassidism; with the adoption by Jews of agriculture and handicrafts and with a desire to keep in touch with the times.” J. E., Vol. VI, p..256. 68 AMERICAN JUDAISM ited thereby to change the complexion of Judaism in that par- ticular era. Following this precedent, the same historical unfold- ing is now operating in America. What is essential at this juncture is to note the historical parallel. This is reaffirmed in the case of the German Jews as it is in the Judeo-Hellenic and the Spanish-Arabic, namely, that the pliability of Judaism as to form and ritual permits the Jews of each geographic division to cloak the ceremonial and also renew the spiritual content of their religion with ingredients borrowed from the peoples among whom they enjoy fellowship and citizenship.*® Thus in this period of enlightenment the Jew was capable of responding to the rejuvenation of science, art and literature with remarkable swiftness. The bond of intolerance with which the Jew had fettered himself was easily broken. The appeals to reason and free thought abounding in this era merely re-echoed what he had announced in earlier generations. The transformation in the lives of the Jews of Germany was hastened by the French Revolution. The principles of liberty, equality and fraternity resulted in civil and religious emanci- pation. Among the enlightened Jews of that period, the magnet of affiliation was not religious but national. Jew and non-Jew abandoned the affiliation of faith and yielded to that of a uni- versal humanity or a German nationality. More and more, religious traditions were abandoned in favor of universal prin- ciples. Ceremonials that were incompatible with reason were rejected. For the first time in centuries the Jew felt himself to be a citizen of the country where he enjoyed life, liberty and prosperity. * “The hold of his national culture could not be as strong on the Jew in the dispersion as on the Jew in his own land. Hence, though the Jew- ish mind had not acquired that imitative skill and assimilative capacity which are characteristics of it today, the Alexandrian community felt the attraction of Hellenism more rapidly and more deeply than the Pales- tinian. They adopted the language of their environment, and endeavored to adjust their religious ideas and observances to the intellectual stand- point of the dominant culture. The translation of the Scripture into Greek was a vital step in the adjustment. A further step is marked by the abundant apologetic literature in which the Jewish Law is interpreted as a code of rational ethics and a deliberate attempt is made to adopt Greek theology to the support of Judaism.” Hellenism, by Bentwich, p. 336, sqq. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS OF JUDAISM 69 Adjusting himself to this enfranchisement required certain modifications in the ceremonial of home and synagog as well as a new orientation of Judaism. He would remain a loyal son of the synagog, but the tabernacle where he worshipped would change its setting. The universalistic element of Judaism, voiced in remote antiquity by the prophets of Israel, obtained a louder and clearer accentuation. The merely local rites and practices of a rabbinical interpretation of Judaism separated the Jew from the modern world. Judaism had to discard either the universal element or the temporary rabbinical legislation. There was hardly any choice. At all events, a choice was made by the Jews of Germany. They cleaved to the universal outlook of Judaism, as the prophets and poets of ancient Israel forevis- ioned it. This new construction of Jewish destiny in course of time received a label. It is now known as Reform Judaism. Owing to the number of German rabbis who emphasized the essentials of their religious heritage, Reform Judaism in the United States is regarded as a product of Germany, and is on that account under suspicion. To such narrowness let none yield. Judaism here is a logical development of the Jewish genius. Rabbinism, from which it is descended, is exhausted. It has outgrown its usefulness. To be modern and enjoy the blessings of liberty and civil rights, the Jew must exemplify the universal teachings of the Universal God whom his spiritual ancestors first conceived, At the beginning of the nineteenth century, even in the last decades of the eighteenth, this phase of Judaism, German when viewed from the angle of a national or a geographical division, universal from the vantage ground of history—took shape. It is the immediate ancestor of American Judaism. fi In the unfolding of the Jewish genius the Biblical, Talmudical, Geonic, Hellenic, Arabic, Spanish-Arabic, Russian-Polish, Ger- man phases are noted. There are other phases, namely, the Karaitic and Chassidic, as there is today nationalistic Judaism. Accepting the process of growth in history as a criterion, one is warranted in describing the characteristics of Judaism in America from the standpoint of American democracy. The Judaism come to consciousness here is a continuum of that reve- lation first acknowledged when the morning stars sang together. THE SETTLEMENT OF THE JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT In these days of rabid nationalism, when a spurious anthro- pology creates racial divisions where none exist, as in the case of the alleged “nordic races,” it is essential to trace the settle- ment of the Jews on this western continent, and to show that their tenure is long established and their fitness for citizenship sustained by temperament, experience, religious and social ideals. Yet even this guarantee is insufficient to satisfy the unbalanced superpatriots who announce a startling policy which they label “Americanism,” the purport of which is that only those profess- ing identical religious dogmas and are bred of the same fictitious racial division known as “nordics” are eligible for membership in that exclusive club formerly known as the United States. These privileged candidates were selected by Charles Houston Chamberlain, an Englishman, who became a naturalized German for their so-called superior qualities inherent as he claimed in them as in all Germanic peoples including the late Hun and other pagan foes of like racial lineage. None other are accept- able. The Jew who has been living on this continent as long as any other racial group and longer than the “nordics,” is not perturbed by this sudden splurge of fanaticism, ignorance and pseudo-science. He has been a victim of these bugaboos of the ignoramus for centuries. Nor is he disturbed by the sudden chilling ardor towards him and the rise of the skeptic who challenges his loyalty and patriotism. He has been as long a Russian as the hundred percenters among the Slavs and still while living in the domain of the Romanoffs longer than the former royal family, he was a prey to their unbridled savagery and murderous designs. It may be so here since he is accus- tomed to the trickery of the chauvanist who would oust him from this country where he has dwelt since its discovery. It is therefore not a new sensation for the Jew to be told that he is not one of the people among whom he lives. He has heard that slander in other lands and at other times. Then, as Esther, 3:8-12. 70 JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT fp. now, he denied it and remained to prove by his life that he was loyal to the national government, ready to serve it at all times and to spend his life and substance for its maintenance, as he did here from the days of Haym Salomon to Jacob Schiff. Here, as elsewhere, the Jew is sustained in his loyalty by the tenets and intents of his religion whose mission is social, the imper- sonation of ethical ideals not existing in nature but upsurging from the consciousness of the Jewish people and practically applied in daily conduct. The cause which the Jew serves is iden- tified with patriotism and loyalty to the national ideals of democ- racy, political and economic. It is a collective responsibility and the object of its solicitude is the welfare of the nation. Patriotism as the Jew conceives it is rooted in moral ideals. At heart poli- tics, ethics, economics, are one, and political democracy implies economic liberation or industrial democracy. If nations without visions perish it is equally true that nations without religion go the way of dusty death. The nation that denies the con- trolling force of religion as a means of direction towards service and balance, that is ethical conduct, is not destined long to endure. For religion inculcates the worth and worthi- ness of man, the love of man towards his fellow creatures and points to the Father of all men in whose image every human being is fashioned, as the Creator of all humanity. It is the religion of the Jewish people that is their chiefest heritage. From their religion radiate those influences that Americanize them, meaning by that term such behavior as inspires in the individual a due regard for other men in matters of faith and in the means and methods wherewith one maintains oneself. Economic democracy no less than political must be achieved so that one’s citizenship be an asset and one’s labors contribute to the common wealth. For this is the intent of democracy and so expresses the ambition of Judaism. Nowhere is democracy so fully realized and so copiously demonstrated as in these United States, and nowhere has Judaism made such splendid strides. Here after weary ages and many sojournings, the Jews pilgrimmed. In their veins flowed the ancient long- ings for liberty, fellowship and justice. Here they hoped to clasp hands with their fellow men and make firm the foundations of those ideals, so that this democracy conceived in a love of humanity might never perish from the earth. 72 AMERICAN JUDAISM The settlement of the Jews in these United States is not merely a shift of fortune, but a historical sequence. It is in a large measure the fulfillment of prophecy, that prophecy being the establishment of democracy forevisioned by Israel as the ultimate goal, the Messianic age which is to crown the wrinkled brow of tortured humanity in the later days. Had there not been this close alignment of Jewish ideals with democratic intentions, the history of the Jews in the United States might have been read in other accents than those vocalizing it today. The Jew is inher- ently democratic. The United States appeals to him as a verifi- cation of his own vision. Having been tried by experience, tour- ing the whole world ’round, he has accumulated a fund of wis- dom. This is deposited in his consciousness, a golden residuum from which he draws his inspiration no less than his ethical behests in the larger field of endeavor opened for him by the founding of the Republic.? The value of Jewish history lodges in the record afforded us of the various states of Jewish consciousness of which the evolu- tion of the American Jew is but one among several. For from these depositories of ideals and experiences interlinked in the complexes of the Jewish people radiate those influences that direct the Jew on his path of life, here and elsewhere. This con- sciousness is the spiritual precipitate of the thoughts, hopes and * The espousal of the democratic ideals central in The Republic ante- dates the establishment of the Continental Congress. In his ‘The Hebrews in America”’—a book that is now out of date and perhaps inac- curate but at all events preserves a number of valuable historical items. Markens mentions several estimable “Hebrew” gentlemen who assisted financially the struggling republic. Haym Salomon gave generous and timely assistance to the founders of the Republic. “It was Haym Salo- mon who when the people of Philadelphia were deprived of the use of any circulating medium by the act of withdrawal of Continental money and great distress existed, caused $2,000 in specie to be distributed among the poor of that city.” More than this, Haym Salomon loaned the Revo- lutionary Congress high sums of money—for that period—. Says Mar- kens: ‘The list made and deposited at the Probate office of the certifi- cates of Revolutionary indebtedness, of which he was seized at the time of his death in 1784, shows upwards of $350,000, consisting of War office, Loan office, Commissioner, Treasury and Continental certificates, not one cent of which was ever received by the infant children owing to circum- stances for which they could not be accountable.” Isaac Moses is another Philadelphia merchant whose patriotism was marked by a contribution of $15,000 to the Revolutionary cause, which was not aided alone by these sinews of war but by the soldiery of Joseph Israel, Israel Israel. JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT .| 73 ambitions of the Jewish people. Each generation replenishes this consciousness in obedience to the morale or discipline enforced on the Jewish people at that time. Judaism, the religion of the Jewish people, is therefore rooted in the Jewish people. Without Jewish people there can be no Judaism although Juda- ism is more than a religion and the Jewish people more than an ethnic group or race which is denied on good authority and is a theory not accepted in this book. The content of Judaism in what- ever period examined, proves to be a product of the interlocking processes of history. As there are various phases of Jewish history there are certain aspects of Judaism germane to those periods, such as the Talmudic, the Gaonic, Spanish-Arabic, mod- ern scientific, and American. It follows, then, that a survey of Judaism during any particular historical period, must have regard for the persons and personali- ties of the Jewish people of that era. This means that an Ameri- can Judaism is inconceivable without American Jews as witnesses to the genius of American democracy. To know the content of American Judaism exacts an account of the settlement of the Jews in the United States as a sine qua non. In other words, the next question that presents itself is the perfectly obvious one: Where do the Jews of America come from? In common with their fellow-citizens, American Jews trace their immediate ancestry to Europe. There are no original Americans in the United States except the Indians. The Jewish people are no more aliens here than the Yankees or the “blue bloods of Virginia” or the modern vociferous “hundred-per- centers,” all of whom are directly or remotely of alien ancestry. Those benighted patriots who are reviving a defunct “Know- nothing-ism” forget that all Americans foreswore their former nationalities and allegiancies when they set sail for these shores. The Jews differed in no wise from their fellow-citizens; they too became Americans, new products of this new land. It must be borne in mind that the Jews scattered among the nations of the world do not derive their Judaism from profession or confession, Judaism is imposed on the Jew by reason of his Jewish birth. He belongs to the Jewish people who have been consecrated to a distinct religious duty. The nature of this his- torical obligation is manifested in the discharge of civic and 74 AMERICAN JUDAISM national duties.2 There is no clash and conflict between Ameri- canism and Judaism. Ina large and liberal sense the religion of Judaism is expressed in our service to American democracy. The American Jew is therefore part and portion of no other country save America. It is an inversion of Jewish destiny to regard him in any other political relationship. The political identity of the American Jew is with America since he chances to live here, and here, as everywhere, his religion is the means or milieu at his command to manifest his national affiliation. This is his peculiar birthright among Jewish people and the Jewish people have proved that a people are more than a nation. In speaking of the Jews in this wise the word is used in the sense of a “people” who are bound together to the end that all humanity may ‘know God,’* that is, a religious people. The particular contribution that each segment of Jewish set- tlers brings to this country is spiritual. Intangible as that is, from the realm of the spirit are culled those ingredients that evolved what is vaguely labelled American Judaism. No revela- tion of Judaism is final, and from our present expression of Juda- ism a different pronouncement is destined to be proclaimed. Revelation among the Jews is continuous, and daily are new chapters written for the endless Torah of the Jews.5 An Ameri- can Judaism is merely an attitude of an eternal manifestation of the unfolding of the spirit of God in man. In his world-encom- passing mission, the Jew is bestriding this American continent destined for the distant goals of ethical perfection. He cannot tarry in complacent satisfaction. His duty neither slumbers nor sleeps. He is tempted however to pause amid the years and summarize the articles of his proclamation. The main concern of the following paragraphs is.to inventory the various groups among the Jewish people in America in the light of their geogra- phical origin, merely as a convenient means of demarcation, the distinction or division among Jews being on the basis of inter- pretation and fullfillment of covenantal relations, rather than geography. ~ *“We must so profit life’s opportunities as to impress Thy spirit upon things of earth within and without us and shape them to the higher uses the divinity which Thou hast breathed upon our mortal clay.” Olath Tamid. Eng. Translation, p. 38. “Jer. 31:31-34. 5 Among the Chassidim, each one is to be his own Torah. (See Chapter Eight.) JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT 75 The Jews are a fraction of God’s children. There are possibly some fifteen millions of them in all the world. In 1914 it was estimated that the Jews of America numbered 2,933,374. This figure was given by the American Jewish Year Book of 1919 after special efforts had been made to be accurate. Ten years later, it may be conjectured, the Jewish population in the United States will be in round numbers, 3,000,000. All statistics regarding the number of Jews in the United States are merely estimates. The earliest approximation ap- pears to have been made in 1818 by Mordecai M. Noah, who put the number at 3,000. The report of the U. S. Census Bureau for New York State in 1790, gives the number of Jews in New York City at the date as 385. Rabbi Gershon Mendez Seixas, the patriot Rabbi of the Revolution, said that the Jewish inhabitants of Gotham in 1812 numbered 400. That Jewish people lived in other colonial cities of the Revolu- tion and pre-Revolutionary period must not be overlooked, Phila- delphia, Lancaster, Pa., Baltimore, Newport, R. I., Charleston, Savannah. New York City had then and ever after the largest number of Jewish inhabitants. It is the largest Jewish city in the world. There are 1,600,000, nearly two million, Jewish souls in the Empire State—more than one-half the Jewish population of the entire United States.® The American Jews can lay claim to the chauvanistic boast, if they care to indulge in this childish pastime, that their tenure of residence in America is longer than that of any other group, since the first sailor to set foot on this western continent was Louis de Torres, the interpreter in the expedition of Columbus. Furthermore, the first child of European parents born on this continent was Jewish.’ Investigations described by Dr. M. Kayserling in his book, “Christopher Columbus and the Participation of the Jews in Spanish and Portuguese Discoveries” brought to light the fact ®It is to the everlasting credit of New York Jews that the promise made Peter Stuyvesant that their brethren would never become a charge on the public has been kept inviolable for nearly three hundred years. When one recalls that into the port of New York drift the hapless victims of blood- lust, rapine and the vilest barbarities of Christian love, the heroic endeavor of New Yorkers to succor their impoverished brethren attests to the fidelity of their colonial oath and their fealty to honor. ™This statement is open to doubt and has no other value save that of an item of news in an inaccurate table of statistics. 76 AMERICAN JUDAISM that Jewish sailors accompanied Columbus on his epoch-making expedition which resulted in the discovery of the new world. And it was Jewish financiers who equipped his caravel and Jew- ish scientists who furnished his charts for navigation. These sailors were: Alfonso de la Calle, Rodrigo Sanchez and Bernal, the ship’s surgeon.® Venturesome as the Jews have ever been—note the bravery of Jewish peddlers in the age of chivalry°—traders and explorers in all the previous ages, they continued that role in the early cen- turies of America. There are reasons to believe that there were Jews in the crews of Drake and Raleigh. Not only has the Jew been a trader, introducing tobacco and sugar into Europe, for instance ;!® he has played an important part as an intellectual intermediary, as Joseph Jacobs shows in his “Jewish Contrib- utions to Civilization.” It is likely that certain bold spirits among the Jews of Europe sought these shores during the six- teenth century." But one is safe in conjecturing that there were unknown Jews on the American continent previous to the formation of the first settlement of organized Jews in America in 1624. The con- quest of Brazil, so to speak, by the Dutch in 1624 resulted in the organization of the first Jewish community. This was a settlement of Maranos from Amsterdam, for it was dangerous in those days to be a Jew and to be found out. When the Netherlands wrested their independence from the Spanish crown a new constitution was drawn up in Holland, based on * Detailed information on this subject is not pertinent at this juncture, but may be found in Kayserling’s book. *Scott’s “Ivanhoe.” * There is no longer any doubt that the Jews by their wide distribution throughout the countries of Europe were able to assist in the transfer of the colonial trade of the New World in sugar, indigo and most likely tobacco. “There is some evidence that the Jews introduced sugar planta- tions into St. Thomas, and even into Brazil; and when they were expelled from the latter in 1654, they transferred a good deal of their activity in this regard to Barbados, Jamaica and Martinique and San Domingo, largely increasing the sugar production of these islands. The sugar trade between the French West Indian islands and the mother country was con- centrated at Bordeaux.” Jewish Contributions to Civilization, by J. Jacobs, Di 223. “ American Jewish Historical Society instigated the composition of bro- chures on obscure and unrecorded pioneers of the pre-colonial and colonial periods. Many of these men were as valuable as explorers and opened up centers of trade. JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT 717 religious tolerance and freedom. The fugitives who had fled the Spanish Inquisition, established in 1492 and continued with unabating fury for many years on the continent of Europe and also in Mexico, availed themselves of the favorable conditions prevailing in Holland. They were soon joined by fugitives from Portugal, whence the Jews were expelled in 1496, and from other countries. Thus it came to pass that in the seventeenth century Amsterdam was one of the leading Jewish communi- ties of the world. The countries in the New World under Dutch control reflected the policy of the mother country. So long as Brazil was under the control of Holland, the lot of the Jew in the country was secure. But in 1654 Holland lost Brazil and the Jews were forced to emigrate from that haven of refuge. Some settled in the Dutch and British possessions of Central and South America, such as Surinam, Curacao and Jamaica. But the most impor- tant settlement was made in New York in 1654, thirty-four years after the Mayflower landed the Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth, Mass. The formation of the West Indian Company of Amsterdam in 1638, the purpose of which was to open up trade with Brazil, appears to have served as an indirect invitation to a large num- ber of Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal to emigrate to the new continent. As many as 600, it is reported, took ship in the autumn of 1642. Measured by this figure, the number of Jewish pioneers in Brazil and the Dutch possessions of the southern continent must have been considerable. In no colonial possession of the Netherlands were the Jews subjected to indig- nities similar to those experienced in other European countries. The religious tolerance extended by Holland to her subjects was not confined to the Netherlands, but included her colonies as well. In the Spanish domains, on the contrary, the fanaticism and ecclesiastical fury that drove the Jews forth under the lash of persecution in 1492 and later was visited upon the Jews settled there. In the City of Mexico and in Lima, the Jews were bap- tized in their own blood. Historians inform us that the celebra- tion of the Passover in the City of Mexico in 1654 was the occasion for an auto-do-fe in which eighty unfortunate Jews died at the stake amid festive music, the jangling of church bells and the wild acclaim of the mob. The colonists learned this 78 AMERICAN JUDAISM lesson of barbarism from the mother country that had taught them bull fighting, cockfighting and murdering Jews. The lot of the Jews in Spanish domains of South America was precarious. At the first opportunity the immigrants departed from the insuf- ferable environment and many centuries elapsed before Jews set foot on the southern continent again. As a result of the inhospitable policies pursued by the Span- ish colonies, no Jewish culture has been developed in South America, nor has that continent witnessed the establishment of large permanent settlements nor enjoyed the prosperity of the northern continent. Whether or not this circumstance is mys- teriously. connected with the treatment of the Jews settles no issue.* There is, however, a curious parallel evidenced in the fate that overtook the mother country, Spain, and her colonies. After the expulsion of the Jews, Spain began to languish, and so likewise from similar causes did her American colonies. In recent years an effort was made on the part of Jewish agencies of the United States, such as the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the B’nai Brith, to visit Mexico in behalf of the scattered remnants of Jacob located in that rest- less but alluring country and reunite them to their brothers of the covenant. This was done because it was felt that no efforts would be made nor organized by the Jews who chanced to live there, nor in other settlements of Central America, unless their brethren from the northern continent should seek out these lost sheep of the house of Israel and link them with the tradi- tional communal activities always maintained by the Jewish people.'* Within recent decades, however, emigration to South America has been resumed. Stimulated by concessions tendered the ven- % The settlement of the Jews in South America is not increasing per- ceptibly in modern times. There are Jews in Brazil and Argentine, in Central America and other parts of that gigantic continent, but they are a fragment of the general population. *In the “Story of the Nations” Series, the decline of Spain is attrib- uted to the expulsion of the Jews. Special mention should be made at this juncture of the splendid and in many instances yeoman service rendered by Rabbi Martin Zielonka of El Paso who has for years, under the auspices of District No. 7 I. O. B. B., interested himself and his brethren in the Jews of Mexico. Some Mexican Jews are former residents of this country. The largest propor- tion emigrated directly from Europe. Movements are under way there to establish a synagog and maintain such social agencies as characterize communal life among Jewish people at all times and places. JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT 79 turesome, funds were bequeathed by the late Baron de Hirsch for the settlement of Jews in the Argentine. These settlements in the Argentine, although liberally subsidized, have not been prosperous, nor has the presence of Jewish settlers been accep- table to the fanatical priests who dominate the hidalgos along the pampas of the La Plata. Immigrating originally as farm- ers, many of these settlers later drifted into Buenos Aires which now contains a considerable Jewish settlement.*° Brazil, too, is now beckoning to the homeless of all nations to dwell in her vast domains, which are larger than the United States. The friendly relations between the Jewish People of the United States and South America, long anticipated, may materi- alize now as a result of commerce instituted by Jewish mer- chants and the desire of South American Jews to affiliate with their brethren here. It is idle to speculate on what might have been the course of the events in the New World, had tolerance swayed the rulers of this El Dorado. Had the Maranos, the Jewish refugees of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, been able to shake off the dust of fanatical persecution when they landed on the rockbound coast of South America; had the thunder of the Andes and the outstretching plains beneath the Southern Cross vibrated with liberty as well as hope, the story of South American civilization might be chaptered with items of as epochal significance as that of the Jews of the United States. Present day South American Jewry is negligible. A settle- ment of Jews fringes the west coast. Occasionally our Jewish % Colonization among the Jews has often been tried, but never proven successful. Jews are neither adverse to farming—there are increasing numbers settling on farms in Russia as well as in this country—nor hard labor. Witness the Herculean efforts put forth by the colonists in mod- ern Palestine. Their tireless exertions and the hardest manual labor proves that given a high incentive, Jews will break new soil in untilled areas. Subsidized colonists are rendered impotent by receiving something for nothing. The Jews are no exception to this rule. Wherever deported to build up new sections of unsettled countries, they have invariably drifted back to their former haunts, no matter how impoverished and over- populated they find their way as undesirable aliens in large cities. The Jews who voluntarily return to the soil stay put. Those imposed on the soil are like chaff which the wind driveth away. There has therefore been less inclination lately to grubstake Jewish colonists than formerly, although there is a well organized and admirably conducted American Agricultural Aid Society which has made many Jewish farmers self- supporting. 80 AMERICAN JUDAISM press carries a story about the “Jews in Central and South America,” but these accounts are episodes of the flotsam and jetsam in the stream of Jewish tradition, similar to those isolated fragments of ancient Spanish Jews, descendants of the Maranos, who are despised by the present populace, and are virtually out- casts. They are neither Spanish nor Moorish, Jewish nor Christian. Had not Vicente Blasco Ibanez in his “Luna Ben Amor” introduced them to the international reading public, these unhappy people would have been forgotten as a tale that is told.*® By irony, so grim that it must provoke the laughter of God, Spain is now inviting her banished Jews to return and populate the waste places of her domain. Madrid, Toledo, Cordova, cities that in the Spanish-Arabic period, were centers of Jewish cul- ture (Madrid excepted), each contains today a small Jewish population. South America, subtly imbibing the elixir of human- itarianism, invites the Jews flogged from Poland, whither they had fled when exiled from Spain, to migrate there; to build houses and dwell therein; to plant gardens in a new world of opportunity and assured toleration.%7 The restoration, however, of the Portuguese power in the seventeenth century in Brazil, led to the removal of many of the recently-settled Maranos from that country. In 1654 a party of twenty-seven men, women and children, some say twenty-three, set sail from the port of Bahia, Brazil, on board the barque St. Catherina, from New Amsterdam. They had followed in the wake of Jacob Barsimson and Jacob Aboab, alleged to be the first Jews to reach that port, although it is possible that individ- ual Jews had strayed into the country before this date. The arrival of this small group of pilgrims was not attended with the eclat of a triumphal entry. In the first place their bag- gage was seized and sold at public auction in payment of their ship passage. Then again their arrival excited the wrath of Peter Stuyvesant, colonial governor, who notified his government of the presence of this colony of Jews, and suggested that “none of the Jewish nation be permitted to infest New Netherlands.” “The American Pro-Falasha Committee are endeavoring by their efforts the educational and religious rehabilitation of the Falasha Jews of Abys- sinia, who were in recent years “discovered” by Jacques Faitlovitch. “The largest manufacturers of rubber goods in Brazil are a Jewish firm, 1923, Schayah Brothers. JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT 81 His opposition was not sustained by Holland. The testy gov- ernor was informed that the proposed exclusion from New Amsterdam was “inconsistent with reason and justice” and an act was passed permitting the Jews to reside and trade in New Netherlands as long as they did not allow one of their own to become a charge on the community. This pledge made over 250 years ago, New York Jewry has never knowingly broken. Noblesse oblige has no better illus- tration than the obligation assumed by the Jews of New York and the unselfish devotion wherewith it has been discharged. Not only New York City but all American Jewry has accepted the responsibility of their brethren, who have been overtaken by adversity. Thus the entrance of the Jews into the New World was attended by a vow of fidelity towards their brethren which has made the Jews the country over mindful of their obligations toward one another, and, as will be shown, resulted in fostering institutions of a religious, educational and cultural nature. The American Jews have been guarding their brethren of the covenant on all their ways unto this very hour.** As early as 1733 there had been an effort to settle Jews in what is now the State of Georgia. Some Portuguese Jews availed themselves of the opportunity created by James Ogle- thorpe who made Georgia an asylum for convicts willing to reform. The governor of the colony fearing that the presence of Jews would jeopardize the success of the colony, discouraged the settlement of Jews there. Many of these moved to South Carolina (for which John Locke, the philosopher, had framed a constitution) which declared equal rights for all inhabitants of the State. A congregation was subsequently formed in 1750 at Charleston and for many decades this Jewish settlement was the most flourishing in the territory now comprised by the United States. At the end of the eighteenth century there were only six com- munities in which there were known Jewish inhabitants. These were New York, as the city was called after it passed into the hands of the English in 1644, Newport, Rhode Island; Savannah, Ga.; Charleston, S. C.; Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pa. The settlers in those cities were either directly or indirectly %8Tn a report on War Relief for the devastated countries and peoples of Europe, the Jews of America contributed (ending 1923) a total of $50,000,000. 82 AMERICAN JUDAISM descendants of the Spanish and Portuguese exiles. It is there- fore important to bear in mind that the settlement of Jews in America was initiated by Sephardic Jews. Among those most conspicuous in New Amsterdam were Asher Levy, an out- standing personality to whom his fellow-Jews then and there- after are indebted for civil rights. Some of his contemporary fellow-Jews were Abram De Cucena, David Israel, Moses Am- brasias, Abram de La Simon, Salvator D’Andada, Joseph De Cista, David Fiera, Jacob Menrique, Isaac Mesa and Isaac Levy. These settlers came from South America, as has been explained, and were of Spanish and Portuguese antecedents. But, singular as it may appear, these Jewish pioneers have not shaped the destiny of American Judaism as the Pilgrim Fathers, who in 1624 anchored off the barren coast of New England— refugees also from intolerance as cruel as that which the Jews suffered. Seeking these shores to obtain increased devotion to that principle for self-determination and self-expression which is the inalienable asset of the Anglo-Saxon group as it is of the Jewish, they have stamped America with the impress of their political aspirations and religious fervor. The powerful influences of American Judaism were not hewn from the rock of Sephardic Jewry. In yielding to them, the right of seniority of settlement a full measure of merit is bestowed on them. The influence that shaped Judaism in America was obtained from another group which followed shortly thereafter to these shores, namely the “Ashkenasic,” that is, the Jews living in German-speaking countries, also Russia, Poland and colonies or dependencies of those countries. Within a century from the date the Jews landed in New Amsterdam, the complexion of immigration had changed. Inces- sant warfare in Europe combined with discrimination and mediaeval persecution, particularly trade restrictions and exclu- sion from guilds, continued to harass the Jews and made their lot miserable. It has been said that the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries’ were the darkest in Jewry, virtually their mediaeval age, although a period of absolute sterility and benightment such as overwhelmed Europe never occurred in Jewish circles. But it was in this period of deepest misery * The Reform Movement, by D. Philipson, p. 5. JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT 83 for European Jews that the first bold spirits obtained passage and sailed to the New World. In the records that appear after 1740, when the passage of an English law gave the Jews of the American colonies full rights of naturalization, there may be noticed on the roster of membership in the congregations of Mickve Israel of Phila- delphia and in the hamlets of Pennsylvania, names of men whose birth places were Alsace, the Palatinate, Rheinish Prussia, Prussia and the newly acquired territory of the former Polish Empire. Joseph Simon, for instance, arrived in Lancaster in 1740; Meyer Hart, who was one of the founders of Easton, came there in 1747 and Aaron Levy arrived in Northumberland County in 1760.2° These men hailed from German-speaking countries. The Jewish population of the colonies grew slowly. At the time of the Revolutionary War, the number of Jews in the thirteen original colonies did not exceed two thousand. The rapid increase of immigration from the continent of Europe began in 1830. Reactionary governments in Europe, the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and of the July Revolu- tion of 1830, when the prospects of improvements in the lot of the Jews either economically or politically, were dissipated, were the causes of extensive immigration to America. From the days of the American Revolution, until the promul- gation of the heinous Russian May Laws of 1880, the tide of Jewish immigration was predominantly German. During this century America became more settled and before the century had run its course, a great Civil War had been fought, which merged the dissenting elements into a union, one and insepar- able, for all time. Jewish communities were now established and synagogs built. There was now the semblance of a Jewish morale and the organization of Jewish activities on a national instead of a local scale. The hinterland was opening. Settlers were crossing the Appalachian range. To all of these new towns and outposts of the Mississippi Valley came Jewish pioneers. After the Revolutionary War, and especially after the war of 1812, in both of which there had been Jewish soldiers and ” There are today in Eastern Pennsylvania many Protestant families bearing names such as Jacobs, Isaacs, Cohens, Leiser, Schnurman, etc., whose ancestors were Jewish pioneers who, as peddlers, penetrated the hinterland of that pre-Revolutionary period, and married and settled there. 84 AMERICAN JUDAISM officers, immigration began to cross the Appalachian range in large groups. It is believed that previous to 1818 no Jews were included in the population of towns in what was at that period the frontier. To towns like Cincinnati, Jews came about 1820. In that year, a certain P. I. Johnson, an English Jew” arrived. Later he moved to Louisville and then to St. Louis. Among the earliest settlers in Cleveland, Ohio, was Samson Thorman of Unsleben, Bavaria. He was followed by Aaron Lowentrite, Schonigen, Bavaria. These men were intrepid youths, who, leaving their fathers’ homes and the land of their nativity, followed the light of the empire which westward took its course, and became peddlers in this new realm. The first Jewish family to locate in Cleveland, it is said, was that of Samson Hoffman, who also came from Unsleben.??, During the same year, Simon Thorman of Unsleben joined his kin, in the new land. Soon thereafter came Simon Newark from Wilmers- dorf, near Fuerth, Bavaria; Moses Alsbacher from Unsleben, S. L. Coleman and Gerson Strauss, also Bavarian Jews. An organization, known as the Israelite Society, was started by them in 1839. A burial ground was purchased in 1840. In this wise, religious activities of national importance were begun. In Chicago, also, a band of Bavarian Jews settled. This group had planned to found an agricultural colony in Illinois in 1841. The experiment proved impractical and those who had come to till the soil moved to what was then an insignificant town on the shores of Lake Michigan to save themselves from famine. Among these pioneers were Jacob Fuller and Benedict Shu- bert, who engaged in business. They were soon followed by Abraham Kohn, the same Kohn who sent an American flag of his own manufacture to Abraham Lincoln before his depar- ture for Washington to assume the presidency. Other settlers were Levi Rosenfelt, Jacob Rosenberg, Isaac Teigler, Meyer Klein, Rubel Brothers, M. M. Gerstley, Henry Greenebaum and others, all of whom were of German birth. 21 Cincinnati’s Temple B’nai Jeshurun, said Dr. Philipson, at the hun- dredth anniversary of its founding, “was organized by a band of English ews. : “Much of this information on the early history of Jewish settlement in this continent has been obtained from Isaac Markens’ “The Hebrews in America,” published by the author, 1888. It is likely that the meticulous will find fault with dates and names. This volume does not essay orig- inal research on this score. For more detailed information consult the monographs of the American Jewish Historical Society. JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT 85 In 1816, four years previous to the admission of Missouri into the Union as a state, the territory was inhabited by a Jewish family, the Blocks, consisting of several brothers and numerous cousins, all of them natives of Schwiham, Bohemia. They first settled at Cape Girardeau, Mo., and later some of them moved to St. Louis which was becoming a particularly prosperous settlement. Steamers from New Orleans were now landing there. In 1821, its population of 5,000, all told, included Eliezer Block, an attorney, a member of the distinguished Block family, all of whom were respected as industrious, high-minded successful business men. The pioneers of the prosperous and influential Jewish com- munity of Pittsburg, Pa., were David Strasburger, Emanuel Reis, Jacob Klein, Louis Stern, William Frank, L. Herch- feld, Simon Stein, N. Gallinger and E. Wromer, all of whom came from Germany to settle in the New World. The most prominent among the early settlers of Mobile, Alabama, were B. L. Tim, who came from Hamburg, Ger- many; I. Goldsmith, a Bavarian; S. Lyons and D. Markstein, from Prussia, and A. Goldstucker, from Bavaria. The Jewish settlement of Mobile is typical of many other southern cities, such as Memphis, Tenn.; Galveston, Texas; and Atlanta and Augusta, Ga., which developed from trading posts and gulf ports into important commercial centers.** The year 1837 witnessed the arrival of the first Jewish set- 28 After the Civil War the settlement of Jews in Southern States was a phase of the extending frontier which affected the entire nation. In those days it was indeed a new country, particularly that portion of it west of the Mississippi. The Atlantic seaboard and gulf states were sadly deso- lated by the war, and the open country to the west was without roads, towns, means of communication or transportation, save by saddle horse or boat. The Jewish peddlers who penetrated into this section were often advance guards of civilization. The vast majority were of German par- entage and sought these shores to obtain a larger increase of economic liberation, liberty, and self-determination. With a pack on their back, they plunged into immeasurable forests, waded streams, detoured about miasmic swamps, enduring hunger and thirst, suffering from the intense heat and the bite and sting of tormenting insects. The trading posts where these peddlers came have become cities, as is true of all small towns that existed then. In several of these Jewish merchants settled, joining with their fellow-citizens in building up commercial and industrial organizations of importance. 86 AMERICAN JUDAISM tlers in Albany, New York. That city is now memorable in Jewish annals, as the community where Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, located as rabbi of Congregation Bethel in 1846. The con- gregation had been organized by the thirty or more families of Bavarian Jews who were then living there. Their number included Mayor Rice, Simeon Schwartz, Bern- hard Schmidt, Louis Sporburg, Julius Gerson, Mayer Isaac, Anshel Lind, Lemuel Linderstein and Morris Herrman. Previous to the year 1840 there were no Jews in Rochester, N. Y., a city which now contains a Jewish population of approximately 20,000. During the early forties, Jewish ped- dlers penetrated into the wilderness as the endless forests of that region appeared to the Europeans. Among them was my grandfather, Lesser Leiser, who landed in New York in 1843 and with a pack on his back gradually trekked westward till he reached Rochester, where he tarried a while, and then returned to Europe. In 1848 congregation Berith Kodesh was organized. On the roster of this congregation were Joseph Wile, Gabriel Wile, Joseph Katz, Samuel Marks, Henry Levi, Jacob Altman, Joseph Altman, A. Adler, Elias Wolf, A. Weinberg and J. Gans, all of whom were German Jews. The growing city of Buffalo, N. Y., attracted Jewish emi- grants as early as 1835, when a certain Mr. Flersheim, a teacher of the German language and a native of Frankfort on the Main, settled there. The colonists increased rapidly and in 1847 there were sufficient Jews in that city to organize con- gregation Beth El. Among the members were Solomon Phil- lips, Elias Bernheim, Joseph E. Strauss, Mark Moritz, Samuel Altman and Michael Noah, a Noah who was a relative of Mordecai Manuel Noah, playwright and philanthropist who made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Jewish State on Grand Island in Niagara River. With the exception of Mr. Noah, who was an Englishman, all the early settlers of Buffalo were German. It is needless to detail the settlement of other cities such as New Haven, Conn., whose early Jewish settlers were also Bavarians. One is constrained to mention the most important cities of the Middle West if not the entire country, but the composition of Jewish inhabitants in all our American cities JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT 87 is substantially alike, a fact which is particularly true of the centers populated previous to the Civil War.** If all other evidence failed, an examination of the congre- gational roster would convince the future historian that Jews of German-speaking countries constituted the second wave of Jewish immigrants who sought out this new realm of opportunity and freedom. Additional evidence is afforded the historian in the prayer books compiled for the congregations organized in this period. The “Olath Tamid” of David Ein- horn was published originally in German. This ritual, an epitome of the aspirations and beliefs of modern Judaism was antedated by Merzbacker’s, Jastrow’s and Wise’s, all of whom had German originals in mind. But no hard and fast lines can be drawn on this score. There was, of course, an admix- ture of Jews hailing from other countries, besides Germany, a condition always prevailing in the Diaspora, although their number was negligible. These German Jews were gradually penetrating into all sec- tions of the United States. Cities were far apart in those days. Such widely separated localities as Mobile and Detroit were settled predominantly by Jews of German extraction. And this is particularly true of all cities along the Atlantic seaboard and in the Middle West. This statement applies to the Jewish census previous to and immediately following the Civil War. It is natural that the sea coast cities should have been the first to increase by accession of emigrants from Germany and Austria. Poverty on the one hand and restrictions of com- merce and industry on the other, prevented the Jews of those countries from fulfilling the law of life which they are enjoined to obey as the sine qua non of their religion. Setting sail for America, their worldly means enabled them to reach only Castle Garden. They had no other possessions than the garments on their bodies, no other treasure than a deathless hope in their souls. The importance of this German immigration will become * The Jew, as Patriot and Soldier, by Simon Wolf, lists the names of Jewish soldiers so far as these can be ascertained, engaged in the Civil War. My own father landed at Castle Garden, July 4, 1863. He pre- sented himself that same day to a recruiting officer, and was told that no more soldiers were needed by the Union Army, since their victory at Gettysburg would soon end the war. The American Jewish soldier’s per- centage in the World War was larger than that of any other group. 88 AMERICAN JUDAISM evident when an analysis of the spiritual heritage of these settlers is made. But it must not be concluded that the Jewish people of the United States were restricted to Spanish and Portuguese settlers of the pre-Revolutionary period or to Ger- man Jews thereafter. For Jews from German-speaking coun- tries were not the only group who came here during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Jews from other geographical areas of Europe and Asia gained access to this country during that time and later. Early in American history these few individuals who had been scat- tered and isolated so as to become lost or obscure in some instances, were later reinforced by a third wave of immigration, the largest that has reached these shores and one that still continues despite the national immigration restrictions of the present time. This third segment of immigration comes from Eastern Europe. The increasing disabilities of the Russian Jews in the Czaristic period and especially the barbaric May Laws of 1882, when the Russian Government gradually succeeded in consolidating all anti-Jewish immigration to the United States. Proceeding at first at a slow pace, it increased in volume. At its height it became a passive but effective protest against that new Egyptian oppression of the Jews, then held in bondage by a brutal Czarism. i During the first three years of the eighties, an increasing number of Russian Jews entered the port of New York. In 1881 there were 8,193 immigrants; in 1882, 17,497, in 1883, 6,907. In the following three years, from 1884 to 1886, the movement remained practically on the same level, counting 15,000 to 17,000 immigrants annually.2> In the last three years of that decade it again gained considerably in volume, mounting in 1887 to 28,944, in 1888 to 31,256 and 1889 to 31,889. The exodus from Russia was undoubtedly stimulated by the law imposing a fine for evading military service and by the introduction of an educational percentage restriction. Mili- tary fines of the kind referred to ruined many families. The disproportion between rights and duties in Russian Jewry was disheartening. Denied the right of residence and the privi- 25 History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, by S. M. Dubnow, Vol. fp Diasate JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT 89 leges of a school education, the Jews were forced to serve in the army under conditions that approached barbarism, What more natural course for a self-respecting youth than to hazard his fortune in a country where he could receive full civil equality and free schooling without any compulsory military service? The first years during which these immigrants resided in America, they encountered a severe struggle for existence.” Among them were many intellectuals who had given up their careers in Russia and dreamed of becoming farmers. With the aid of charitable organizations, a number of qolonies were formed and farms established in various parts of the United States.27 After a few years of vain struggle against material want and lack of adaptation to local conditions, many of these colonies and farms were abandoned. Later, however, the founding of the National Farm School of- Doylestown, Pa., to prepare American Youth, Jewish and non-Jewish, for agri- culture, made such ventures less hazardous, Gradually the idealistic spirit of these Russian pioneers gave way to a sober realism more in harmony with American con- ditions. The bulk of the immigrant masses settled in the cities, principally New York. They worked in factories or at trades, the most important of which was the needle trade. They engaged in peddling and in farming, and lastly in the liberal professions. Many an immigrant passed successively through all these economic stages before obtaining a secure economic position. The result of these wanderings and vicissitudes: was a well- established Jewry in the various communities of the United States, which totalled, at the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury some 200,000 souls. The German Jews, who had previous to that date been in the majority, began to notice that they were outnumbered by the recent arrivals. The third great accession of Jews to America, who came from Eastern Europe, outnumbered the previous settlers of German ancestry. There are at present continual additions of Sephardic Jews {from Salonica and Turkey. These are few in number, although sufficient to support synagogs and maintain a newspaper published in their peculiar Spaniolish dialect. These recent * Capitalized by Jewish novelists as the background of their fiction. * The Jewish farmer in the United States is increasing. 90 AMERICAN JUDAISM Sephardic Jews are more numerous than their Sephardic pre- decessors of the seventeenth century, but they are not suff- ciently acclimated to cast any spiritual shadows on American Judaism. They keep the even tenor of their way, content to earn their living and read their parochial paper. The American Jews are compounded of three groups: the Sephardic, German and Russian-Polish. Each group is iden- tified with a particular geographical division and naturally reflect the varied environments of their different locales. Envir- onment has not obliterated the traces of their common heredity. The common consciousness of Jewish kinship tended to blend them into one religious group, albeit there were social strati- fications among the three groups when they chanced to be brought into closer contact. The proud, often arrogant Seph- ardic, did not condescend to mingle with what he regarded as an inferior German Jew. Inter-marriage among the Sephardic and German Jew was looked upon in somewhat the same light as if a Jewish boy now elopes with a Gentile girl, or vice- versa. Later German Jews sneered at Russian-Polish immi- grants and treated them with scorn. These animosities are gradually evaporating under the sunnier influences of tolerance, and in response to the generous appeal of the United States for likemindedness among its various citizens. There is less inclination to draw lines of distinction within the Jewish group, or segment the various layers of Jews into their original ele- ments. As the Jews resent references to the qualifying desig- nation of their religion, so a like description of each one’s peculiar affiliation to the house of Israel is less frequently stressed today than heretofore. That one is a conservative or reform, Russian or German Jew is of less moment now than formerly. Petty differences are obliterated. Lines of demarca- tion are blotted out, in order that the various groups may unite their spiritual forces to the making of American Jews. This is the ultimate achievement. Russia was in its day peopled by various groups who in course of ages became one compact group, save for the Karaitic element in the Crimea, and so Germany. These national groups were compounded of different segments who, in course of time, became unified. What hap- pened to Jews in Germany and Russia in former ages is destined to occur here: the various Jewish groups are rapidly merging into an American-Jewish type. The American Jew has even JEWS ON THE NEW CONTINENT 91 now a construction of religion that is his own, and Dr. M. Fishberg in his book, “The Jews,” says they have an American type. It is our purpose to give this Americanism a local habi- tation and a name so far as it involves the Jewish people living in the United States, although Canada”* is included. * There are many Jews in Canada. Many came originally from Europe— some in later years from the U. S. Canadian Jews follow largely the religious, social and economic policies of their neighbors, but in religious matters are less progressive. THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM Naturally the settlement of the Jews on this continent has a priority claim over the religious preoccupations of the sons of Jacob. In the foregoing chapters the historical record of that settlement on the part of the sires of the present generation of American Israel was briefly sketched. The tribulations and uncertainties of the sojourn, the anguish and often penury attending adjustment—the finding one’s self in the storm and stress of life—which was the lot of our fathers, now yields to another pilgrimage, one equally hazardous, the pilgrimage into the realms of the spirit. The adjustment incident to the settle- ment of our fathers of the flesh in this country was paralleled on the plane of the spirit. Here, too, they had to find themselves and build tabernacles, as they had established their places of business, their factories, mills, foundries, mines and plantations. The present chapter is also an exploration. Its purpose is to examine the foundation of American Judaism, testing the rafters and beams (which are doctrine and principle) that hold the structure together. The elements utilized to erect that edifice not built by human hands are many: ritual, tradi- tion, ceremony, philosophy, anthropology, literature, history— all are the depository of Jewish aspiration and ideals for service at the altar of humanity. These various ingredients are com- pounded in that spiritual substance labelled Judaism. And yet this phenomenon is not merely a religion. It is an expres- sion of the religious consciousness of a people who have incar- nated and corporealized a conception of life and living in terms of humanity, and assumed these obligations entailed in such an attitude towards God, man and the world. No matter what construction is placed on Judaism, whether one illustrates it as an expression of personal opinion or the accepted interpreta- tion of a group, one’s Judaism will always be based on one’s treatment of humanity. What we do for our townsmen and our fellow-citizens embodies our application of Judaism. There is a radical departure from this construction of Juda- ism, as has been intimated in the Introduction. The differen- 92 THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 93 tiation is based on this conception of service, Best ratane espouse America as an act of worship, a function of their religion. The nationalists and other groups previously described do not consider the purpose of Judaism to be in part a series of civic duties. To most of the groups who are out of sym- pathy with American Judaism, whatever their religion implies, it is a stimulation obtained from reciting the traditional ritual or discharging a ceremonial as an exercise of emotion and after the habit of aesthetics, proffers its own compensation. Let it be borne in mind that while the designations, “reform,” “orthodox,” “liberal,” “historical,” “prophetic,” which are in vogue among us today, sound ominous and discriminatory, yet through all these phases and aspects of Judaism, here and else- where, there flows a broad stream. By no token, real or imagin- ary, can American Judaism be regarded as unique, sui generis, or so estranged from the age-long House of Jacob as to be unre- lated to it. On the contrary, Reform Jews are the youngest member of the family, merely kin to all who were ushered into life before them. The attitude of the Jewish people of this country concurring in that interpretation of their Judaism which has been branded as Reform, represent merely the present status of Jewish consciousness among them today. In current scien- tific phraseology American Judaism exhibits the evolution of Judaism today. It is not a finality. It is not even perfect nor the last reaction of truth, for that matter, in the realm of things Jewish. American Jews can only describe and name the boundaries of their present religious territory. This con- cession to mortality and the natural limitations of knowledge invested in each generation accords well with the notion attrib- uted to the rabbis who said of Noah, regarded in Scripture as “righteous in his generation” that in another generation he might not have been righteous. The values of one generation do not serve as standards of measurement in another age. Noah might have been an Elisha Ben Abuyah or some other scapegoat of a later period. Reform Judaism, the result of historical circumstances and sequences, may make way for another order as it in turn departed from previous formulas. The three groups that settled in America, Sephardic, Ger- man, East-European, each brought with them a certain ritual *A Talmudic character alleged to have been an apostate—most likely a liberal. independent thinker. 94 AMERICAN JUDAISM and religious concept common to all: that was legalism. This interpretation of the Jewish religion enjoined on all Jews the duty of performing certain ceremonials, observing regular holi- days and festivals and fulfilling the elaborate ritual connected with their observance and that of the all-controlling Sabbath. Religion was not to them so much a matter of doctrine as it was faithful conformity to rules of behavior. To obey literally or to discharge by means of subterfuges ‘a series of ordinances classified in codes which were drawn up-at various times, expressed the totality of religion to them. These codes might have been the “Mishna Torah” of Maimonides, compiled in the Twelfth Century, or, in most likelihood, as was the case of our immediate ancestors, the “Shulchan Aruk” of Joseph Caro, made in the Sixteenth Century. These digests covered every exigency of life and derived their authority from the Penta- teuch in the first place, and from elaborations thereof in the Mishna. This was the second law that was invented to explain and expound the law of Moses given on Sinai. From the law revealed at Sinai, all later rabbinical codes were evolved. By means of this, the entire scheme of existence of the Jewish people was regimented. Fidelity to these laws sanctified one’s life. In the doing of them the Jew glorified God and all that is implied in that comprehensive poetic term. He also obtained a great reward: clean hands and a pure heart. Fidelity in the fulfillment of these minute and encompassing statutes also conditioned another consummation: the restora- tion of Palestine. In the conception of rabbinical Judaism, the restoration of Palestine is dependent on the performance of these commandments. When it comes to pass that everywhere God will be acknowledged One, and His name One, then it will be made possible for Israel to return.? While it was confidently expected that some day this final consummation would be real- ized, there was no disguising the belief that its dawning was remote, but feasible and likely. This concept forms an import- ant item of doctrine. American Jews no longer await a distinct fulfillment of this vision as the special dispensation of provi- dence. To them the distribution of the Jews the world over is providential, enabling all humanity to take hold of the hem *Singer Prayer Bk., p. 59. *Prayer for the Anniversary of the Destruction of Jerusalem, Olath Tamid, Eng. Trans., p. 141, sqq. THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 9% of their garment, saying, “Come let us go with you for we have heard that God is with you.” There is a temptation to digress at this juncture and antici- pate the succession of events that led to the organization of American Judaism. It has been made evident that there is a continuous progression in the Jewish religion. In sketching these ideas and conceptions entered today, deference need be paid the pioneers whose orientation was eastward. The first settlers were strict conformists and literalists. This is particularly true of the Sephardic Jews who first inhabited this land. The religious authority under which they were controlled, and by means of which they regulated their lives, was the Talmud and such redactions as were made therefrom in later periods, especially the code known as the “Shulchan Aruk,” to which reference has already been made. This code furnished them a norm, whereby they adjudicated their values and set up their attitudes. The intent of these codes was to control behavior in each and every Jew to this end: strict conformity to them resulted in hallowing life and thus made earth also holy. The method whereby this sanctification was attained is be- havioristic, the faithful following a routine. This regulation created a morale, and founded the “mores” of various communi- ties on a firm basis. The technical term for this process in the vernacular of this group is “minhag.” Each group set up a more or less elaborate “minhag,” the outcome of their behavioristic scheme of discharging the precepts of the Lord. Such regimen- tation, it is readily understood, admitted of no freedom nor in- dependence of action in our sense of that term. Action was par- ticularly prescribed in the realm of religion and religion and life were and still are synonymous. Deviation from the codes which were amplified and explained by various decisions or responses handed down by rabbis of great legalistic learning imperilled the social standing, in fact the very life of the Jew. These expert Talmudists fortified their position, technically their Hala- kah, by precedents taken from Scripture. Their course of action was dictated on grounds of that authority provided by the Mishna and rabbinical amplifications, all of which were regarded as an extension of the original Mosaic revelation, and in the light of that origin obeyed implicitly. This legalistic scheme in all its rigidity is the predecessor of 96 AMERICAN JUDAISM Reform Judaism and the background from which it emerged. It was that aspect of religion that prevailed among the first Jewish settlers on this continent. To the more independently minded of this era, such a system of existence appears harsh, unrelenting, drab. But it was not so viewed by those who fol- lowed it unreservedly and faithfully. To them it was a delight. This legalism appears austere, but it was a bond of union. By means of it the early settlers here, as the Jews of Diaspora in general, were held together until the Nineteenth century, when a complete change in the ceremonial and the legalistic scheme of behavior was brought about. The transformation of the political status of the Jew from disenfranchisement to enfran- chisement, a status alas, that is now threatened, hastened their departure from their former legalistic methods. The new era, contemporaneous with the French Revolution, witnessed the admission of the Jew into full citizenship on an equality with his fellow-citizens of other faiths. In Germany, no less than France, Austria, Italy, England, the Jew of fact or fiction is no longer distinguished from his neighbor by his foreign language, manner of speech, his gabardine or any freakish apparel imposed on him by intolerance of church and state, such as the badge of shame he was charged to wear, or a peculiar conical shaped hat. Even his own ritual locks and ringlets and his long beard were shorn. He began to iron out the cringe in his soul as he had the bend in his knee. He dared to stand erect, clean shaven and in the latest style garment of the boulevard. He identified himself completely with the nation whose language he spoke, whose art and industry he shared, and with whom he struggled for a national life in terms of political equality. Educated as many of the Jews were in gymnasium and university, all those who had obtained the benefits of a higher or university education, began to share the political destiny of the peoples among whom they dwelt. Hence the hope voiced in the traditional liturgy for the restoration of Palestine,* for example, no longer expressed the views of Jewry; particularly the Jews of Germany. The entire system of ritualism drawn up by tradition became in conse- quence burdensome and incompatible with their business, and social status. Judaism had been divine legislation to a Moses Mendelsohn. Now it was discovered that this legislation, *Singer’s Standard Prayer Bk., p. 66, sqq. THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 9% whatever its origin, came in conflict with modern democracy by imposing an older legalism upon another and newer political legalism which had just been accepted by them. Later it was noted that Judaism was not divine legislation at all, but doctrine, divine doctrine, if one wishes, but doctrine® affecting the action of the Jewish people and guiding that action towards humane end. This particular conception came to consciousness among the Jews of Germany who are responsible for the doctrines that enter into the construction of American Judaism. The great changes in their modes of living and methods of education, the reorganization, in a word, of their social, political and economic status, compelled them to harmonize their religious practices with the conditions and situations arising from their emanci- pation in Germany at that time, namely, the last decade of the Eighteenth and the early Nineteenth Centuries. Under the stress of this need for adjustment felt on the part of a few Jewish people of Germany for the modern situations projected at that time, the Reform Movement was engendered. The first concerted effort to effect a reform in the ceremonial of the synagog, and later in the doctrines of the Jewish religion (within our own age since Judaism is always incurring changes) transpired in Germany. This is no reflection on other countries of Europe. Now it came to pass that in the early decades of the nineteenth century, a few German rabbis and Jewish scholars encouraged and abetted by a few, but a very few, congregations, lent themselves to the task of mod- ernizing their religious heritage so as to permit larger con- tacts with their countrymen—for this is what the process implies—can not detain us now. It was not accidental, but the logical sequence of historical happenings and events prevalent in this period of enlightenment. The Jewish people were not the only group in the state who began to enjoy emancipation. The wave of liberalism overflowing the country carried in its flood liberation from tyrannies of many sorts. The entire people were released from bondage of superstition, ignorance and authority, and by this fortuitous circumstance the Ger- man Jews obtained a share in fee simple of this general liberation. ®* This construction was placed on Judaism by Samuel Hirsch (1815- 1889). 98 AMERICAN JUDAISM To the German people as a whole this emancipation did not release as many restraints as happened to be the case among their Jewish fellow-men. In the wake of those influ- ences cast by the French Revolution and the tolerant spirit fostered by the “Age of Enlightenment,” the entire religious life of the Jewish people had to be reshaped. What monu- mental modifications and innovations were instituted one needs but recall the sad, yes pathetic, situation in which the Jews of Europe were seeped. in his “The Reform Movement in Judaism,” Dr. D. Philip- son, commenting on this period antecedent to the rise of modern liberal Judaism, says: “The degradation of the Jewish communities of Europe was almost complete by the middle of the Eighteenth Century. The Jews were cramped intellectually from restriction to Talmudic study and the casuistic methods pursued. Judaism was a legal- ism. According to that system the technique of jurisprudence was imitated. To be sure there was no other avenue of intel- lectual pursuit. Fed mentally by identical diet, the splendid intellect of the Jew stagnated where it did not cultivate fantastic ingenuities of Talmudic argumentation, called pilpulism. Soci- ally regarded as pariahs, they were politically degraded to the rank of aliens even considered non-existent. Uncouth in dress and unkempt, they spoke a jargon which was a conglomeration of Middle-High German and Hebrew and liberally sprinkled with phrases and terms absorbed from other languages of Europe.” It was not his political, social and economic life alone which impelled the Jews of Germany in general (later France, Eng- land, Austria) to create a new adjustment of their religious heritage with the exigencies of a more democratic interpreta- tion of government. The impedimenta of accumulated tradi- tions, superstitions, exhausted values, meaningless ceremonials and rituals exempted and preempted of content, enforced the Jews of Germany to re-examine the elements of their religion, venerable as that was, and hallowed by the sacrifices of unnumbered hosts who had suffered martyrdom that it might endure. Cumbersome as it appeared, this religious heritage enforced the respect due the aged, before whom one rises in reverence, and to whom even the last born generation clings with a devotion that beggars description. THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 99 Judaism of antecedent generations was rabbinical legalism as has been explained. Fundamental to this interpretation of the Jewish religion is the eternal validity of all laws, i. e. commandments revealed at Sinai, and the ceremonials which are the outgrowth of them. Whether these laws are prescribed in Pentateuch or developed by tradition, all are equally bind- ing. Fulfillment of these elaborate precepts and command- ments were originally dependent upon residence in Palestine. The dispersion of the Jewish people (the “Golath,”’ or exile) caused these laws to be suspended. When, however, the Jew is restored to his ancient patrimony, these laws or command- ments will become again binding upon all inhabitants of the land whose very atmosphere the rabbis alleged was permeated with wisdom. Rabbinical Judaism, out of which Reform Judaism emerged, stresses the restoration of a nation whose sovereignty was des- troyed in the beginning of our common era. Even at that time, two thousand years ago, the universal function of the Jew as the teacher of religion had not escaped the sages of the Talmud. The entire Torah has the aim and purpose of furthering the ways of peace and humanizing man, they intimate, thus attrib- uting a non-civic or a supercivic destiny to Israel, already as- signed them by Abraham when he was commissioned “to be a blessing.” For the demand which Judaism makes on the Jew is not to convert the world to the religion of the Jew, but to spread the knowledge of God and the fundamental relations of man to man in terms of brotherhood and love. The importance of this emphasis will soon be vindicated. Intimations of the non-political or supercivic career for which the Jews are enrolled are embodied in their ritual. But accom- panying this universal aspiration, a hope was expressed in tradi- tional prayers, such as the Shemoneh ’Esreh to “restore the ser- vice to the oracle of Thy house. And may our eyes behold thy return to Zion in mercy as of yore. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, that restorest speedily Thy Shekhinah unto Zion,” in which the worshipper would again become a member of a nation under the rule of a scion of the house of David. This yearning took root in his consciousness. With the restoration of the ancient com- monwealth the descendants of Aaron would revive the sacri- ficial system and a state religion would be reinstituted with 100 AMERICAN JUDAISM worship of an established form on the ruins of the temple of old.® This consummation was central in the religious belief of our immediate ancestors. So long as the Jews were dispersed, reasoned those who clung to rabbinism, they were suffering the penalty of their father’s misdeeds in centuries agone. When the full measure of their expiation was drawn, then as a result of their repentance and purification from sins committed, they would be restored to Palestine. This in broad aspects is the outlook of rabbinical Judaism, the substratum of Reform Judaism. In its initial stages, the reform movement was not a protest against nationalistic views of this order, strange as that may appear. ‘The agitation that attended the inception of Reform Judaism did not penetrate beneath the surface or plumb the depths, for the Jewish people of that day were as firmly rivet- ted to authority as the followers of the church. The first step towards liberalization of this religious heritage was directed to externalities. The form and manner of worship in the syna- gog was of greater moment to the reformers than the philoso- phic and ethical content of that worship. Their enfranchise- ment made them self-conscious. They realized that their religious services were noisy, lacking in devotional attitude and decorum, despite the fervent and insistent demand that the ritual be recited with “kavonnah” or reverence. The object of the first among modern reforms, say for example Israei Jacobson, was to make services of the synagog more attractive to the children of his generation who were then coming under the liberalizing tendencies of the New Age. Israel Jacobson and his followers builded better than they knew, although it may be safely ventured that none of them posed as valiant champions of a movement that would usher in a dawn of redemption for future ages. These men did not regard them- selves as saviors of Judaism. What they introduced was merely propriety as befits men who shared civic rights and privileges with other men not of their faith, who, on attending church, were at least as gentlemanly as they were in the bourse. Jacobson introduced an organ, a matter of great moment, be it noted, at that time, when music of the spheres was the only harmony tolerated within the synagogal walls, and a sermon in the vernacular. This homiletic adventurer was no stranger °Singer’s Standard Bk. of Prayer, p. 66, sqq. THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 101 in the synagog. Jesus and Paul preached in the synagogs of their day, as even before them and after preaching con- stituted a part of the Sabbath ritual. It had, however, grown into disuse. To speak in the vernacular was tabooed. So an organ, a sermon and decorum were in the nature of innnova- tions when proposed. There were no doctrinal variations or deviations in this program. The particular feature of this inno- vation was the violent opposition occasioned by the boldness of the step. To what lengths men’s passions drove them in the frenzy of fanatical adherence to ancient precedent, review the Geiger Tiktin affair in Philipson’s “The Reform Movement in Judaism.” The enemies of reform were successful in winning the favor of the government which used the strong arm of law and order to suppress the radicals. Sermons in German were forbidden, an injunction which prompted Zunz to examine the origin of the sermon and prove, as he did in his “Die Gottes- lientslichen Vortrage der Juden” that homilies have always been indigenous with the synagog since post-exilic days. The possibility of giving Judaism congregational expression in accordance with the encroaching spirit of modernity was wel- comed by a very few, notable champions though they were: Heine for instance, and Zunz. They were of course the veriest minority. Without detailing minutely the successive stages that led to the introduction of Reform Judaism in Germany, since this sub- ject has been treated in full by Philipson in his book on “The Reform Movement in Judaism,” from which citations have been drawn, one might select the year 1815, the date is arbitrary, as the beginning of the reform movement in Germany. At that time Israel Jacobson, who had moved to Berlin, held religious services in his own home, a perfectly legitimate pro- cedure. The service conducted there departed from traditional ritual by the substitution of an organ for a cantor, or supple- menting this functionary singing by choir, a sermon in the vernacular and also a prayer in German instead of a prescribed collect from the liturgy. It was a modification of form. The religious content and confession echoed the sentiment of centuries. Attending these services were a few representing the culture of Berlin Jewry. Emancipation had not released the masses of German Jews from ghettoism, and this movement reached 102 AMERICAN JUDAISM only the enlightened, the “highbrows” of that era. Even so, opposition to this measure instigated the Prussian government to suppress it. The rabbis of the old school, fearing that these daring radicals would overthrow the foundations of Judaism, appealed to the government in the name of hundred per cent loyalty to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and thus it came to pass that in 1817 private synagogs were “verboten.” Following this adventure in the no man’s land of heresy at Berlin, a reform society was organized in Hamburg, somewhere around 1818, by progressive Jewish men and women who came under the influence of the private reform organization instituted at Berlin. This effort encountered in Hamburg the bitterest opposition on the part of those rabbis who feared that the authority of the Talmud as the absolute rule for Jewish prac- tice would be abrogated, as it was in the latter part of the nine- teenth century. These opponents entertained just grounds for complaint. Their predictions were true. But their error lodged in the assumption that the Talmud and all implied in that con- notation was unalterable and eternally binding. Their intui- tions convinced them that Talmudic authority was losing pres- tige, and so it was, and hence they in all sincerity, (despite the suspicion that economic reasons had a share in their resistance to reform), fought it tooth and nail. And yet the distinctive features that marked the opening of the reform temple in Ham- burg on the score of traditional variation, were changes in lit- urgy. The services were curtailed and among other modifica- tions the prayer invoking divine intervention for the advent of the Messiah was omitted. Prayers in German were introduced, also sermons. But as Philipson observes: “The aestheticising of the service was the seeming be-all and end-all of the reformers” in the early period of this reformation, The philosophy underlying the reform movement had not yet been projected. The recasting of the content of Judaism in terms of a Jewish theology had not been undertaken. And yet this very task was essential, in order to fortify the generation of that age against skepticism, assimilation and atheism and to arm them with the conviction that their birth in the household of Jacob was no accident nor even a misfortune, but a provi- dential act, imposing on them a duty for which they were called. They were assigned a place in the sun. Jewish thinkers had written philsophically: Philo and Mai- THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 103 monides are among the leaders of a host of marvelous intellects. But their statement of Judaism fitted the era of legalistic, static Judaism. What was required by the generation coming to grip with nineteenth century problems was the formulization of their religious heritage in the light of historical research and literary criticism. This desideratum was keenly felt by those rabbis who had obtained university training and had come under the spell of academic methods of investigation. These very methods, when employed in assaying the value of rites and ceremonies inherited from the ancient regime, proved them to be expedi- ents, evolved by the household of Israel to explain their atti- tude and identity with God, and their covenantal relation with Him. Under the lense the examination into these institutions transmitted from of old showed the tracing of an evolutionary growth. A static Judaism insisted that these laws came full panoplied from the font of revelation, invested with sanctity and irrevocability. The new scientific conscience declared that religion evolves man’s concept of God, and hence all that is contained and conditioned in the phenomena of Judaism as the religion of a historical group, was subject to this cosmic urge which rules the spheres as it sways the throb and impulse of each human heart. To formulate the digest of this revision, which is an interpretation of Judaism, was the labor of a later period. It was the contribution offered to their generation by the German rabbis who put a historical and philosophic con- struction on Judaism in accordance with the scientific methods then and thereafter invoked. This substantial basis was made possible by means of a number of conferences. The rabbinical conferences of Brunswick, Frankfort and Breslau, held in 1844, 1845 and 1846, crystalized the zeit-geist of that period, and formulated a new statement of the Jewish religion. The reformers, like Israel Jacobson, presumed that a few reforms in the ritual of the synagog, were the sole requirement needed to reconcile the conflict between rabbi- nical Judaism and the modern world of industry, democracy and disenfranchisement. These progressive men, to whom all rev- erence is due, ignored the organic development of Judaism and the full sweep of its intent. They hardly can be blamed for this shortcoming, since the process was not matured till the middle of the century. But public worship alone does not constitute Judaism, as is possible in Catholic and Protestant churches. 104 AMERICAN JUDAISM That danger, however, lurks in our congregations of this day. The modern opponents of Reform Judaism stigmatize it as “anaemic” on the score that it is a mere religion, in the sense of an ecclesiastical function, stimulating the emotional phase of the individual but failing to link the devotee with a group engaged in the toil and turmoil of the Jewish people. Differences arising now have been made vocal, but the dis- tinctions between orthodox and Reform Judaism in the early days were far reaching. The need therefore for a discussion of the essentials of their religious heritage and the practical application of Jewish doctrines to the situations precipitated by new contacts of the Jewish people with their fellow country men became im- perative. Those who felt this urge were ipso facto progressive, since orthodoxy had its program. The life of the orthodox Jew was organized on the basis of codes regulating all their exis- tence. Conformity to such a code as the “Shulchan Aruk” sat- isfied every need for the ghetto, but not the bourse, and it was the bourse and market-place, the factory and parliament, the theatre and atelier the Jews were entering, and, in those days, welcomed. Orthodox Jewry had no need for conferences then, nor has it cultivated the taste today. One would hardly call the mass-meeting so much in vogue a conference. It is more of a rabble-rousing drive for funds than a conference. The con- ferences instituted in the middle of the last century did not claim authority to formulate a new Judaism, nor did they assume synodal legislation. The intent of these gatherings was to obtain an expression of opinion among progressive rabbis on those matters of ceremony and ritual, doctrine and profession essential to retain Israel in the folds of tradition. During those conferences, and as a result thereof, the prob- lems of Judaism then dominant were thoroughly studied. Their discussion led to very important results. Some problems, to be sure, are still unsolved, such as the observance of the traditional Sabbath. In the United States the traditional Sabbath outside of Jewish institutions and along the Atlantic seaboard is prac- tically unobserved. Or in the highly colored phrase used in Jewish circles, “the Sabbath is dead.” The acceptance of the first day of the week as the civic day of rest has become general in the middle west and yet religious services as legitimate on that day as another are not as readily introduced as one might infer. Thus attesting to the conservatism of the Jewish people and to THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 105 the many unfinished tasks transmitted by these conferences to the Jewish people today. The Breslau conference, for example, to illustrate in part their methods and the serious preoccupations that engaged the con- {freres, recognized officially the total exhaustion of the value accorded the second day observance of the festivals. This had now lost its significance in the United States and has no meaning here save for employees in Jewish institutions who gain thereby an additional holiday. The conference declared among other measures that the customs in connection with death and mourn- ing, such as tearing of clothes, abstention from shaving, sitting on earth and the like were survivals of earlier decades and had now lost their significance and were inconsistent with religious sentiments. The problems of the conferences are treated in full by Philip- son in his book on the “Reform Movement in Judaism,” and need not be repeated. Hints only are given of them, that it may point the direction of the new era. The position of woman in home and synagog, for instance, was as a result of these conferences stated in progressive terms. The subject forms a part of this book and is surveyed in that chapter. Briefly, the conferences declared that the Jewish woman was entitled to the same religious duties as man which, it is safe to say, was a slap in the austere face of orientalism. Furthermore, the notion that woman was in religion inferior to man was nullified, and that a girl was obligated from youth up to participate in religious instruction. What was even more avowedly radical and made orthodox Jewry hot under the collar, was the recognition of woman as an individual who could be counted for “minyan,” the religious quorum. In summarizing these conferences wherein many traditional but valueless ceremonials were annulled, Dr. Philipson says: “The Rabbinical conferences will remain for all time among the most remarkable gatherings in the history of Judaism. It was here that the great truths received public expression that Judaism contained in itself the power of adaptation to changing needs and conditions of life in successive ages of the world’s progress. It was here that the spirit of Jewish tradition and the spirit of modernity were welded.” Thus is became evident then, that to give Judaism its true interpretation, not merely as a memory and a replica of the past, 106 AMERICAN JUDAISM but also as a proclamation of truths and duties for those living in this new age, it was necessary to obtain a definite statement of the religious consciousness, a philosophy of Judaism, or at best a theology. From these leaders came the assurance that one’s affiliation with the community of Israel was conditioned on a fact of greater vitality than mere birth in the household of a Jew. Duties ensued as a consequence. A Jewish birth was in that very condition the origin and source of obligations imposed on the Jewish group to which one was born, and these had to be discharged. These pioneers regarded each Jewish soul as a priest of God who is chosen to carry into the world the pro- fession of one God and to bear the burden of effecting this knowledge among men. In emphasizing the universal aspects instead of the national aspirations of Judaism they constructed religion in the light of prophetic forecasts which assigned Israel a messianic career—the “light” unto all humanity, of Deutro- Isaiah. In place of former national views they set up an inter- pretation affecting all humanity, and carried this conception to more logical conclusions than their Biblical or post-Biblical forbears. To obtain these statements of principles was a task no confer- ence could undertake until there had been an expression of convictions among certain individuals qualified to do so, which a conference might crystalize. Such studies were being carried out to enable the Reform Movement under way to merit the sanction of tradition and at the same time the approval of mod- ern scientific methods whose deductions were entering into the consciousness of men today. In the Midrash, Bereshith Rab- bah, it is said of Akiba and Jehudah ha-Nasi and others that at the death of his predecessor a sun went down and a sun rose; the meaning is that when God permits the sun of a righteous man to set (i. e. when he dies), He permits the sun of another righteous man to rise. (Paragraph 58.) The value of the analogy is this, that in the passing of the old order of rabbinical scholars, men of vast Talmudic erudition, a sun of equal brilliancy flushed the fact of the dawning century. A host of scholars anticipated by Mendelsohn with Zunz as their dean and possibly pattern, scholars like Steinschneider, Jost, Geiger, Gratz and later philosophers like Lazarus, Samuel Hirsch and Einhorn, still later I. M. Wise, Kohler, Landsberg, E. G. Hirsch (the list is not exhausted) stood on the parapets and said to the vast THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 107 store of literature accumulated during the ages, what Hamlet said to the ghost: “stand and unfold thyself.” This meant research. This literature spanning the stretch of centuries was forced to confess its reason for being. What motivated the authors in composing it? What swing and swirl of conflict and contention was registered therein? Whatever deductions obtained from reading, as Zunz did the thousand and more religious poems, piyyutim, scattered over the habitable world fortified the reform rabbis in their argument that Judaism was a process of continuous revelation rather than a product of laws. The revelation at Sinai once declared irrevocable was now regarded as a symptom of evolution. God does not reveal him- self once and then depart from all human concerns and interests. His spirit is constantly unfolding to the seers of our own day. Examining history wherein the events of humanity are revealed shows that there is a continuation in the stream of revelation which enlightened our generation, as the revelation at Sinai brightened ancient days. These emanations on continuous revelation are clothed in garments borrowed from most accessible sources, as is instanced by the ceremonials and rites of the Jewish people. These cere- monials are assimilations, in large measure, from a common Semitic ancestry.’ The intent of the ceremonial was the essen- tial factor and its ethical import often symbolized, took prece- dence over its fulfillment as a discharge of a ceremonial obliga- tion. The idea invested in the rite which had ever an ethical implication reminding man of some duty and worthy action assumed a larger share of attention than mere ritualistic conformity. For the German youths growing to manhood and womanhood in this period of enlightenment, the restatement of the heritage of Israel, in terms of modern science was imperative. By establishing the eternally valid in Judaism, the teachers of reform hoped to retain the German youth within the folds and not give them over a prey to atheism and apostacy. They had to be shown that the Torah, though it is written in a Semitic tongue, still “speaks in the language of the sons of men.”* It outlines duties in the fulfilling of which there is great reward, but these duties are moral obligations binding on all humanity. 7™“Rolk-Lore and the Old Testament,” by Sir J. G. Frazer, 5T. B. Berokoth, 33b. 108 AMERICAN JUDAISM Upon Israel is laid the task of teaching these duties of human conduct that all men may have a share in the bliss resulting from the pursuit of justice and righteousness, which is the applica- tion of Jewish teaching. The Jews were, in consequence of the position taken by these reform leaders, a religious people, not a nation in the political sense. The term people is not coextensive with nation. A nation always implies a political unity, and this condition had been outgrown by the Jews. There came to them as a result of their Jewish birth, this burden of moral obligation, the exem- plar and director of conduct that earth might be tilled and made habitable for the children of men. Religion, particularly the manifestation of their Jewish religion, was the application and expression of an ideal, the reaction of a thought, a reflection of an inner light forever kindled on the altar of service. A rite fulfilled for the sake of fulfilling it was an abomination.’ Rites were stimulations, incentives towards action, and all action when wrought for mankind and when motivated for good, hastened the kingdom of God. Their particular social obligation was heightened to religious sanctity by the years of martyrdom, hero- ism and devotion with which their ancestors had endeavored to {fulfill this group covenant. This association of centuries is a covenantal relation. In each age the medium of discharging the obligations of that covenantal relationship changes, or is changed by exigencies of social, political, economic circumstances. The Jew is not cut off from his humanity. He is a part of humanity, and shares with his humanity the fortune or misfortunes of the state. The fundamental doctrines of Judaism, as the rabbis of reform conceived them, were universal in application. The concept that man was created in the image of God was fundamental, and implied that man was capable of godly things, of imitating God, the High and Lofty One who inhabits Eternity. Reason alone does not enable man to comprehend God. Man is permitted an approach to the heights where the glory of the Shekinah abides. Scientific terminology alone does not explain, nor poetry, but the vision of poetry must lend penetration to philosophy and science to give cogency and reality to the concept of God. Man strives to know God through those attributes ascribed to Him. °“For all art is primarily, not a contemplation but a doing, a creative action, and morality is so pre-eminently.”—Havelock Ellis. THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 109 In the symbolization of justice, love, mercy, truth and righteous- ness, man exhibits his divine heritage. Son of the Most High is he, and this dicta carries with it the valid injunction of illustrating that belief in practice. To believe in God and not demonstrate that belief in human con- duct, is to do the thing that the Lord despises. Poetry locates God within the soul of man and since the dynamic currents of our being are started from within our consciousness, the language of poetry is as sound as scientific terms. The indwelling of God and the upsurging of the divine element of man impose respon- sibilities and exact duties of man. He cannot live for and unto himself alone. He belongs to humanity and therefore must work for the common good in whatever way he is able. This is the only method of attesting his belief. To live these convictions is to practice the Jewish religion. The fundamentals or roots of Judaism are set up on this kinship of God and man. Each human being is a manifestation of deity. Our lives are given us and are our own to make them divine, a pattern of God, who being our Father we, His children, par- take of Him, by means of those attributes we, as human beings, have evolved and ascribe unto the Most High. In a sense, man does create God. The God man creates is an extension of his sublimest aspirations. From within his soul, the source of his conscious life, there upsurges this yearning, the hunger of the spirit for the all encompassing totality of existence. The recog- nition in western civilizations of a personal relationship between God and man is adopted in part from Judaism which enjoined deportment of one’s self in conformity to that conception of kin- ship with the High and Lofty One who is enthroned in eternity. The deviation of Judaism from a tribal religion is the empha- sis placed by the Jews on their historical obligation as has been stated. This was brought to the fore by the reform rabbis whose particular interpretation of this obligation lent the Jews the only uniqueness they enjoy, apart from their humanity. For it cannot be too often repeated that Judaism and humanity are synonymous. Were this historical obligation not interlinked with their existence, they might become a mere ethical culture group not bound by historical duty nor beholden to the sacred trusts imposed on a people identified, as is the case of Israel, with a cause. The Jew is under the compulsion of identifying himself with his historical mission before the eyes of all men. 110 AMERICAN JUDAISM The unique burden is detailed the Jew to teach this knowledge of God unto all men, and to illustrate it by living a life of ser- vice, in accordance with these ideas, to the end that he, by so living, may bring to pass a condition here on earth when man- kind will no longer hurt nor destroy by organized agencies. That this is a far off event, so significant as to warrant the desig- nation “divine,” does not impair the value of the aspiration nor chill the ardor of those Utopian dreams from the days of the unknown poet of Scripture who first voiced them, unto this last day when H. G. Wells hypothesizes a state of social order as messianic as that forevisioned by Israel’s seers. In this consecration there is reflected the belief in the election of Israel to demonstrate the knowledge of God to mankind. This is a distinction of birth unlike royalty in that it is a priv- ilege and an additional call to social service. This cause filled the lives of the Jewish people with a purpose. He had as an investment of history, an allotted task. Having a cause to uphold, the Jew finds himself in a world that is not meaningless and chaotic, nor a mechanism ruled by chance and caprice, over which he has no discernible control. On the contrary, the human being is sent here to realize his career. To evolve that destiny, each one shares with the creative spirit in the effort to bring this messianic era to pass. By working either by mind or muscle every one realizes his creative destiny. Work is therefore not a curse placed upon the human being. Work is the “co-efficient of human dignity.” That God works is a doctrine Judaism makes bold to defend. “God works without regard for reward, in order to increase the sum of human life and love,” to subdue the earth to the uses of man and to make it more habitable. The purpose Israel is elected to serve is this sanctification of man, a recognition therefore of the worthiness of each human being. It does not mean a levelling of humanity to one stand- ard of mediocrity, but aims to awaken desire and aspiration in all to attain excellence and to quicken within each a large and liberal discontent. This duty of proclaiming a high destiny as the lot of man is reenforced by centuries of devotion to the cause of furthering the culture, civilization, art, science, com- merce, industry and governments of various groups of peoples on the globe. This duty is, furthermore, imposed by the forces of history, and constitutes their covenant. He was of old and remains today bearer of the arc of this Torah. THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 111 Judaism becomes in this light cast upon it by the pioneers of reform, not the fulfillment of a set of inflexible ritualistic ordi- nances but a “way of life,’ a doctrine controlling action and conduct in the larger contacts of an emancipated people in democ- racies. The very result of this preachment induced cooperation and partnership with other peoples. The medium whereby these attitudes of fellowship, cooperation and services are expressed were the ceremonials which served as conveyors or vessels con- taining the essence of the new spirit. Take, for example, the attitude of Reform Judaism toward the Sabbath. The interpretation placed on the Sabbath by the Jews of Reform proclivities illustrates the position taken by them towards their religious heritage: (a) on the testimony of astronomical science the reform teacher said a universal Sabbath day, one day intended for all Jews to keep at an identical time, hinged on the notion of a flat earth. There being no possibility of observing at an identical hour the world over the ritual of the Sabbath, the injunction of the day per se was invalidated: (b) western civilization had enforced the participation of the Jew on the last day of the week and a cessation from labors on the first. Sentimentality alone defended a discarded Sabbath. Rather than exhaust the value of the Sabbath idea by ignoring the Sabbath day, the Reform rabbis urged and instituted wor- ship on Sunday morning. The Sabbath was not intended as a sign of Israel’s distinction from other peoples, the reform teachers argued, nor was it a day surrendered to pleasure-seeking and relaxation. It is meant to establish in man the conviction that he is superior to nature and able to control it, not the subject or slave but the master of materials. Man is created to work. He expresses his sover- eignty over the things of earth by means of labor. By working it is intended that labor be not motivated by the fear and coercion imposed on a slave. The Sabbath, so Reform Judaism announces, is ordained to endow man with strength which replenished by rest, he may gain new stimulus for creative effort. Were man the servant of nature, and not the the master, there would not be a day of rest and refreshment of mind and spirit. Man would completely duplicate the endless rotation of a machine. The Sabbath consummates the weekly cycle where, as the climax of labor, man merits the release from the monotony of his daily tasks. His day of rest comes then with true dig- 112 AMERICAN JUDAISM nity, the counterpart of worthy service, not a release, for leisure and license, but moments of relaxation accompanied by refreshment in spirit and for hours of sociability. Six days of labor and one of rest are sequence and antecedent, one of the other, and make the observance of the Sabbath valued, whether observed on the traditional seventh day or the first day of the week, six days of labor are commanded that the seventh day of rest ensues not as a reward or a bribe, but a rec- ognition of man’s own control over the things of earth, and wit- nessing to the Creator ruling above nature in absolute freedom. When the Reform Movement gained a degree of self-con- sciousness the traditional ceremonials of the synagog were recre- ated to conform to convictions of later days. For it could not be the doctrines of the Reform Movement alone that would lend stability to American Judaism. These threatened to become mere abstractions when unrelated to actualities and unapplied in daily affairs. Forms and institutions characteristic of the relig- ious genius of the people, and expressive symbolically of definite ideas in religion and ethics were required. Tradition equipped the Jewish people with these forms and institutions and the vitality of Judaism enabled it to create new forms to express ideas of the times and invest old ceremonials with new meanings. A few of these ceremonials and institutions which Reform Judaism rejuvenated ought to be mentioned. Passover, for example, originally an inspiring festival of a crude agricultural era, was transformed in later ages into a festival of redemption. In primitive times this spring festival served as an occasion to consecrate tents and herds. Later this festival was associated with the deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt. The unleav- ened bread reminded later generations of the hasty exodus of their fathers from the “land of oppression.” “Thus, the spring festival became a memorial of the springtide of liberty for all the nations and at the same time a consecration of the Jewish home to the covenant of the God of Israel. God was to enter the Jewish home as He did in Egypt, as the Redeemer and Protector of Israel.”2° Moreover, this festival of springtime fills the soul with joy and hope. This feast of redemption promises liberty from whatever form of oppression burdens the body and soul of mankind. The Feast of Weeks was another farmer’s holiday at the ~The Theology of Judaism, by Kohler, p. 462. THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 113 end of the first seven weeks of harvest. According to rabbinical Judaism this agricultural festival of thanksgiving for early crops assured, was transformed into a historical feast by making it the memorial of the giving of the Ten Words on Mount Sinai. The ingathering of the first fruits was symbolized into the ripening of the first fruits of the spiritual harvest for the people of the covenant. Congregations of Israel, through their young, pledged themselves anew to fulfill the commandments. Early in the development of the Reform Movement this festival was utilized by reform rabbis as a confirmation day. It thus became a consecration of the Jewish youth to the ancient covenant of service and a renewal of loyalty on the part of the young to, assume responsibilities imposed by their Jewish birth. In this spirit confirmation day is observed by American Jews unto the present hour. It is not a confession of faith, but the affirmation of duty to their humanity. A like transformation was effected in regard to the Feast of Tabernacles. In Biblical times this was an important festival. It was in the post-exilic priestly code connected with the exodus from Egypt. The Reform rabbis retained the spirit of the festival which was one of gladness and gratitude to God for his protection of Israel and His providential guidance during the first centuries of Israel’s pilgrimage through all lands. The two holidays that have received the most universal response among Jewish people of this country are New Year’s and the Day of Atonement. The sublime truth voiced in the New Year’s day ceremonial is the glorious realization that man possesses the capacity to renew his heart so that he may harmonize himself with the “great Judge on high and receive life anew from His hands.” ° Reborn spiritually by this conviction, he can with vigor and courage dedicate himself to the unfinished tasks of his own career and that of his fellow-men. The Day of Atonement has undergone many transforma- tions. Originally on this time (among other quaint rites such as banishing a goat to the demon of the desert, Azazel) the high priest in the temple expiated the sins of the people. The day was one of communion with God for the High priest alone. He confessed his sins and those of the people. Forgiveness was implored for all the people by the priest, who, it was actually believed, beheld God’s majesty. 114 AMERICAN JUDAISM In contrast to this priestly monopoly the rabbis, who fostered the reform movement in accordance with well established tradi- tion, invested the Day of Atonement with the doctrine of God’s mercy and paternal love, an interpretation that is fully in accord with prophetic Judaism. Atonement, they concluded, could not be obtained by priest with sacrificial blood or incense or a scapegoat. But every son of Israel was to spend the day in the House of Prayer, confessing his sins before God, in order to obtain pardon. But this pardon is wrought by one’s inner consciousness and registers the conquests over one’s evil inclina- tions. A guilt confessed is half redressed. A resolution firmly formed to rise above the injustice that cleaves to one’s hands, and to cease from evil speech that clings to one’s lips is a means of effecting atonement. A penitent soul is then heartened to improve his way as a servant of humanity. On this Day of Atonement Israel rises up to the heights of aspiration and calls to the universal God. Hopes that reach the stars now become vocal. Not for himself alone or unto himself as a Jew is the consummation of his achievements here on earth directed. He voices the hope that eventually God’s covenant will embrace all earth-born children. That all humanity may attain this blessed state of peace and prosperity was Israel summoned of old. On this Day of Atonement he renews his faith in the ultimate triumph of justice, love and mercy. When this destiny is achieved, Israel will cease to be. But until that destiny is attained he must labor with unshaken confidence for this united humanity. In this explanation of the Day of Atonement no mention has been made of the oriental methods of self-chastisement, fasting. Usually the Jewish people abstain from all material things on that Day, forgetful of the world outside. American Judaism recognizes the traditional rite, but lends it faint support. In those cases it is not a sentiment, it is, as observed, a super- stition. Yom Kippur is an orison and aspires to lift man up that he may stand amid eternal ways. On this elevated station Reform Judaism placed it. At a cursory glance, the expansion registered in these ancient ritualistic ceremonies forces home the conviction that during the nineteenth century, the rabbis who extricated a spiritual and ethical symbolism therefrom recast the institutions of Juda- ism and imparted an intent to it synchronous with the spirit of THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 115 the age. In the early part of that century, and by means of the methodology evolved by them, particularly Geiger, the Reform rabbis of Germany prepared the ground work of their argument. They justified their position, i.e., the historical continuity of Judaism, by utilizing academic technique in exam- ining the sources of the religious consciousness among Jewish people. For, as Dr. K. Kohler* said of his own illustrious teacher, Samson Raphael Hirsch, he and the rabbis of the old school had not the faintest idea of the historical growth of language and law, of custom and tradition and post-Talmudic Judaism. All of his ilk held to the principles of stability which would construe the religion of Judaism as a bundle of laws and stat- utes, formulated in sections and paragraphs for the avowed design of making Judaism a product of a creed, the national profession of a distinct race. The reform rabbis indulged in an exploration of post-biblical, patristic literature, the apoc- rypha, the Talmuds, midrashim, responsa, commentaries and rit- uals. This survey equipped them with the conviction that ger- minal ideas were continually unfolding. The unique inspiration that was kindled in the soul of the Jew could not be paralleled by another people, in that the soul which God had created was pure and also free. It was their mission to know how through the consciousness of the Jew one increasing purpose runs, and that purpose was to make God one and His name one. The same is being interpreted in our day to mean consolidation of human- ity on the side of labor and on the side of property, to the end that men work not for selfishness and for personal profit but to lend themselves to their humanity, that through their indi- vidual labor they establish here a more perfect union, a vaster and more tenable commonwealth. This, in the main, is the undertow of reform Judaism. It has not been detailed in academic style. It has been presented in bold relief without excrescences and the superfluous luggage of citations. This aspect of the Reform Movement constitutes the ground swell of that religious interpretation booming on the shores of American Judaism. For, after the Breslau Conference in 1846, several of the reform rabbis of Germany located in the United States. The reform movement therefore had its inception in Germany, yet in America, this movement found its freest and most logical devel- “Memorial Volume on his 70th birthday. 116 AMERICAN JUDAISM opment. As Dr. Philipson says: “It was in most instances German preachers and thinkers who shaped the cuurse of Amer- ican Jewish congregations.” The connecting link between these German university trained rabbis who combined the scientific academic technique exacted by library and laboratory with traditional rabbinical erudition and American Judaism, is trans- parent. The historical and philosophical formulization of con- cepts and doctrines, as the German reform pioneers evolved them, was practically applied in this country. The first reform congregation organized in the United States is credited to Beth Elohim, Charleston, S. C. In the year 1824, forty-seven members, dissatisfied with the prevailing order of services, memorialized their board of trustees to have the ritual reformed. In their petition they referred to the religious agita- tion stirring German Jewry at that time. With the exception of this congregation in Charleston, there were no steps taken anywhere in the United States in the inter- est of reform before the year 1840. After that date societies were formed among German Jewish settlers and called “Reform Vereine” organized for the purpose of worship according to the convictions then current in the land of their birth. These societies eventually organized themselves into reform congre- gations of which Har Sinai, Baltimore; Keneseth Israel, Phila- delphia; Emanual, New York, and Sinai, Chicago, are illustrious examples.” The membership of these reform congregations were recruited 2% The “Kore Bamidbar,” by B. Felsenthal (d. 1908), was the Magna Charta of Sinai Congregation, Chicago. (Reform Advocate, Nov. 18, 1922.) The keynote of this booklet is the slow development of rabbinic law. Orthodoxy contended that rabbinism was the outflow of divine revelation, of equal authority with Biblical law. His researches influ- enced by Zunz, revealed the fallacy of this contention, Rabbinic law was also an evolutionary process and many of its interpretations were dis- closed to be based on mis-interpretations of the Biblical text. Rabbinic ingenuity had aimed to build a fence around the law was resolved into the minimum requirement necessary to fulfill the commandment—at best a trick to circumvent the law by legalism itself. “The members of this congregation abandoned the theory of Tal- mudism entirely. Judaism, they insisted, was not dry law. It is ethical instruction. Religion is the quest for humanity, not the compliance out of fear or greed with a will of some external power. The inception of this view was traced to the religion of the prophets. The teachers of Reform Judaism showed that the message and the meaning of the prophets of Israel were quite the reverse of legalism and sacerdotalism.” THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM lit for the most part from among young men recently arrived from Germany. The leading spirits of these congregations had come under the direct influence of reform rabbis abroad. Hence the transition from the orthdoxy of the continent to progres- sive, liberal Judaism, American Judaism was logical and natural. Since 1860, the Reform Movement has made great progress in the United States. As Dr. Philipson says: “There are few congregations of influence that have not adopted reforms of some kind. Even those congregations that consider themselves conservative in this country would, in European lands, be looked upon as reform. While orthodox synagogs are increasing, many o{ their members after living in this country for some time affiliate with reform congregations. The spirit of American democracy does not pact with the inhibitions of rabbinical legal- ism. The children of immigrants do not follow the traditional ceremonialism of their parents. Frequently they forswear religion entirely and array themselves with movements and measures whose purpose is solely materialistic.” But, despite the fact that reform Judaism is the religious conviction of a minority, the universal truths announced by the great leaders of reform in this country: Max Lilienthal, Isaac M. Wise, David Einhorn, Samuel Adler, Dr. K. Kohler, Samuel Hirsch, E. G. Hirsch, Max Landsberg, shaped the policy of American Jewish congregations and prepared the foundations for a Judaism which has the hall marks of American construction. These congregations whose influence has been most felt in preparing the Jews of America for a Judaism conformative to the American free spirit, formulated in the Pittsburg Conference of 1885, their declaration of principles. This conference called by Dr. K. Kohler gave succinct expression to the theology of the Reform Movement and stands to this day as the embodiment of the central concepts of Reform Judaism. Briefly, this Pittsburg platform recognized in every religion an attempt to grasp the infinite. “We hold,” it said, “that Judaism represents the highest conception of the God-idea as taught in our Holy Seriptures and developed and spiritualized by the Jewish teachers in their respective ages. We maintain that Judaism preserved and defended amidst continual struggles and trials and under enforced isolation, this God-idea as the central religious truth for the human race. “We recognize in the Bible the record of the consecration of 118 AMERICAN JUDAISM the Jewish people, its mission as the priest of the one God, and value it as the most potent instrument of religious and moral instruction. We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagon- istic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primi- tive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of divine Providence and Justice dealing with man in miracu- lous narratives. “We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization. “We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regu- late diet, priestly purity and dress, originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jews with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our day is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation. “We recognize in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect the approaching of the realization of Israel’s gredt Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state. “We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striv- ing to be in accord with the postulates of reason. We are convinced of the utmost necessity of preserving the historical identity with our great past. Christianity and Islam being daughter religions of Judaism, we appreciate their providential mission to aid in the spreading of monotheistic and moral truth. We acknowledge that the spirit of broad humanity of our age is our ally in the fulfillment of our mission, and therefore we extend the hand of fellowship to all who operate with us in the establishment of the reign of truth and righteousness among men. “We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul is immor- THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 119 tal, grounding this belief on the divine nature of the human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism the beliefs both in bodily resurrection and in Paradise and Hell as abodes of everlasting punishment and reward. “Tn full accordance with the spirit of Mosaic legislation which strives to regulate the relations between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times; to solve on the basis of justice and righteousness the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.” In later years, this platform has been enlarged upon, as in the adoption of a social justice platiorm, to be treated in the final chapter, in 1920 and the addition of a prayer quivering with the social conscience of the age for the Day of Atonement in the last revision of the Union Prayer Book, Vol. II. Follow- ing the process of evolution as unfolded in the consciousness of the Jewish people, the cardinal ideas of American Jews are set forth in this Pittsburg platform. These, it has been shown, are an outgrowth of previous era and the Pittsburg platform provides the fulcrum wherewith to move the Jewish world of later days. It is not static—it could not be so and remain American, And yet the American Jew is in the minority among his Jewish brethren in the United States. Reform Judaism, it must be noted, had not made any noticeable headway in Russia and Eastern Europe, from whence the majority of recent immi- grants came. Attempts had been made to introduce certain innovations of ceremonial and ritual into Russia without avail.'* The life of the Russian Jew—this refers to the tragic Czaristie period—a like stricture applies to Galician and Polish Jews— was dominated by rigid conservative principles. Through this wall of ceremonial no cultural influences from without could penetrate. The old scheme of family life, with all its patri- archal survivals remained. The youth of that sorrow-stricken country was held in the vise of discipline. Not the slightest deviation from a custom, a rite or the “mores” was permitted. To read a book in a foreign tongue was reprehensible. ‘The mental energy of the Russian Jewish youth was absorbed in * The Life of Max Lilienthal, by D. Philipson. 120 AMERICAN JUDAISM Talmudism. The synagogs which served as houses of study were frequented by thousands of Talmudic students,” says Dub- now. In those academies mentality, erudition and dialectic subtlety were valued above every other intellectual attainment. A scholastic education of this character resulted in unfitting the students for the battle of life. The men spent their days “in study” as it was styled, an aimless speculation, while the women, excluded from study and considered inferior, took charge of business and became the wage earners. This is the picture as Dubnow draws it, and his authority is not disputed. In this era, when Russian Jews were deprived of any privilege granted by their barbaric government, certain aberrations of Judaism, such as chassidism and mysticism—their modern reviy- als in this country are treated in the chapter on neo-chassidic tendencies—enjoyed luxuriant growth. Between these esoteric movements and rabbinism the conflict of Akiba Eger and Bal Shem, for example, there was vigorous antagonism and protest. It was a cleavage affecting first principles. The rabbis, zealous for a sane life as well as a sane religion, fought the mystics and the superstitions of the chassidim with their pet saint esconced in a palace “cleaving to God” with unsparing rigor. Gradually the firm hand of rabbinism obtained a secure clutch on the Russian Jew and held him rigid. The agitation of German Jews for a modification and readjustment of their reli- gious heritage did not affect the mass of Russian Jews. To the overwhelming majority, Reform Judaism is first demonstrated in this country where the East European Jews come in contact with it. Their first year in the United States is strictly ortho- dox, although the number of recent immigrants who are without religious affiliation is appalling. The recent arrivals, fewer and decreasing with stricter immi- gration laws, come under the influence of institutions established by Reform Jews. They witness its methods and learn its intent. Even when not affiliated with reform congregations, the pattern of American Judaism designed by the previous generation of German Jews is accepted as the standard of American Judaism, as the organization among the United Synagogs of America, an avowedly orthodox organization of traditional Judaism, in imitation of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, % History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. THE PREDECESSOR OF AMERICAN JUDAISM 121 the outspoken champion from its organization by Dr. I. M. Wise in 1876 of Reform Judaism. Each generation has a right to decide what is the true value of religious practice.* For Ameri- can Jews, the ritual and construction of Judaism as prepared by rabbis who received their training in Germany has become the accepted stamp of Jewish worship in America. There are in round numbers some two hundred and fifty reform congregations’® in the United States, those enrolled on the roster of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations representing the American type of Jewish worship most accept- able in this country. But this does not betoken a majority. Reform Jews in America are a minority, and while the second and third generation of orthodox parents are often found within reform synagogs, still this influx does not upset the balance— American Jews are still a minority. Confronted by an overwhelming majority, a deduction natur- ally inferred might conclude that reform congregations would gradually disintegrate and disappear. But this tragic end has not been the fate of reform congregations in the United States. Evidences tend to show that the disintegration takes place in the religious organizations of the majority party. Congrega- tional perpetuity is maintained by a transmission of obligation toward the organized congregation from father to son, literally and figuratively. In the congregation of the majority party there are few if any instances of this transmission—a bold state- ment to make—wherein a father has been succeeded in congre- gational office of any sort by a son. Those instances wherein the children of the majority party accept the synagogal affilia- tion of their parents are so rare as to warrant one to hymn the marvel. But in American Reform Congregations sons have succeeded their fathers in office unto the second and third gener- ation: B’nai Jeshurun, Cincinnati; Keneseth Israel, Philadelphia ; Sinai Congregation, Chicago. The ascendancy of Jews of German birth was interrupted by the accession of legions of Jews from eastern and southern * “Knowing that there has always been progress and development in Judaism according to a Talmudic principle, the teachers of every genera- tion are the sole arbiters to decide for that generation what is authoritative in Jewish teaching.”—Prof. J. Z. Lauterbach in C.C.A.R. Yr. Bk., Vol. 31, p. 220. #1923. data. 122 AMERICAN JUDAISM Europe who were not responsive to the feeble efforts made tc introduce Reform Judaism into their European synagogs as Dr. Max Lilienthal?’ in his early life sought. Were American Juda- ism dependent on numbers alone there would not be a Jewish religious preachment here savoring of the United States. Judg- ing by various published statements from representatives of the majority party, that construction of Judaism most in favor, were the majority able to so impose it—would be reactionary, and nationalistic, with avowed sympathy for a modified pietism, revived from mediaeval aberration and obsessions for fictitious or plaster saints. Reform Judaism, it was charged by the majority through their various self-appointed spokesmen, declared it is a device on the part of wealthy American Jews to shun or deny their Judaism, and to make it at all times a “religion of convenience” Yet, in spite of this indictment unsupported by the evidence, there are fewer backsliders among the American Jews than in any other country under the sun. The record already inscribed with the large hearted deeds and sincere religious zeal of American Jews makes it a glowing tribute to the permanent validity and legitimacy of American Judaism. The American standards set up by Jews of German parentage in fulfillment of aspirations voiced by rabbis immersed in the religious awakening fostered in Germany has become the chief standard. This American “minhag” prevails because it is most compatible with political democracy and our industrial civilization. By eliminating from Judaism outworn racial, tribal, even national integuments, such as the restoration of the sacrificial cult, and the revival of national autonomy involved in these legalistic schemes, the universal appeal of Judaism is revealed and announced. This universal element, not a colorless cosmopolitanism, but the dis- tinct and universally Jewish message, transmitted from the days of the prophet and psalmist through the Pharisees and rabbis of the Talmud, through rabbinical scholars, thinkers, poets, and thence down to us, is the platform on which American Jews chant their hymns of greeting to the universal God. 7 Life of Max Lilienthal. AMERICAN JUDAISM A summary of those doctrinal concepts of Judaism acceptable to that group known as Reform Jews, to single out this fragment from among others, carries with it the assumption of a creed. But there is no dogma so firmly intrenched in Judaism as its creedlessness. This paradox proves the youthfulness of the Jew- ish religion which seems to be endowed with a sort of spiritual elixir and from age to age is renewed by drinking the waters of immortal life. The thirty-five centuries of unbroken historical continuity of the Jewish people is in reality not a miracle, albeit God, the watchman of Israel slumbereth not nor sleepeth, but indisputable evidence of the tremendous capacity for adjustment to a constantly varying environment. Ina brief survey therefore of the religious concepts which constitutes the Judaism, pro- fessed by a considerable number of the 3,500,000 Jews of the United States, the casual reader will be impressed by two facts: that Judaism admits of different interpretations and construc- tions; and that no phase of Judaism is a finality of the Jewish revelation. As liberty to be retained must be daily rewon, so does God daily renew the marvels of His creation. Not only each age and generation, but every individual names God in the vernacular of the period wherein he lives and has his being and also according to the stirring and yearnings of his own heart. An account of the religious content of Judaism in America labors under the difficulty of being views held by a group of Jews and secondly, even the personal views of an individual. As documentary proof of this, note that the thirteen articles of faith compiled by Moses Maimonides and included in his com- mentary on the Mishna. Later this was incorporated in the traditional liturgy of the daily morning service and recast in poetic version in the canticle “Yigdal.’”? Yet these postulates of belief were his own personal opinions and fiercely opposed by certain scholars of his own day, Abraham ben David of Pos- quieres for example. The personal equation is evident in pre- senting the religious construction of Judaism at any time in any part of the world. Those opinions and decisions entering into *Union Prayer Book, Part I, p 201. 123 124 AMERICAN JUDAISM the content of the religious construction of Judaism are not the resolutions of credal enactments of a synhedrial authority.’ There is no body of Jews—not even a Jewish Congress—with authority to impose its resolutions on any Jewish group. Surely not in the United States. This reservation must be borne in mind lest one infer that in the presentation of the religious outlook of one group, namely that of the American Jews of liberal inclinations and ante- cedents, the religious intent of all other Jewish groups in this country is registered. That is not the case. Every Jewish group—and there are many—cherishes its own version of the Jewish religion. There are to be sure certain fundamental views held in common by all, by virtue of which each one born in the household of Israel is ipso facto Jewish. These universal ele- ments will be detailed in proper sequence although a systematic order of presentation will not be rigorously followed lest it be presumed that Judaism is a rationalistic scheme capable of geo- metrical demonstration with major and minor premises that can be juggled like a syllogism. The elements that enter into Judaism will be treated in the order of their historical origin rather than in logical regimentation. In the first place Judaism does not sanction a differentiation of doctrine according to degrees of importance.’ The concept of God’s existence is no more important than His love and com- passion. God’s spirit in man vocalizes a belief not superior to the insistence that man is a free-will agent, endowed with genius to select either good or evil and whom God so loves that He endows him and all men with moral responsibility, thus mak- ing each one answerable for his own actions. ?“An isolated saying, quoted in the Talmud in the name of an individual teacher, cannot be considered as Jewish religious teachings unless it is approved by the other teachers and accepted by the rabbis after Talmudic period and embodied in their codes.” Year Book, C.C.A.R., Vol. 31, p. 212. *“The fundamental principle of Judaism is, according to the rabbis, the doctrine that all men are brothers, children of one father and one mother, as stated in the opening chapters of the Torah.”...The second great prin- ciple of Judaism, which is but a logical sequence of the first, is declared to be the commandment (Lev. XIX, 18), “Thou shalt love thy fellow- man, not thy fellow-Jew only but thy fellow-man as thyself....Every human being—and not only the Jew—is beloved by God since he is a creature of God, made in His image, and therefore he should also be beloved by the Jew whose religious ideal is to imitate God and to love whom God loves.” Year Book, C.C.A.R., Vol. 31, p. 194. AMERICAN JUDAISM 125 The qualities that enter into the content of the Jewish belief elude classification according to a scheme of salvation. Judaism is manifested by conduct. In so far as one dedicates himself to a life of worthiness he attests to the supremacy of his religious belief which exalts service to humanity above all other tokens of godliness. God begins and ends the Torah with illustrations of deeds of loving kindness, say the rabbis. God clothed the naked, they said, in Eden and buried Moses at the end of his career. This observation impresses in picturesque comment the sum-total of Judaism. For in a large and liberal sense Judaism is not merely a religion. It is a cause: the cause that works for righteousness. The Jewish people incarnate conscience. Israel is the heart of God.t The Jews have identified themselves with this service of righteousness as the distinct purpose of their existence. To them this world is not a figment of fancy, a whim and caprice of the cosmic process but providentially planned for the unfolding of a spirit, or a conscience, which reaching upwards strives to raise man out of lower depths of brutishness to human con- siderateness toward others.’ The Jewish people through their ceremonial and ritual have identified themselves with this service for humanity. Being among the first to voice it as the still small voice of conscience they continued to remain through the ages the prophetic harbinger and priestly guardian, “the witness,” unto consciousness which is a manifestation of deity. This consciousness of purpose was embodied in that historical group known as the Jews whose philosophy of history, early imparted in their national existence, by the ancient prophets and psalmists has remained the source of their persistency unto this day. While their message is universal, the messengers are earth-born, subject to the limitations of time and space, and all that is contained in such an admission, such as language, cere- monial, customs and institutions. The Jew therefore stands in a two-fold relation to the world: as a result of his endowment, he felt that he had a priestly world-mission. “In those days it shall come to pass that men should take hold, out of all languages of the nations, shall even ‘This apostrophe has been attributed to Yehuda Halevi. 5 Hosea, 2:18-25. ® Olath Tamid, Eng. translation, p. 25 sqq. 126 AMERICAN JUDAISM take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying: we will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’ And yet this world embracing vision was revealed through the language, institutions and human agencies of the Jews. Thus is set up an enigma that has been the source of a deep-seated hatred towards the Jewish people, first evinced in Alexandria and Rome, then later throughout all Christendom even to this very hour: Universal in outlook, National in origin. The contrasted world-mission of the Jews against the back- ground of the human instrumentalities of its manifestation and functioning, sets up no disunity nor does it foster a contradiction. Judaism is not for Jews alone. The law that goeth forth from Zion is to be heard eventually by all mankind as forevisioned in the afternoon service of the Day of Atonement.* The central conception of man created in the image of God applies to all humanity. “The son of man” is humanity written large. Thrilled by the consciousness that they have been called to bear the arc of the covenant, the children of Israel, though scattered far and wide, have impressed their religious ideals on the civilization of Europe and America. In the later days, so the poetry of the messianic vision anticipates, the mountain of the Lord’s house will be exalted above all the other hills and all mankind will be {ull of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the depth of the seas. There stands out then this consciousness of a distinct service to humanity.® This is embodied in the conception of the election of Israel, the servant of God, as the agency for the fulfillment of this function. There are certain signs set up in the poetry of this assignment such as the betrothal of Israel to God and the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, to impress upon each succeeding generation the solemnity of the dedication to a life of sacrifice and martyrdom. For Israel had to go forth to an unequal battle in a cause of unequalled importance. A handful, weak and ill- equipped had to take up arms against whole continents. In order to persist in his assault on selfish heathendom Israel for- tified himself with memorials, that is to say, ceremonials, whos¢ intent is to impress him with his Messianic destiny. Many oi ™ Zechariah, 8:23, ®*“Olath Tamid,”’ Eng. translation, p. 198 sqq. *The Jew teaches his religious principles by precept and example. AMERICAN JUDAISM 127 the holidays observed in our period are memorials of this sancti- fication and dedication. The Sabbath in the larger application of the idea regnant therein, reverberates with echoes of lofty exal- tation of man. The ceremonials of Israel had a far different origin than that now associated with them. Many were survivals of a very primitive tribal rite shared by all aboriginal peoples and observed by all early races in all parts of the world. ?° But it is as true of these ceremonials as it is of other beliefs and concepts transmitted from tradition, all of the ceremonials have been reinvested with new contents.1* The ceremonial of Israel has gradually been built up from primitive foundations to lofty conceptions affecting the destiny of the human race. The per- manent value of a ceremonial is never lost since it contains an ethical ideal of brotherhood or the love of God for man. A slight familiarity with the origin of the festivals suffices to illustrate this process of development in Judaism. A _ purely agricultural feast which was a racial inheritance from prehistoric ancestry is appropriated by the rabbis of the Taimudic era, for instance, as the conveyors of a new vision of man’s destiny and particularly his conduct towards his fellow-man. Such festivals as Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, were primitive agricultural rites and reinvested with the spiritual content of liberty, loyalty and fraternity in later generations. The crass uses of amulets and talismen by the crude semitic tribes were popular in Canaan but were converted by the prophets into signs of Israel’s dedi- cation to a life of holiness instead of brutishness. The Day of Atonement originally a priestly ceremonial was transferred from the sanctuary of the Temple to the individual sanctuary in the soul of each one. Instead of a high priest atoning for the sins of all, each of his own volition sought expiation for his own sins and made himself personally responsible for his deeds and con- duct.?? Folk-Lore and the Old Testament, by J. G. Frazer. ™ The seventy bullocks which were offered in the Temple at Jerusalem on the Succoth festival were intended as an atonement for the seventy nations. Sukkah §56. *%“And on this so solemn day, we would search our hearts and examine our ways before Thee, and spurning what is of evil and confessing our sins, in deep contrition vow in Thy presence henceforth to walk in the light of Thy countenance. O forgive us, though our shortcomings be many and grievous, and cleanse us of our iniquities in the stream of Thy mercies; help Thou us so to live that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy.” Olath Tamid, Eng. trans., p. 118. 128 AMERICAN JUDAISM From this brief recital of the methods of recasting the inherited ceremonial of previous ages into the mould of modern forms one is justified in concluding that Judaism is subject to evolutionary growth. Being of the nature of an organism Juda- ism is constantly unfolding and developing. ** It is a religion of historical growth and is ever regenerated anew at each crisis in history. There is therefore no finality in Judaism. As it was in the beginning it is not so now. Its world is a world of improve- ability. Man is reborn. His nature can be and is changed. He reaches upward ever to the rock that is higher than himself. This recognition of a process of unfolding and renewal in content and phrasing of the great religious truths identified with Israel is the admission of a group in America who have accepted unwillingly the label of “Reform Jews” although a truer name would have been prophetic or liberal. The Reform Jew in con- trast to the orthodox Jew accepts evolution as a law of God. Liberal Jews accept the truths of ancient revelations as well as the visions ol the seers of our own time since God’s light is never hidden from any generation. Orthodox Judaism does not endorse this view. The idea of a gradual evolution of religious concepts is inhibited by reason of the rigorously binding doctrine of divine revelation. That is to say, the Torah, the moral law as it was given at Sinai is complete and unalterable for all ages. Liberal Jews insist that revelation is continuous. This difference of interpretation is the substance that separ- ates orthodox from Reform Jews and explains the readiness wherewith Liberal Jews have modernized the ceremonial of their synagogs here in the United States. Judaism in America is the immediate descendant of Reform Judaism which was originated in Germany and inspired the Jews of America to fashion the ritual of the synagog and their ceremonial in accordance with the spirit and atmosphere of the United States since the inherent purpose of the ceremonial and festival as traditionally interpreted, harmonized with the civic, political and national idealism of the United States. Any one of many alleged innovations of the American Jewish synagog, such as the ritual in the vernacular, family pews, Sunday services *% Tn his “Folk-Lore and the Old Testament” Frazer shows how exalted ideals grew out of primitive rites of all savage peoples. AMERICAN JUDAISM 129 are buttressed by the recognition of the unfolding of the spirit of Judaism as illustrated in the growth of the ritual and religion from ancient to modern times. What is distinctly American in Judaism is the application of democracy inherent in Jewish tradition, to local situations. This does not involve a departure from Judaism but represents an extension of the links in its chain of tradition. A ceremonial more than a doctrinal variation has thus been effected. The essential elements of belief are untouched. Belief however is personal among Jewish people and is not stressed with the emphasis that is accorded conduct. In the Jewish consciousness belief per se can not be entertained. Belief dissociated from and unrelated to action has slight reverence in Jewish theology even if it be mystical. One must illustrate his belief by a life worthily spent.14* The Jew looks to action and conduct as the telling evidence of his faith. Hence he finds himself in fullest accord with the political institutions of the United States because his own religion first promulgated those ideals of equality, fraternity and liberty cor- porealized in the government of the United States. The democratic urge which evolved the institutions of this country transposing authority from one to all members of the group, was forevisioned by the prophets of Israel through whose influence high priest was divested of his sacred prerogative and his function delegated to the House of Jacob. The rise of the Pharisees illustrates the investment of the people of Judah with the sanctity hitherto assigned the priests alone. The substi- tution of prayer for sacrifice, the creation of the synagog as the house of prayer wherever ten or more men met in contrast to the temple where only the priestly order were privileged to fore- gather, indicated in remote antiquity that eventually democracy would be applied politically as it was being administered in religious ceremonial.1® Democracy is destined to be fulfilled in the realms of economics as Charles Steinmetz predicts for the world in the next century.’® ~™ We must so profit life’s opportunities as to impress Thy spirit upon the things of earth within and without us, and shape them to the higher uses of the divinity, which Thou hast breathed upon our mortal clay.” Olath Tamid, p. 38. % “The Literature of Rabbinical and Mediaeval Judaism,” by Oesterley and Box, Part III., The Jewish Liturgy, p. 141 sqq. * The American Legion, Aug., 1923, 130 AMERICAN JUDAISM The organization of the synagog in America recruiting mem- bership from among men and women and allowing women a voice in the administration of the synagog, exhibits the instinct of democracy which is one of the most pronounced tendencies in the Judaism of the diaspora. The continued application of a democratic technique to Jewish conceptions transmitted from old is all that American Judaism is or hopes to be. But this is much. Democracy is providing the Jews of America a new technique wherewith to register their religious reactions. The political primaries and election day is a holiday. Thus the funda- mental elements of political democracy are essentially Jewish since the discharge of all the duties of citizenship is a religious act. In Judaism and democracy the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are identical. Man fashioned in the image of God is endowed with life that he like Abraham may become a blessing. He is to live and not die that he may declare the mighty deeds of the Lord. In the poetic diction of Scripture, to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with the Lord summarizes the fullest requirement exacted by God of mortal man. In essence the democracy of these United States intends to glorify the human being and humanity is the basis whereon Judaism rests. As American and as Jew, in discharging con- scientiously one’s duties as outlined by the prophet in terms of Justice, tempered by mercy and in reverence for our fellow men, these twain, Americanism and Judaism, become one as humanity and Judaism are synonymous. The doctrinal aspects of Judaism as expounded in this country retain the elements that compose the religious heritage of all Israel. This includes the monotheistic and monistic outlook on the world. No Jewish doctrine has been as firmly proclaimed as a belief in One and only God. The God idea in Judaism is not to be taken in the sense that there is a Supreme Being exist- ing in nature whose attributes can be discovered by metaphysical and scientific inquiry. According to the judgment of American Jews God is the impersonation of ethical ideas and is identified with His attributes. “With the merciful thou dost show Thy- self merciful; with the upright man thou dost show Thyself upright. With the pure thou dost show thyself pure and with the crooked Thou dost show Thyself subtle.’ 17Psalm 18:26. AMERICAN JUDAISM 131 Thus by conduct man illustrates the attributes he assigns God. In a sense man evolves God which means that what is evolved are His attributes. Be that as it may, God represents the ampli- tude of justice, and righteousness. All God’s ways are just. He is a God of truth. In His light do we see light. Whatsoever the yearning soul of man ascribes unto the Most High that sym- bolizes God to him. The watch word of Judaism is “Hear, O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One.” There are other renderings of this formula first phrased in Deuteronomy. As accepted today the formulization of faith refers not merely to the unity of God but the interdependent relation of all God’s creation. This monotheism is to be viewed from the standpoint of the far reach- ing importance effected by an acceptance of this interpretation of the world in contrast to a version held by paganism where- in many gods contended for obseisance. Originally that group who became Jews worshipped other gods. In course of time Judaism upheld the conception of a unified godhead and a unified world. Compare this conception with the heathen notion of a blind faith guiding the destiny of man and note that the out- come leads into the discard and rancor that is characteristic of heathendom. The unity of God includes the interdependence of all His Creation and all God’s creatures. Each human being, no matter what his previous condition may have been, shares with his fellow-man relationship to His Creator. The bond of union is one of divine inheritance. All men are mutually dependent. This is the distinct declaration of Judaism and while Jewish thinkers realize that all men are not equal in ability, all men are equally responsible to their duty. The Jewish genius sensed the dependence of man on his brother by reason of his concep- tion of God, the Creator. God is named Father and all earth’s creatures are His children, a tender-appellation but one that is saturated with the spirit of love which obtains among all who draw the breath of life. Thou shalt love thy fellow-men as thy self, states in brief the content of this belief.** The vital importance of these fundamental elements are attested in Jewish history. God is made known through his unfolding in history. In the mass apperception of the Jewish **In the Messianic era all men will live together in brotherly love. The task of Israel is to work for the realization of this ideal. 132 AMERICAN JUDAISM people God is revealed in the attributes ascribed to Him: holi- ness, mercy, truth, those laws of morality that literally are the foundation of modern civilization. The God-consciousness*® of the Jews shaped their lives and spiritualized their material existence. They became missionaries in the cause that works for righteousness and in this service they established the love of truth, the pursuit of justice and the recognition of the sanctity of life and property as the symbol of a man’s worth and self- expression.” This kinship of God with man becomes in Judaism a covenant. A covenant therefore obtains between God and Israel. From age to age the terms of this covenant are reinterpreted. Often symbolically, always poetically it states the innate impulse of religion in man which is at heart a feeling of our going out towards something not ourselves, something greater than our- selves with which we are in communion. In some ways the religious sense is like the instinct of hunger, a hungering and a thirsting for righteousness, as the prophet phrased it. There is in the depth of our nature a vague longing for kinship with a spirit that fills the universe as the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. In this wise Israel feels drawn to God and expresses the indwelling of that consciousness of God in terms of endearment. “T have betrothed thee unto me in righteousness and in judgment and in loving kindness and in mercy. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness and thou shalt know the Lord.”?? Religion expresses therefore a relationship with God. By means of it the yearning of earth-born creatures for identifica- tion with the Father, (a Supreme Being) is satisfied. Thus there is imparted to each human being an abiding value.”? This divine allegiance of mortal man with God enables man to transcend the limitations of earthly existence and become absorbed in an ampler creation which does not end with his earthly career and lends to all his activities a purpose and destiny that gives mean- ing to them. In Judaism this heritage of God bequeathed to man is the kingdom of righteousness to be eventually established. A poetic conception to be sure but without poetry religion is ® Olath Tamid, p. 38. 9 Singer’s Standard Prayer Book, p. 17. * Hosea 2:21-22. Union Prayer Book, p. 67. AMERICAN JUDAISM 133 deprived of bridges to cross over from the garish reality of the known to the confidence in God’s love and wisdom estab- lished in the hope, faith and vision of man. When religion resorts to rationalism for an explanation men become skeptics and scoffers. Rationalism can not explain relig- ion as safely and sanely as poetry. Religion and poetry are of the heart, an emotional urge that man can no more escape than he can breathing and live. Religion is not an intellectual propo- sition to accept or reject. The doctrine of a sect or denomina- tion, a theological formulization of this primary urge within man can be put on or cast off but not the initial searching of the heart for that anchorage in the abiding value of God. Man is born into religion since it is a function of his being on the physic plane as hunger is on the physical. What man accepts or rejects are rationalizations told in terms of a denominational nomen- clature. These vary according to the different dialects man speaks in naming God. American Judaism has therefore been a doughty champion for religion and meets the challenge of rationalism valiantly. Religion, when held up to derision as a survival of man’s infancy is shown to be inherent and innate in man and can not be explained in terms of rationalism. It is experience shared by all humanity and is a natural pro- cess of the human being whereby he fortifies himself against the overwhelming contentions of the elements, his own weakness and frailty. Conscious that he is a child of dust and returns to the dust whence he came, a speck in the whirling spheres, the Jew does not yield to despair, but realizes his days are in God’s hands to help perfect the world. So the synagog of America announces, knowing full well that the Jew has no more mo- nopoly on religion than the Christian, the Mohammedan or Bud- dhist. Each one of the devotees of religion approaches his God according to the path of inspiration his group, in all aspects of their national, political, and economic existence, has hewn. The Jew interprets God in terms of those attributes assigned Him by Jewish tradition and consciousness.”* Other denominations and faiths praise their God in the vernacular of their local habi- * Judaism functions in action—dynamically. As will be shown, con- duct, character, behavior, ethical terms, identify and explain Judaism as doctrine and tradition explains the Jewish people. 134 AMERICAN JUDAISM tation. In all of them each individual seeks to link himself in a chain that encompasses worlds without end. Born of Jewish parents a Jew is endowed as are his fellow- Jews with an inclination towards God, a predisposition to find out God. This searching, groaping and outreaching is common among all human beings, yet it must be clear that each histori- cal group explores territory familiar and follows paths already blazed. As each one of us steps upon the stage of existence, each brings into the drama antecedents and precedents, a heri- tage as it were, which is a culture. During the unfolding of the Jewish consciousness throughout history the Jewish people have incurred the penalty of obligation entailed by their ancestral culture and tradition. This obligation directly impinges on the conceptional relationship of a covenant between God and Israel. The poetry of the conception reacts in terms of moral and ethical conduct. His ideology of a co-partnership with God dictates the behavior that is most illustrative of this allegiance and if it be imputed to the Jew that he has set up a monstrous fiction in this visionary compact to beguile himself withal the Jew, loyal to his fealty, replies in terms of pragmatic philosophy. His religion, he avows, has armored him to withstand the outrageous assaults of ignorance, superstition, brutality and violence that has always been arrayed against him even at this very hour and which even in this United States has not abated. American Jews are not apologizing for Judaism. It is the firm conviction of the liberal group that their contribution to the American commonwealth is a service of morality. America is the richer for this inheritance of Israel, given to America no less in the lives of the Jewish people who illustrated their belief by their passion for humanity and their willingness to aid in what- ever endeavor blesses and benefits their fellow country-men, than in their tradition. Compounded as America is out of the various families of earth each of whom sought these shores that they might build a more perfect union the Jew is as needful as any group. In fact race is far less essential than spirit. To differentiate men on the score of their race and ignore the endowment of mind and heart is folly. No race is superior to another in the fulfillment of their duties. The biological status is generally discredited where it tries to prove racial superiority or inferiority. American Jews of the liberal school freely admit their Jewish ancestry. Fully aware of the fact that they sym- AMERICAN JUDAISM 135 bolize the cause that makes for righteousness they mingle with their fellow-country men in common national duties. It is their vision of an ultimate destiny of humanity transcending the imper- fections of our own period that animates them. Men and women dedicated their lives to their country that their nation may be enlarged. Without vision a nation perishes. To stay the floods of passion, brutishness and the ever present menace of unmiti- gated selfishness they invoke the oracles of their Judaism. In the words of their prophetic ancestor they are told: Wash you, make you clean, Put away the evil of your doings From before Mine eyes, Cease to do evil; Learn to do well; Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.?4 The American Jews acknowledge that other people share with them a religious consciousness, as has been intimated, and admit that this consciousness is manifested in terms of dogmas, cere- monials, and cultures. The attitude and value of these religions are often contrary, even antagonistic to the revelation of Juda- ism. Yet it is not the province of the Jew to deny these religions or seek by violence to banish them. The fact that a denomi- nation is organized to illustrate the teaching and preachment of its religious interpretation of the world justifies the movement since it spells the meaning of life to its devotees. The superi- ority or inferiority of religions hinges on the viewpoint of the individual measuring them. It is a matter of relativity. Jews are Jewish by reason of their birth in the household of Israel. Their measurement of religion is conditioned by that circum- stance and then again by the larger phenomena that Judaism is more to them than a mere religion. A Jew is born into Judaism. It is not a matter of meta- physical speculation that makes one accept Judaism. It is not a matter of mentality like logic or philosophy. It is a matter of common memories and like-mindedness shared by the group, events of joy, sorrow, tragedies, catastrophies. These and tra- ditional devotion to the cause of humanity evolve a Jewish soul, “The soul which Thou hast® given us came pure from Thee,” so begins a prayer now recited on the Sabbath morning * Tsaiah 1:16-17. Union Prayer Book, p. 65. 136 AMERICAN JUDAISM service. This is poetry. The soul given us came from our fathers. We are their heirs physically and spiritually. Each of us is drawn to his own Jewish group by the magnet of the soul wherein is deposited all the emotion, enthusiasm, yearning, sor- row, triumph of his Jewish ancestors. Born into this group the Jew has imposed on him the memories and duties of the group. Thus it comes to pass that the Jew is by nature of his birth invested with Judaism. The Jewish life implies consciousness and entails duties as well as it imposes obligations. The equiva- lence of religions is not essential. Judaism to the Jew is a fun- damental condition of his thinking. He does not deny religion in others. His religion is his medium of identification whereby he finds himself and his place in the sun. It is his approach and contact with God, man and the world. Other peoples have theirs. Speculation on the equality of all religions is a skeptical inheritance of the French Encyclopedists who aimed to show as Voltaire did in his “Mohammed,” that all religions are impositions. A designing priest, it was claimed, intent on deceiving his fellows, invented some airy fabric of a theological dream and told of it in solemn tones to a spell-bound mob. Com- parative religions, combined with folk-lore and modern psychol- ogy, a far more reliable authority than the French cynic show that religion is not an adventure of crafty churchmen nor an invention of mountebanks but a function of the soul of man whereby one expresses one’s relation to something greater than one’s self.2® Religion is akin to language and art. It is an expression of the soul seeking to be incorporated in a Being, or a process, or a cause that is larger than self. This very kinship exacts obligations of individuals and in Juda- ism consciousness of this covenant entails a particular devotion. The religion of the American Jew is not merely a part of his life. It is the totality of his life. Existence is therefore no chaotic scheme of blind fate, no irresponsible indulgence of the senses and bodily appetites but an opportunity, enjoining discipline and control in order to unite with men in common collective efforts. The American Jew—(this is true, of course, of Jews every- where)—seeks to live an ethical life. An act of conduct becomes ethical when it is intercepted by judgment. The inhibition of impulse by judgment is constantly emphasized in Judaism. This ”“The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence,” by G. B. Foster, p. 176 sqq. AMERICAN JUDAISM 137 is the basis of the ethical laws of the Pentateuch from the angle of psychology. It is the very gist of the Jewish inspira- tion. The attributes of God through whom each Jew knows God, becomes the bars flung across the path of heedless impulses that, unchecked, would plunge man into brutishness, unsociabil- ity, the collective term of which is, sin. Life directed ethically leads one to practices of justice, ser- vice and study on which the world rests. Orthodox Judaism would codify the totality of human behavior and regulate life according to that prescribed program revealed on Sinai. Ameri- can Judaism on the contrary emphasizes the ethical control of all conduct whether this conforms to the classifications of con- duct or deviates therefrom. In this construction of Judaism as an illustration of the ethi- cal process which Israel wrought and introduced to the world, American Judaism is absolved from Jewish nationalism. Polit- ical affiliation becomes then a means of manifesting the reaction of religious adhesion. The covenant set up between God and Israel utilizes political loyalty as a medium of expressing relig- ion. Voting, paying taxes, attending primaries—any phase of civic duty in government is a religious act, as “sacred” as any traditional rite such as reading from the Torah or observing Passover and eating unleavened bread. It can not be too often repeated that Judaism is not civic. It is supercivic, and is concerned with man’s relation to man in terms of humanity; not geography or nationality. America affords the Jew a means of exercising his religion in action and not theory, for practice not belief is Jewish procedure. The more conscious a Jew is of the ethical processes of his religion and the obligations ensuing from his birth in this group the bet- ter American he becomes. As Judaism comes to consciousness in different countries its ceremonial assumes some of the national features of the peoples among whom the Jews happen to dwell. These national charac- teristics—and there are several—(covering the heads of men during worship and the various taboos regarding women, their segregation in worship, for example)—are empirical and repre- sent no fundamental doctrinal view-point. This is decidedly true of American Judaism wherein national American ideals are complementary to the principles of Judaism. 138 AMERICAN JUDAISM In common with all religions there is a tendency in Judaism towards abstraction. The externalizing of religious ideas requisitions ceremonials as the expression of those ideas. It is very true that ideas were not in their primary state abstractions and then symbolized in a ceremonial. Nor is the reverse true. Originally ceremonials were tribal institutions whose roots penetrate remote antiquity.?” In the guise of feats and holidays these ceremonials persist in the group consciousness which is constantly replenished. The abstraction precipitated by the mass association of the group from earliest semitic ancestry unto the present hour is now symbolized by an attribute where- with the Jews identify themselves with their God. Hence the festivals of the American Jews are not un-American nor evi- dences of disloyalty. The abstractions shadowing every Jewish festival is an ethical idea. In Passover, liberty; Shabuoth, consecration to a service of humanity; New Year’s, kinship with humanity; Yom Kippur, repentance and re-alignment with the group in the cause of God. These ideals applied in daily conduct here on earth, reinforce the structure of American democracy. The contribution that Judaism in America makes to the traditions of the House of Jacob is this application of Jewish ideas to the function of gov- ernment in this country. Government is only a part of life, a decreasing part at that. Political control tends more and more toward the economic functions and the seat of authority is shifting from the political group to the industrial, agricultural, the cultural and artistic groups. Even then the motivation will be generated by the central current of Jewish inspiration. Linking the individual with the creative process enables him to participate in the upbuilding of his own genius or working out of his desire or “daemon.’”?8 *” Folk-Lore and the Old Testament, by J. G. Frazer, outlines many of these ceremonies as well as W. R. Smith in his “Religion of the Semites” and his “Kinship and Marriage Among the Arabs.” Both authors are fre- quently mentioned as representatives of the modern scientific method which displaced the traditional exegesis based on infallibility of original Scriptural text. * Judaism has ever recognized the unity of life, of action, of self. Hence to segment politics from economics and both from ethics, results in cor- ruption. Religion unifies and co-ordinates all functions of man. The function of religion is to assemble a series of incoherent, detached frag- ments and merge and fuse them into a tenacious whole or unit, which can be used for an ultimate good. AMERICAN JUDAISM 139 In laying hold of the universal application of the ethical ideas by which God is symbolized and identified—to incar- nate Judaism in America—the Jews of this country have fol- lowed tradition which received the heritage of Reform Judaism and reinvested his construction of Judaism so as to harmonize with the political and social institutions of American civilization. Thus Reform Judaism has within a few decades organized a “minhag” or program wholly American. The acceptance on the part of many congregations of the Union Prayer Book affords a certain uniformity to the order of worship in Ameri- can Reform Congregations. This prayerbook, compiled by rabbis of reform training and inclinations eliminates entirely those references to a national restoration of the ancient patrimony and exalts the ethically universal in Judaism in contrast to the prim- itive and tribal. All references to Jerusalem, the holy city and the sacrificial system are deleted, as incompatible with citizen- ship in the United States. In many congregations throughout the country Friday even- ing has become of special importance. Services in some con- gregations are held on that evening only. As a rule a sermon is delivered in connection with the Friday evening service. But this contrivance is an exigency. It is also a subterfuge and often an evasion. The regular Saturday services of tradition are now attended by women and children for the most part. Reform rabbis have declared unfalteringly : “The Sabbath of tradition is dead.” Sunday morning has become the logical meeting hour for religious instruction. In many large congregations services on Sunday either supplementary or the sole meeting hour have be- come the regular program. Judaism in America is a fulfillment of Reform Judaism initi- ated in Germany. In the beginning Reform Judaism was a means of aestheticizing worship. It was concerned with deco- rum in the synagog in the main and gradually with a philosophy or theology. The American synagogs inherited this respect for the place and a reverence for the intent of the worshipper. It also respects the vernacular as it does the Semitic languages (Hebrew and Aramaic) in which even in modern rituals many venerable prayers are recited. But it does not impute any magical charm to these dialects. Certainly these traditional prayers are not incantations but sources of sentiment and emotion which play a definite part in conduct. Not the lan- 140 AMERICAN JUDAISM guages, which are national, but the ideas are vital. Those ideas particularly of universal aspect are outdrawn and stressed. In this country the synagog presumes to be open on all sides as Abraham’s tent. It aims to be intelligent to whomsoever would hearken to the message announced. And it is the message of Judaism more than the rite, however inclined one be to empha- size the rite, that is the raison d’etre of Judaism. As our generation becomes more addicted to industrialism, the maladjustments and inequalities of the economic function become more apparent. An interpretation of Judaism is now sought to obtain a solution in this industrial warfare. In no way or walk is American Judaism more conspicuous than the reso- lution taken to function industrially as well as politically and socially. As a personal medium of piety Judaism does not exist. It is not a religion of salvation. Judaism serves the state through investing the individual Jew with desire and duties which he must contribute to the collective group.2® American Judaism has inherited the ideals of social justice and righteous- ness. These attributes of God which the Jew is to translate into action were first announced by his prophetic ancestors. To do them is the business of the Jew. His association with these ideals of social justice imposes the duty on him of making human life precious. This allegiance has made the Jew few and feeble in number to overcome the legions that rose up against him. Believing in his election as priest-people®® assured the Jew that he was chosen from among all mankind to teach man this law for life: namely, the love of justice, mercy, and peace. He has striven to do this. He tries himself to become like unto that which he taught. Now that the Jew lives in an industrial era it is thoroughly in keeping with American Judaism to make known these con- ceptions of modern industrial justice such as the right of labor to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of its own choosing as an instrument by which to secure its rights at the hands of employers. Judaism recognizes the right of labor to share more equitably in determining the conditions In setting forth social salvation, justice, equality of opportunity, more adequate means of distribution, production for use not profit, and con- creting brotherhood of man in terms of economic liberation, Reform Juda- ism widens the chasm separating it from Christianity. This ideal is constantly rehearsed in the prayer books used in the United States, particularly “Olath Tamid” and Union Prayer Book. AMERICAN JUDAISM 141 under which employees labor as well as in the reward of their working. Social justice is the corner-stone of Reform Judaism. Should not Judaism in America deal concretely with social industrial and economic problems of our own day when every phase of Judaism has been responsive to the cry of oppression? The answer is obvious. The legalism of rabbinic Judaism can not cope with the complex situations of this generation. The ethi- cal regeneration on which Judaism in America insists as the full- est and finest expression of the religious function applies primar- ily to those economic relations whereby men obtain their subsis- tence. Prophetic Judaism which is the rock from which all subsequent phases and forms are hewn, interprets all action in terms of ethics. American Judaism is a re-incarnation of pro- phetic Judaism. If Judaism in this country ceases to regard man and man’s dealings with his brother as the test of Judaism, it has outlived its usefulness and should be remorsely abandoned. To preserve Judaism as an asceticism is to mummify it and yet this tendency is evident in certain quarters. If Judaism is a religion of life as it is often described, how can it escape func- tioning in all circumstances of living, particularly in the eco- nomic domain, which is three-fourths of existence? American Judaism is oxygenic. It can not be neutral or passive or nitro- genic. It can not culture a pietistic emotionalism as a pana- cea for the religious shortcomings on the part of the individual. Judaism can not be distorted into a scheme to save one’s soul. The ambition of Judaism is to link the soul of each with God for the common, collective goal! Not self alone but to use one’s self for the social good, is the slogan of the synagog. There is tyranny abroad in the land to day. It is not the ancient tyranny of kings but all economic czarism! Political control has been usurped by economic domination. The author- ity of property seeks to enslave as mercilessly as monarchy ever dared and even more brutally. The Jew is an ancient rebel. His religion which is exercised through him, has been allied to a God who redeemed slaves from bondage and brought them forth to everlasting freedom. The redemption wrought in the days of old for his ancestors has become symbolic. To enslave men is to debase him and deny the God given right to realize the fullest expression of his creative spirit. Hence restriction of speech and the right of free assembly is un-Ameri- 142 AMERICAN JUDAISM can as it is unconstitutional. More than all the right to life and happiness is primary.™ Industrial disputes arise. The invitation of certain rabbis to arbitrate these difficulties is a blessed augury. By their inter- vention more justice will be done than is possible now with violence and force mustered to suppress humanity. American Judaism urges a respect for the laws of the nation as our fathers revered the laws which Moses received from God at Sinai. That code of the laws respects neither the face of the poor nor rich.” American Judaism upholds the sanction of an eight-hour day. It favors a compulsory day of rest for all workers and the regu- lation of all industries so as to guarantee sanitary and safe conditions to the men and women who toil. It urges the aboli- tion of child labor and the raising of the age limit whenever the legal limit is too low to be consistent with moral and physical health. The enactment of legislation that will provide the work- ers with adequate compensation in cases of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, old age and unemployment is a definite, persistent demand in the preachment of American Judaism. The program of social justice only a few items of which have been stated and those pertaining to national situations but might include international relations: disarmament on land and sea; the recognition of small nations; the right of self-determination. These appeals are crystalizations of Jewish ethics. American Judaism is an interpretation of God in terms of the individual responsibility to the state, the nation, and the community of fellow-man. They reinterpret the Jewish revelation in terms of social justice and righteous industrial relations and thus witness anew to the providential purposes designed for Judaism in this world. For the old orders of individual contract and bargaining, product of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries must yield, giving way for collective action in which each lends himself for a larger goal, the welfare of the group instead of personal profit and selfish advantage. Hand in hand humanity now enters the gate-way of the future not single file like a tribe of American Indians. To the group not the individual belongs the future. * Social Justice Platform, C.C.A.R., 1920. “The “Law” as commonly understood in Judaism is not the highest attainment of the Jewish genius. The passion for justice, the love of man and the espousal of righteousness as his “way of life” presents more ade- quately the genuine nature of Judaism and the heart of the Jew. The codes in the Bible, the “Book of the Covenant,” the “Priestly Code” and “Deuteronomic” forevision the ethical zeal of Jewry throughout the ages. AMERICAN JEWISH INSTITUTIONS The two previous chapters may create in some the impression that this phenomenon, American Judaism, is a splendid imitation of the God of Israel on theoretical grounds but without substan- tial reality and application. If this be your American Judaism, one might be imagined saying where then are the concrete evi- dences of your religion? It has been stated with great emphasis that American Judaism is not a religion merely, but the entire life of the Jewish people dedicated to a cause, that cause being humanity’s welfare. In what manner then are these professions attested? Where are the fruits of the tree planted in the courts of the Lord? How are the deeds of loving-kindness which objec- tify the contention of your religion made manifest? The question is natural, but actually superfluous, since Juda- ism is known and illustrated in practice. It is not a matter of confession alone, but commission in ampler, fuller measure. Confession is essential. There must be a vision and conception of what is to be done by mortal man here on earth. Again and again one encounters this edict of the Lord: “This is the thing the Lord requires”! And then there are enumerated the deeds and action most acceptable unto Him whose will is obeyed. Belief does not figure so largely in the Jewish world as it does outside. Belief is personal. It is one’s conduct that is the basis of evidence in the court of the Most High. Jews were never excommunicated for the sake of belief alone. It was their conduct particularly such behavior as did violence to the conventions of the group that was provocative of official con- demnation. And this applies to Spinoza, whose excommunica- tion was not occasioned by his radicalism, his Biblical criticism, his postulate of a pantheistic God-concept, but his refusal to act according to the formulas of the group. Belief therefore does not constitute the totality of Judaism. Belief is not ignored but it is never presented as a creed to which one vows exclusive fealty.* 2As an example of confession of faith, note the following prayer: “We confess this before Thee, O Eternal, that Thou art our God as Thou wast the God of our fathers. Thou wilt be forevermore. Thou are the Rock of our lives; the Shield of our salvation. Thou changest not though gen- 143 144 AMERICAN JUDAISM American Jews, alike with their brothers of the spirit the world over, are born into their Judaism. They do not join it nor accept it as an intellectual theorum or under emotional duress. The Jewish religion is not speculative and metaphysical so that an act of the mind or an impulse of emotion affirms it. One is born into the Jewish group. That group obligates conduct in conformity with the traditions of the group, and those traditions are cast in the mould of service towards humanity. To serve man is to worship God and hence to be Jewish.’ It is natural that American Judaism which is not a departure from the traditional urge of the Jewish religion should give fullest expression to this innate qualification. There is so evi- dent a craving to make practical and real the preachment and contention of this religious heritage that some zealous Jews in this country substitute philanthropy for religion, and assume that in clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and setting the captives free, that is, in serving their humanity by bestowing charity, they describe every obligation of their Jewish religion without the intercession of the synagog and independent of it. erations come and go before Thee. We render thanks unto Thee and sing Thee praises. Our lives are in Thy hands and our souls in Thy keeping. Without number are Thy wonders which day after day Thou workest in our behalf. The boons which Thou marvelously showerest upon us at every hour and in all seasons are without end. Thou art a loving God, whose mercy and favors are boundless. Our hope hath ever been in Thee.” Olath Tamid, by D. Einhorn, p. 28, English translation. Judaism teaches and Jews practice the love of mankind. R. Simlai, a Jewish teacher of the Third century, said that David had reduced the 613 ordinances of the Mishna to eleven, Isaiah to six, Micah to three and Habakkuk to one. David depicts the perfect man as one who walketh uprightly, worketh righteousness, speaketh truth in his heart, hath no slander on his tongue, doeth no evil to his neighbor, despises a vile per- son, honors them that fear the Lord, swears to his own hurt, changes not nor puts out his money to usury or takes a bribe against the innocent. These are the virtues catalogued in Psalm Fifteen. Isaiah draws a similar picture. The perfect man, according to his estimate, walketh righteously, speaketh uprightly, despiseth the gain of oppression, will not take bribes, stops his ears from hearing of blood and shuts his eyes from looking upon evil. (Is. 33:15.) Micah summarizes the ideal of Judaism in these im- mortal phrases: “What doth the Lord require of Thee, but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk reverently before God.” Habakkuk includes all these, so Rabbi Simlai quotes in the sentence: “The righteous shall live by his faith.” Ben Azzai declared that he for his part always regarded as of most vital importance as an exposition of the contention of Judaism, the verse in Genesis 5:1: “This is the book of the generation of Man.” * Social Creed of the Churches, C.C.A.R., Vol. 33, p. 241. AMERICAN JEWISH INSTITUTIONS 145 The application of Judaism is instinctive.* This religion can not be portrayed as a creed or as articles of faith. Just as language precedes grammar, so the deeds of loving-kindness which constitute the application of Judaism precedes the abstrac- tion of theory and belief.4 In this wise, one should understand that the manifestations in the form of institutions, cultural agencies, philanthropies and ameliorative organizations fostered by American Jewry presents the trend and motivation of their religion. It is then meet for us to look into these as an evidence of what the Jewish citizen of this land have wrought in behalf of their own brethren and their fellow-citizens. For the Jew never builds for himself alone. Even his house of worship shall become the house of prayer for all peoples. So he invites all men of good will to share the peace and blessings of his endeavors and philanthropies. He raises no banner nor imposes any ban. For his world is the world of man, and his God is concerned in men here on this earth. In common with every revealed religion, Judaism in America has evolved certain view-points distinctively responsive to the American zeitgeist and the state of civilization prevailing here. These doctrines or interpretations of duty and tradition are not merely doctrines, as indicated, since the foundation of Judaism does not rest on doctrines alone. Essential as articles of belief are in the organization of life, their chief virtue consists in the stim- ulation these afford in directing one’s course of action. In so far as doctrines incite or precipitate action, the Jew believes and obeys them. But action is always involved and expected on the plane of humanity’s good. The rabbis explained this process in the following way: “As God is merciful and gracious, so be thou merciful and gracious. As God is called righteous, so be thou righteous. As God is holy, so do thou strive to be holy.” An imitation of God is held out as the pattern of behavior even as God is said to lay Tifellin.® Another rabbinical maxim is: “How can mortal man walk after God who is an all-consuming fire?” What the Bible means is this: “that man should emulate God. * Liberal Judaism and Social Service, by H. S. Lewis. “No philosophy or theology of Judaism was formulated until the Torah was given. i ® Aboth de Rabbi Nathan. 146 AMERICAN JUDAISM As he clothes the naked, nurses the sick, comforts the sorrowing and buries the dead, so should man.” The pattern of loving kindness is offered by God that man may copy it even as the study-habit is presented to man by the poetic conceit of God studying Torah. These beliefs are dis- charged whenever these ethical attributes are embodied in behavior. To declare them or confess them is futile unless ful- filled or discharged. The tenor of the confession uttered by the Jew is to the effect that God is the Rock of our lives and the shield of our salvation. “Thou changest not,’ reads this con- fession, “though generations come and go before Thee.’® Service, not self, and he profits most who serves best, represent a mental attitude of the age which regards well-being for all more important than the welfare of a privileged group. Democracy no longer means political freedom alone, but economic and industrial freedom also. To hasten this day which is the messianic era for those who attain it, the future beckons the Jews of today. 55 Decay of Capitalistic Civilization, by Beatrice and Sidney Webb REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN AMERICAN JUDAISM There is at the root of religion, as Haverlock Ellis shows in his ‘Dance of Life,” a mystic element due to the “relationship of the Self to the Not-Self, of the individual to a whole, when, going beyond his own personal ends, he (i. e. man) discovers his own adjustment to larger ends in harmony or devotion or love.” (p. 191). The covenantal relationship between God and man is the specific term of religion in Judaism. A covenant was effected by God with Israel. This covenant or b’rith par- took in antiquity of the nature of a sacrifice in which, according to primitive customs, members of the tribe become related (literally, blood-brothers), as a result of drinking the blood of the animal sacrificed or being sprinkled therewith. By analogy the god becomes a brother, a member and part of that particular tribe. But in very early times, at the dawn of recorded speech, the Covenant made by God with Noah, for instance, is designed to impress upon him and all future generations the perpetuity and continuity of the natural order of the world which is never again to be altered or interrupted by cataclysm like floods; at least this is the interpretation of the rabbis. In this covenant there is exacted of man the observance of certain laws such as not to shed blood nor eat the blood of animals. This covenant, be it noted, is not made with Noah alone but includes all man- kind. From the very beginning of history, what became the Jewish religion is conceived and born in a covenantal relationship which is the universal basis of all religions. This concept of a covenant naturally undergoes enlargement in scope and compass. Imposing obligations on Israel, it aims to reclaim all members of the human family for the vaster covenant which will eventually be attained. That this may be brought to pass, God chose Abraham, as one who was faithful to the obligations of His covenant, which are moral laws. God made a special covenant with him for all his descendants who might be as numerous as the stars above and as the sands by the seashore. Yet in every compact of the covenant, the obligation depends on the obedience to the conditions of morality enforced. The covenant is set up that justice may be done and righteous- 242 REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 243 ness fostered. At first this is limited within the narrow confines of the nation. Later this is to encompass the ever widening circles of humanity. This covenant with Abraham was the harbinger of other covenants, particularly that concluded with Israel through Moses on Sinai,? whereby the Jewish people were consecrated to be the eternal guardians of the divine cove- nant with mankind until that time when a religion of morality shall encompass all nations of the earth, and be the profession and confession of all men. “In this covenant of Sinai,” says Kohler,? “the free moral relationship of man to God is brought out; this forms the char- acteristic feature of a revealed religion in contradistinction to natural religion. In paganism, the Deity formed an inseparable part of the nation itself; but through the covenant, God becomes a free moral power, appealing for allegiance to the spiritual nature of man. This idea of the covenant suggested to the prophet Hosea the analogy with the conjugal relation of love and loyalty which became typical of the tender relation of God to Israel through the centuries. In days of direct woe—God’s covenant is everlasting and is ever renewed in the hearts of the people, but never replaced by a new covenant. Upon this eternal renewal of the covenant with God rests the unique history of Judaism, its wondrous preservation and regeneration throughout the’ ares = *)*" And yet this covenant, vital as it is, is merely an exalted fiction set up by the Jew to enable him to adjust himself to this world. If man lives by his imagination surely the genera- tions of those descending from Abraham have ordered their lives according to this vision of a binding relationship between their God and themselves, which exact obedience in terms of holy living and hallowed lives, and using this bond of relationship that through them blessings may ensue from this divine con- summation for all men. If mysticism is then engendered by contemplation of this covenant and a desire to harmonize one’s will with the essence of this universe, there is the fundamental natural instinct in man to explain it and the blessings ensuing from the establishment of the covenant to justify it. It is not meet for this discussion to examine the arguments leading up to the acceptance of the * Hosea, 2:18-22: Jeremiah, 31:34. *Exodus,. 19:3-25. * Jewish Theology, p. 49. 244 AMERICAN JUDAISM covenantal relationship from science, folk-lore, comparative religions or comparative psychology. It is evident that reli- gion, among whomsoever it has become manifest,—and it is universal—has devised a certain covenant after the order of this relationship obtaining between God and Israel. In primitive days, the covenant was crude, its spiritualizing during the ages came to pass gradually: with Israel the covenant is now firmly established as an authority and sanction for fulfilling the laws of God, who is spiritually a part, the rabbis. say, a “partner” with man in the work of creation. That which is associated with God (justice, love, mercy, righteousness, truth, benevolence, work and service), all that which prevails in God in fullness is according to Judaism, also in man, and constitutes the world order of morality. Reduced to ethical laws that are to be pat- terns of conduct and behavior, God’s covenant with Israel exacts the fulfillment of these moral obligations to the end that all humanity may be blessed by them. Contemplating this covenant may kindle emotion in the tem- peramental. If one is so endowed, he may enter the arena of conscience and there unroll before his unveiled eyes a vision of universality. People with an over-developed religious sense, combined with an under-developed science sense, are prone to indulge in a carousal of the soul. There have been lapses of this sort at various periods in Jewish history. Obedience to the law has yielded to a contemplation of its operations as a divine spectacle. There has been, as an aftermath, a well-defined strain of mysticism in Jewish circles for centuries.* It is therefore not singular that today mysticism is again intruding through the curtains that shield the arc of the covenant. Judaism can not be, nor should be, charged with sordidness. It has with sensible regard for the true and worthy things and values of life admitted the possibilities of mysticism, but never gave it sufficient encouragement to perpetrate it as a rite or need of body or soul. Possibly Judaism has been too pragmatic to give more heed to the streams of inspiration and motivation that affect. conduct. When there was so much misery in the world (and the. Jew the most glaring illustration thereof), there was sorry benefit garnered by contemplating the mystic tie that binds man to God. Rather the actual deed of feeding the hungry, “Akiba Eger (1761-1837), a Talmudist of great renown, living in Posen, was a persistent and doughty opponent of the mystics in his day. REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 245 clothing the naked and setting free the captive was urged as vastly more essential than hearkening to dulcet music wafted by spiritual spheres. The primary condition of concluding the covenant lodged in the discharge of social duties rather than assuming a posture of inactivity held in catalyptic rigidity by a surcharge of ecstacy. Emotions of this sort, in fact all phases of elation were in the consciousness of the Jew (who may have until recent years pried open volumes on psychoanalysis) repugnant, even for- bidden® since their exercise entails a certain peril of sensualism. This applies likewise to mysticism. The natural wholesome sense of the Jew repudiates it as a transgression of the ethical laws, providing nothing to the man or woman which would enable him or her to serve his humanity more efficiently, faith- fully or diligently. It is a superfluous and extravagant luxury of the emotions which it is admitted obtain in the soul of man but functioned as a rite or a ceremony of religion must be dis- counted, discouraged and denounced. The cult of mysticism is withal one of the fads of the day. Among the reactionary tendencies which are characteristic of our period, mysticism is being feted and fostered as a panacea of social ills and a salve for unselfishness. It is promoted as a refuge of escape from the entangling alliance of bridge whist, mah jong, poker games, golf, social functions, and all the other beguilements invented by the leisure classes to banish their boredom and provide substitutes for work. No man who has to get up at five o’clock every day is troubled with insomnia, said an American sage, and no woman who has to earn her daily bread bothers with mysticism. Still it is one of our modern reactionary manifestations and must be combatted. The Jewish mystics have a long ancestry despite the prevail- ing opinion that the religion of the Jews and mysticism stand at opposite poles of thought. And yet, J. Abelson, author of “Jew- ish Mysticism,” is authority for saying that Jewish mysticism is as old as the Old Testament. The current flowed on, he 5° The ascetic spirit which encourages self-mortification and rigid renun- ciation of all pleasure is declared sinful in rabbinical literature, and has set a precedent for subsequent ages. In their way the rabbis predicted that in the world to come man shall have to give an account for every enjoyment presented him in his earthly life if used with appreciation of the cheer and good fellowship proffered or rejected with ingratitude. Abstinence is considered praiseworthy only in so far as it disciplines the wild desires and passions. 246 AMERICAN JUDAISM alleges, uninterrupted into the rabbinical era. It is of course a matter of academic concern whether or not this is the case. There are those who like H. Graetz (1817-1891) the Jewish historian, ascribes the origin of Jewish mysticism to a French Rabbi, Isaac ben Abraham of Posquieres. He is regarded as the father of the Kabbalah which is the word in Jewish literature for all phases of mysticism. There are many evidences to show that mysticism did not appear suddenly from without like an imported exotic plant blooming spontaneously on arid plains, but in naive, unconscious form, some aspect of mystic transport traces back to the sudden inrush of inspiration that seized the prophets. No one doubts that their kinship with God endowed them with a higher and finer insight into His will than is the potentiality of ordinary man. The earliest beginnings of mysticism consciously exercised is usually accredited to the Essenes whose mode of life differed from the general body of contemporary Jews. Records available show that these esthetics strove to live a life of purity and holiness away from Palestinian centers of population. They were primitive communists living in isolated groups, in monkish celibacy, enjoying unusual ecstacies and experiencing visions denied ordinary mortals. Seeing visions and hearing heaven— transporting sounds typical of the mystics of all ages. There are throughout the Talmudic literature references to sects such as the Zenuim, “the chaste ones,” who bear the hall- mark of all ancient and mediaeval Jewish mysticism. Thus indicating that the Kabbalah had predecessors in these mystic sects and those who used lore of the heavenly throne chariot of Ezekiel. Philo’s metraton, logos, the Sefer Yezirah (Book of Creation) with its doctrines of emanations and the ten Sefirot or agencies through which God created the world, viz: wisdom, cognition, strength, power, inexorableness, justice, right, love, prayer, were prominent predecessors of the Kabbalah. The Book of Creation,? Yezirah, lands us into the heart of Jewish mysticism and prepares the way for the ramified litera- ture of the Zohar, literally “brightness,” which is the text-book of Jewish mediaeval mysticism from its first appearance in Spain in the 13th Century to the present. What the Zohar aims to teach, says Abelson, “is that man having the privilege to behold _ “Life and works of Saadia Gaon, by H. Malter, contains a lengthy analy- sis of the Sefer Yezirah, pp. 179-99. REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 247 everywhere the Divine image, can, if he will, make his way to the Invisible Author of all and be united with the Unseen. The Universe is Divine Spirit materialized, and it is given to man to have contact with it, since it and the world wherein he abides is an embodiment of God which his soul, in contemplat- ing the wonders of the universe, may perceive and recognize.” As in all systems of mysticism, the soul plays a towering part. It is the center of gravity in mysticism,—Jewish and non-Jew- ish. The close kinship between the human and divine is linked more securely thereby. The one avenue through which this kinship can become real is the soul. The soul is a spiritual entity for the mystic, and seeks to enter consciously into the presence of God. It can do so only under the spur of an over- powering ecstatic emotion called love, which is the soul’s most visible tangible quality. When the soul has completed the cycle of its earthly career, it hurries back to the source of life and becomes blended with the Oversoul, where it is united by this kiss of death with the Divine presence, and this abides forever in an immortal union, This view of the soul, it is readily understood, is an incentive to nobler living not only for each individual Jew, but for the group which, according to the traditional aspirations of the Jews, on the warrant offered by Scripture, will attain its fulfill- ment and highest evolution in the arrival of the Messiah. The famous Kabbalist and mystic, Isaac Luria (1535-1572) main- tained that man, by means of his soul, unites the upper and the lower world. He maintains further that with the creation of Adam there were created at the same time all the souls of all races of mankind. This fantastic notion savors much of Plato- nism. In fact, it is an excrescence of neoplatonism which per- meated the mediaeval world and lent to many a mystic the insubstantial pageant of his vision. Hence Luria made liberal drafts on Platonism for the beliefs imparted his disciples who gathered around him in Safed, Palestine. He taught that there were “variations in the physical qualities of men, so there are corresponding variations in their souls.” There are souls of all shades and degrees of values which fluctuate between good and extremely bad souls. When Adam sinned there was con- fusion in all these classes of souls which might appear to some an approach to the Christian doctrine of original sin. Through Adam the good souls became tainted with some of the evil inherent in bad souls; and on the contrary, the bad souls receive 248 AMERICAN JUDAISM many ingredients of goodness from the souls of the good. By this subtle admixture, there will be in the later days (which means the coming of the Messiah) a perfect condition. Until that time all souls, tainted as they all inevitably are with sin, must by means of the process of transmigration from one body to another, shake off more and more of the dross clinging to them. When they reach that summit of purity and perfection they will unite with the infinite source. From this doctrine’ Luria taught his disciples, and through them each individual Jew, that in promoting the growth of his own soul each one is really prompting the welfare of his group collectively. Upon the weal or woe of his own soul hangs the weal or woe of the Jewish people. His conclusion is far more valuable than his argumentation, as it happens often with all of us. Jewish mysticism, subsequent to the Zohar, continues the doctrines developed in that absorbing farrago of fantasies and elaborates them. Abelson says there is “an enormous fund of originality in many of these elaborations.” These men,’ satu- rated with mystic sentiment and living on high spiritual plane, gave forth the earnest cry of their souls, and so without con- scious design composed prayer and liturgical hymns that constitute a material addition to the enormous store of Jewish literature and is perhaps the direct incident to that great relig- ious movement known as Chassidism, which arose among the Polish Jewish at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At the core of this movement was the yearning to revive the spiritual element in Judaism which had become seared by the dry air of rabbinical casuistry and formalism. The impulse that stirred the hearts of those who injected Chassidism into the Jewish world aimed to show that Judaism meant more than the fulfillment and discharge of commandments enjoined in the ritual. These gracious warm-hearted rabbis intended to release the emotions of love, aspiration and faith felt by each living Jewish man and woman for God who, as their Father, was ever near, and whose heart overflowed with compassion. The Chassi- dim strove to effect the supremacy of a religion of the heart, an inward revelation over the dogmatism of tradition. There is little doubt but that the corrective was needed to withstand and 7 Abelson’s account thereof has been followed. * Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature, by B. Halper, p. 243, sqq. REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 249 overpower the force of intellectuality initiated by the philoso- phers of the Spanish-Arabic period. While its devotees in course of time cultivated excesses, it was a force in Judaism, making conscious in each one the endowment of an inner impulse that urges each one to seek and find that trail amid the intricacies of the soul, leading to the Shekinah. If there is today an attempt to inoculate the present genera- tion with the toxin of pietism as a cure against sordid materiality and the reign of Jewish millionaires as leaders of Jews, their direct forebears are the Chassidim of Galicia. For the revival of interest in the Chassidim and whatever knowledge of them there has been given us in recent days, we can thank Professor S. Schechter, late president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who popularized this sect in English speaking countries.® The Chassidim described by him appear now as models for those American Jews who are making rapid advances along the road towards “spiritualizing Judaism,” which is the outstanding ambition of the mystics so far as they have any material desires. There is an inclination to court pietism in one of the sundry guises, among which is an abundant and promiscuous praying in seclusion.*° Jewish traditions always looked with suspicion on such tendencies for excessive praying, and established an accept- able time for prayer, an hour when all members of the congrega- tion were able to take up public worship which is far more helpful than the devotional aberrations and emotional elations. *Studies in Judaism (First Series), by S. Schechter, essay on “The Chassidim.” Tt is very singular that American Jews of Reform antecedents are prone to overdevelop, certainly overindulge praying. Whether imtiating non-Jewish precedent, prayer is now a proper form for formal opening of public as well as private exercises. Events as far apart as charity bazaars, relief drives, literary and political conferences, wherever, in a word, two or more gather together in the aid of a common design, prayer begins and a benediction often ends the session. Jewish tradition set time and fitting benedictions, a ritual. This practice is now being discarded. With the advent. of women’s equality in politics there was accorded her certain leadership in religion, also, which is now being exercised in clamoring for prayer-books, manuals of private devotion, more spirituality in the synagog and religion in the home. “The Book of Prayer and Meditation” issued by the Central Conference of Rabbis, the “Book of Prayers” published by the Council of Jewish Women, are indicative of this tendency. The con- sciousness of dependency so pronounced in women accounts possibly for this proclivity. Judaism abstractly envisaged often tends toward femin- ism, which is another story. 250 AMERICAN JUDAISM The Chassidim and their American imitators are of particular interest because they are motivated by impulses which are con- trary to the sound sense of Judaism in its insistence on com- munal endeavor as an index of piety. Yet the religious attitudes of these two sects or factions are so nearly identical one is warranted in presuming that modern pietism and its propensity for prayer on all and sundry occasions is a modern outbreak of religious frenzy such as characterized the older Chassidim. By virtue of the inclination of modern pietists to segregate the religious function to an emotional experience, these modern mimics of mysticism inherit the psychosis of religious ecstacy given their mediaeval predecessors. Chassidism, Professor Schechter tells us, was in its inception a revolt among the Jews of Eastern Europe against the excessive casuistry of the contemporary Rabbis and the present revolt against Reform Judaism is, as has been shown, a like reaction against intellectualism. The center of this sect was in Podolia and Volhynasia and began to be a distinct and conscious move- ment towards the latter part of the seventeeuth century. Of the three channels in which Jewish thought functions, namely, reason, tradition and the written record, the Chassidim chose neither but aimed directly at the emotions, as the modern mystics in the metropolis. It was, as Schechter says, “One more manifestation of the yearning of the human hearts towards the divine idea and the ceaseless craving of the heart for direct communion with God. It was the protest of an emotional but uneducated people against a one-sided expression of Judaism, presented to them in cold and over-subtle disquisitions which not only did they not understand, but which shut out the play of the feelings and affections so that religion was made almost impossible to them.”!1 Movements regnant in American Judaism today are likewise protests against intellectualism in the synagog wherein Judaism has been subtly abstracted and rendered imperviuus to emotion- alism or the yearning of the human heart in this covenantal relationship of the self with the not-self or God. The preach- ment of the synagog had acclimatized the methods of European universities and combined in happy proportions hortatory appeals to character and such needful information that the hearer would be induced to reflect on what was told him and 4 “The Chassidim,” Opus Cit., p. 20, sqq. REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 251 adjust his conduct to ampler and fuller social ways. But this calm rationality did not satisfy the craving of the heart for emo- tional expressions which was apparently most urgently sought by those who yearned to “bring religion into the home,” to “spiritualize Judaism,” and enable the “soul to cleave unto God.” In brief Judaism in America had not devised an emotional outlet of sufficient amplitude for the outpouring of elation engendered in the fulfilling of certain ceremonials of antiquity.” Elation had been in a slight degree experienced in the revival of traditional hymns or chants. But no thoroughgoing revival of all the rabbinical provisions had been instituted. Hence the need of the neo-chassidim to save American Jews from impiety by reviving ceremonies capable of elation such as kindling the Sabbath lights and literally “rejoicing” in the law. Judaism, it is true, had been preoccupied in adjusting inherited ceremonies and content to an American environment. These modifications were made according to the methods of adjust- ment operative in a wholesome growth of the religious revela- tion, namely reason, tradition and literature. Whatever doctrine and duty satisfied the canons of reason and the precedents of tradition as revealed in Jewish literature was appropriated to defend and explain Judaism in America. Less reliance was imposed on emotion than reason, albeit emotions are powerful, possibly more powerful than reason. Even so, reason is safe. Emotions are often wild impulses. An ethical religion, such as Judaism, demands ethical action as the fulfillment of its destiny, and all ethical acts are manifestations of inhibited impulses. Emotion is not always inhibited. Emotion is more often unrestrained and unethical. If American Judaism has not yielded willingly to the importunities of emotionalism, it is due “The museums for religious ceremonial objects which are now being installed in synagogs as well as in the Hebrew Union College serves a two- fold purpose: instruction in religious archaeology, showing the utensils used in conjunction with worship. The other object is emotional. Asso- ciated with all ceremonial objects are tender memories. These associated memories link each one to his kin and group and bind up these discarded objects in the swaddling bands of recollection. There is just this possi- bility that the objects now so zealously restored to library shelves and museum cabinets are incitements to emotion and guarded for these tender quiverings of the heart than their archaeological value. What to rational minded modern the fact that the philacteries are survivals of talismen? What pathos and infinite tenderness surrounds the philacteries wherewith “father used to pray.” The rationalism of the reform movement damp- ened the ardor of emotionalism and emotion is near the surface of every Jew—scratch a Jew and one exposes his emotionalism. 252 AMERICAN JUDAISM to the sound judgment of American Jews who instinctively revolted against perversions in their religion—a religion at once practical and idealistic, mystical and pragmatic. The real is ever the gateway to the ideal, which stretches out towards the future and penetrates the unknown. There was, however, a sensation, or might one not say a con- sciousness, or fulfillment even in this simple rationalism, Within the synagog there is apparently in recent days as keen a craving for the stimulation of emotions as there was for the children of the Desert to worship the Golden Calf. This craving had to be satisfied because the propaganda of American Judaism did not provide it as copiously as certain ceremonials of rabbin- ism had. Take for instance the blessing over the Sabbath lights. This ceremony rendered poetic by tender memories is being revived, on the part of the mothers of Israel. This rite, when analyzed psychically, does not uphold the arguments advanced in its favor by those who are endeavoring to “introduce religion into the home” and claim that this rite is needed to instill religion in the household. On the contrary, the feeling of elation aroused by kindling the lights in this ceremony borders more closely on the sexual than the advocates of “more religion in the home” realize. The feeling of elation that is stimulated is mistaken for piety. Reform Judaism has not curried favors with emotionalism because it leads to unwholesome consequences and excitements and in discouraging the ceremonials that stimu- lated them emphasis was laid on more social action. The high task set by American Judaism required service here and now for humanity, which is a poetic manner of saying what is implied in collective action and social service. In this relig- ion, work, laughter, love, good-health, co-operation, mutuality, education, and loyalty to God and country*® are the essential doctrines in their practical aspects. But certain individual Jews, and particularly Jewesses craved a personal stimulus, and inti- mate consciousness of the stir and surge of an attitude which admits “communion with God.” In this decade, the demands of Jewish women are granted for prudential reasons, since men. who formerly administered and excluded women now retire and give them control. Their feministic construction of the religious function in terms of emotion, often challenges Jewish tradition and ursurps the control formerly exercised by men. Jewish 1% “What Men Live By,” by Dr. Cabot. REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 253 women are more “interested in religion” today than men, it is said, and having equality in the affairs of the synagog can now vote their opinions and desires whether good or vicious. Whether to be en rapport with God, attuned to the cosmos or subdued in an all enfolding nirvanna is synonymous with this yearning for God, there is no denying that the neo-Chassidim are “selling” “communion with God” more frequently than they are imitating God. This doctrine of communion with God and allied notions such as “cleaving to God” are symptoms of pathology, viewed from the diagnosis of religion as sane and healthy as Reform Juda- ism. They are aberrations of what might engage the atten- tion of the psychoanalyst. Pathological cases represent noth- ing but an extension of perfectly normal tendencies. Traits that lie slumbering in men and women everywhere are exposed by pathology. These emotional traits are now being outdrawn by the neo-chassidim and are survivals of previous states?* within the psychic organism of Israel. Attributing to a historical peo- ple organic unity such as Israel exhibits, it is perfectly plausible to draw comparisons from biology and psychology. In the bio- logical organism there are malformations and monstrosities which are “sports” to use the biological term, or off-shoots from the natural parent stem, assymmetrical instead of symmetrical, embodying contents previously entertained. As if from the depths of the sea terrestrial eruptions cast on the surface re- volting and loathsome creatures that infest the hidden taverns of the deep.?® One needs be reminded of brain storms or mental explosions with fatal reactions to catch the analogy in these two fields. The accidents that happen in nature can likewise occur in the brain. There is today an unconscious indeterminate effort to revive an exploited and disreputable symptom of Judaism as there is a scheme to commercialize superstition by attaching magical attributes to the “mazzuzah”** which in its original state was a talisman or charm. Popularizing the theories and attitudes of the Chassidim is a reactionary movement in American Juda- ism. America is too practical to deal with it and counteract the deadening narcotics it prescribes. The keynote of the Chas- 14 Folk-Lore and Old Testament, J. G. Frazer, pp. 1-3. *“The Pathology of Religious Worship” has been treated with great thoroughness by Prof. William James. * A cylinder-shaped receptacle containing extracts of Deut. 6:4-10. 254 AMERICAN JUDAISM sidim of old is the Immanence of God, the universality of Divin- ity. The idea of the constant living presence of God in all existence permeates the whole of this scheme. From it is deduced every important proposition and every rule of conduct. All created things and every product of human intelligence owe their being to God. To this their modern descendants also agree. The Chassidim believe that “All generation and all existence spring from the thought and will of God,” says Schechter. It is incumbent upon man to believe that all things are pervaded by the divine life and remember that it is the divine life which is speaking through him when he speaks. There is nothing which is void of God who is the source of corporeal beauty. One thing the Chassidim did; they never allowed their thoughts to abide with the body when they could rise to the inward contemplation of the infinite soul of beauty, which is God. This aspect of the older doctrine modern Chassidim are also introducing. Even the very name of God is always speak- ing, acting and generating throughout heaven and earth in end- less gradations and varieties. I{ the vitalizing word were to cease, chaos would reign. Creation is a continuous and an un- ending manifestation of the Goodness of God. All things are an affluence from the two divine attributes of Power and Love which are manifested in various images and reflections. God, father of Israel, All powerful, merciful and loving, cre- ated everything and is embodied in everything. But as creation is continuous, so also is revelation. This revelation is only to be grasped by faith. Faith is therefore more efficacious than learning since it is faith in the revelation of God that makes us aware of the manifestations of the Divinity in all things. Faith is a doctrine the modern Jewish pulpits, even those not favorable to revamped pietism begin to harp on. It is a new note some- what discordant in Jewish tradition. There is good in all things, actual and potential, say the Chassidim. While knowledge might incline us to discriminate, the Chassidim everywhere seek out and honor the good, and do not arrogate unto themselves the right to judge that which may seem to be evil. Modern pietists have not yet developed that state of guilelessness themselves, since whoever disagrees with them are regarded as a “menace.” In thinking of their fellow-men the older Chassidim endeavor to realize in each the presence of the spirit of good. This atti- tude was exalted into a doctrine enjoining each Chassid to think well of another and always slow to think evil of another and Ngee P+ a bre, poe REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 255 at the same time to think humbly of one’s self. This condition of self-effacement, by the way, has not yet been attained by the pietist today. The Chassidim combatted the assumption of sin- fulness in man and set a high value of the capacity of repent- ance. The notion that any one was wholly irredeemable was not fostered. In all men was potentiality of good and all dwellers in this glorious world were to praise God in gladness. For every man was a reflection of God. When this reflection was obscured by sin it was the duty of every true believer to restore the like- ness of God in man. The Chassidim, old and new, make large and liberal use of prayer.’ In prayer man must lay aside his own individuality and not even be conscious of his own existence. Hence no wish or need should intrude. For if, when he prays, the individual self is not absolutely quiescent, the object of prayer is unattain- able, and prayer was to admit one into the presence of the divine majesty, which is the modern notion of “communion with God.” The older Chassidim prayed to enjoy the thrill of elation in their communion with God. They also prayed for their fellow-men whom they were to honor for the good that was in them, and to abstain from misjudging on account of whatever evil may be in them. Furthermore, to work for the spiritual and moral reclamation of each was a part of the Chassidic doctrine, just as they insisted that every utterance of man, if properly under- stood, contains a message of God. Those who are absorbed in God will easily find divine elements in everything they hear, even though the speaker himself be quite ignorant of it. This is a phase of mysticism inherent in such a conception of intel- ligence, and shows that in Jewish as well as all other sorts of mysticism the natural process of cognition is abrogated and annulled. The study of the Torah was not made important among the Chassidim. The Torah was a revelation of God. But as the world itself is equally divine revelation, the Torah becomes ““A certain man went down (to the Ark) in the presence of R. Han- nina. He said, O, God, the great, the mighty, the revered, the glorious, the powerful, the feared, the strong, the courageous, the certain, the hon- ored.” R. Hannina waited until he had finished. He said to him: ‘Hast thou exhausted all the praises of thy Lord? What is the use of all those (adjectives)? The three which we do say, the great, mighty and revered (at the beginning of the Tefillah) if Moses our teacher had not used them in the Torah and the men of the Great Assembly had not substituted them we should not have been able to say (all these adjectives).” Beraket, 33b. 256 AMERICAN JUDAISM little more than a part of a larger whole. The study of the law is no end in itself but to enable the pious to absorb the revela- tion of God. The object of the whole Torah, said one of the Chassidim, is that “man should become a Torah himself and expel the Balaam within him, and develop the Abraham in him.” Every action of man should be a pure manifestation of God, as Schechter, who is authority for this, explains. The three virtues rated highest by the Chassidim were humil- ity, cheerfulness and enthusiasm.‘* Humility included the ideas of modesty, considerateness and sympathy that put them beyond the faults of vanity, conceit and self-satisfaction. One was to think humbly of one’s self but highly of one’s neighbor. Out of this virtue was born the love of man for his fellow-man, which was a very conspicuous trait in the chassidic practice. To love God enjoined the love of man, regardless of his rank and station, and included the common ordinary clod-hopper as well as the astonishingly learned pedant. The virtue of cheerfulness’® was ardently observed by these Chassidim. Cheerfulness of heart is a necessary attitude for service to God. In signalizing cheerful as a distinct trait, the Chassidim anticipated several modern cults whose fundamental dogma is happiness. But these pietists of the Middle Ages argued that one who really is a servant or child cannot fall into a gloomy state of mind. Serenity of soul was the bliss sought undisturbed by consciousness of sin. With John Burroughs they might have sung: “Serene I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea; I rave no more ’gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me.” Yet there was a difference due to the possibility of the sinner to return to God, who would have mercy upon him and abund- antly pardon. “Every penitent thought is a voice of God,” we are told by Schechter. Man should detect that voice in all the The lamentable feature of modern mysticism among the Jews is the cultivation of the excitements, elations and thrills for the sake of the ecstacy perverting religion to the status of a narcotic and hence indulging in what is essentially selfishness. The older mystics were at least com- pelled to exercise humility, tenderness and forbearance towards their group. There is no impulsion of this sort among the modern pietists. 7” Modern Jewish pietists frown against cheerfulness, particularly in worship. A subdued voice, a downcast face, a sickly pallor in their cere- monial “make-up” when “cleaving to God.” Hence they are always serious and seldom cheerful or natural. REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 257 evidences of his senses, in every sight and sound of external nature. It is through his want of faith in the universality of God’s presence that man is deaf to those subtle influences per- meating nature. This of course is mysticism, which imposes a superior process of consciousness on man. Usually men become conscious of these influences only by reading of them in printed books, not by intuition. In this phase of their belief, there is a close approach to that mystic communion which is praised as the jewel of rarest charm today among the neo-chassidim. Among the pietists of Eastern Europe taking a cheerful view of things was commendable. And one should remember that cheerfulness was not their equivalent for asceticism. Asceticism is very much in vogue among neo- chassidim as one of the variants of their theory of “spirituality” (which is the neo-chassidic dogma for those ascetic doctrines and practices gradually invading the home and synagogs of America) was not fostered by them. Spirituality, the term often used these days, differs from the cheerful confident disposition that the older Chassidim sought. Spirituality if anything is more gloomy and despondent, particularly about “sin.” The concern and pre-occupation of the synagog on sin is borrowed in part from non-Jewish theology. But there is no doubt that sin plays an important item in the religious consciousness of the neo- chassidim. In their prayers publicly uttered invocations are made “to free us from sin.” Anxious scrupulosity is manifested to escape sin. The older Chassidim would have dismissed this solicitation by observing that this concern in one’s own flesh is a device of Satan to keep one away from true service of God. For God can only be served when the heart is glad. A “sinful” heart is sad according to their catechism. ‘There is another phase of chassidic teaching that the neo-chas- sidim have not revived. It is best rendered by the word “enthu- siasm.” Prof. Schechter says: “Every religious act, to be of any avail, must be done with enthusiasm.” Perfunctory wor- ship is valueless. Fulfillment of every ordinance in the code, if performed from a sense of duty, is wasted energy. Whatever is done should be done with enthusiasm and love of service. The inspiration of true service is its own reward. At no time let a man believe he has attained the stature of the righteous. On the contrary, it is better to be in the attitude of the penitent who daily progresses in the knowledge and love of the Divine. Master, It is only the uninterrupted communion with God 258 AMERICAN JUDAISM which will raise and enable your thoughts and cause the roots of sin that threaten to sprout in every one, to perish. Such absorption will result in fulfilling the whole of the Torah without any external command and it will become natural and self-evi- dent to them, a manifestation of God and life, made real through the fulfilling of all the Torah. For the end of this chassidic doctrine, the ultimate object of their orisons, was union with God, a consummation the neo- chassidim also exploit. Each one has to discover the presence of God in the divine word of His Torah. This mystical service of God eludes the grasp of ordinary mortals, and therefore becomes the distinguishing feature of an intermediary, an especially pious man who is not as much the product of learning as he is of intuition. Such pious men have more direct illumination from God than ordinary mortals. They are not only supposed to resemble Moses, but by virtue of long communion with the Divine, are more akin to God, a true child of God. He is the connected bond between God and his creatures and is the source of blessing and the fount of grace. Modern pietists have no saints of this sort unless the praying rabbi be so regarded, the Neo-Chassidim being keen on prayer.?° In their day, the medi- aeval pietists paid little regard to the prescribed hours at which public worship should be held. Prayer began when they got themselves into the proper devotional frame of mind. Frequent ablutions, perusal of mystical writings, introspective meditation, were the means by which they sought to gain the befitting mood, and often accompanied by the usual phenomena of religious excitement which is absent in the more restrained manners of our age. But there is little doubt that were demonstrations admissible in our modern “divine worship” the devotee might give visual illustrations of “cleaving to God” or “walking with God.” Some external manifestations of communion with God is the desideratum of the neo-chassidim who find American Judaism deficient in the production of ecstacy. The parallel is more real than apparent in the ancient and modern sect. Neo-chassidim have not yet evolved a Zaddik or “saint,” for example, to whom one can pilgrim as the faithful did in the Middle Age, one whose piety and goodness and self- * While there are no saints among American Jews today, there are equivalents, these being “spiritually-minded rabbis,” who are vegetarians, pacifists, and Tolstoian non-resisters. Their chiefest contribution to hu- manity is spirituality. In a material age that is worth while, too. REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 259 sacrifice made him a lesser deity, whom his devotees supported in royal estate. The neo-chassidim have not gone beyond set- ting up as a model the “spiritually-minded man.” One of this sort is set apart and distinct from his humanity also, by reason of his alleged “spirituality.” It is a difference only of degree. The characterization closely resembles the veneration bestowed by the Chassidim on their saintly “Zaddik.” Spirituality as a variant of this pietistic and mystical tendency, is a new attitude in American Judaism. The meaning of the word as interpreted in Jewish circles is hard to determine. In its best and truest sense, the word, spirituality, refers to a con- ception of other worldliness which contains in the full sweep of that conception notions that are not Jewish. The word and its implications belong to the theology of Christianity, with its distinctions of heaven and earth, as states and realities. Their theological world stages a conflict between two natures or worlds: one is earthly, the other heavenly or spiritual. This distinction permeates Christian theology and is directly de- scended from Plato’s eternal uncreated ideas.*? Christianity is a scheme of salvation to rescue the soul from sin, and is therefore antipodal to the contention of Judaism. The duality of man is thereby assumed which Jewish thinkers gradually abandoned in favor of a monistic concept, as implied in the unity and oneness of God. Christianity is grounded in Platonism with its division of heaven and earth. Plato evolved these concepts of the eternal ideas, unrelated to life and matters which have been responsible for misery untold and in a way retarded progress. Neo-platonism enlarged upon them until they separated the world into two mutually antagonistic realms: one holy, the other profane; a conception that is repugnant to Jewish thinkers—and made possible the mediaeval period when nothing was done on earth but prepare for Eternity. According to this theology, which is thoroughly un-Jewish, even the body is conceived in iniquity and born in sin, a notion so un-Jewish as to be repudiated, it is alleged by scholars,”? in the prayer, “O, Lord, the soul which thou hast given us came pure from Thee.” Christianity insists that the body must be redeemed by a sacrament and this sacrament is an acceptance of a belief in the atoning blood of Christ, whose spirit can be *“The Christian Platonists of Alexandria,” by C. Bigg, Lecture I. * Union Prayer Book, p. 65, 260 AMERICAN JUDAISM brought into a believer by absorbing Him vicariously in this guise of bread and wine. Hence, to have the spirit of Christ in- dwelling in the soul, is to partake of Him spiritually, and this is attained by believing certain articles of faith about the Christ as_a theological dogma. abe Ha hg | The term spirituality has a definite meaning in Christianity, which is not translatable in terms of Judaism. The manifold attempts “to spiritualize Judaism” is, in the light of the origin of the concept, unJewish, because Judaism aims to consecrate earth and all that therein is to the use of man, and he in turn is to make worthy use of earth as well as himself and all mate- rial things. wily at hay ki Judaism is not unconscious, for all that, of an attitude of devotion, “Kewannah,” in which the worshipper is wholly en- grossed in reciting his prayers. But the passion for loose and abundant prayers, as is the vogue today, was never paramount among the Jews. There is good reason to conclude that pray- ers are regarded as incentives to stimulate deeds of benevo- lence; a call to duty and service; the still small voice whisper- ing to conscience. Prayer, as an end in itself, an ascetic indul- gence, or an aberration of religious ecstacy, has never taken root in Judaism.** . The attitude of devout absorption in reciting the ritual, known technically as kewannah, refers to a sincere regard for the con- tent of the prayer. It is a state of inwardness and is more a means of emptying the heart of every care in order to imagine one’s self standing in the presence of the divine majesty, the Shekina.*4 This solicitude for spirituality, the consciousness of an in- ** The analysis of the Jewish liturgy shows that the ritual itself as ar- ranged and historically developed, is replete with the appeals and reflec- tions that should inspire the main intent of the Jewish sermon, Reflection and thought were never repressed in Jewish prayers. Of the many pray- ers that ultimately were incorporated in the old prayer book from which the modern rituals, such as the Union Prayer Book (fashioned from Ein- horn’s Olath Tamid), all strike deep notes of thoughtful exposition. Heine is said to have characterized the worship of the Jews as a ceremony of singing metaphysics and praying archaeology. Were this the fact, it would constitute a distinguishing factor of Jewish worship. Mere out- pouring of sentiment, mere supplication for help and favor never satisfied the Jewish soul. °4The Talmud guards against the very suspicion of a “Judaized God” by insisting that every benediction be so phrased to read, “God, the Lord,” to which is added “King of the Universe.” The formula of the Psalms, God of Israel, is not adapted. Berokat, 40b. ee REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 261 dwelling of God came about after there had been implanted a construction of Judaism in terms of ethical monotheism in the hearts of the dominant element among American Jews. The mission of Reform Judaism was apparently fulfilled, as inti- mated in former chapters. At all events, there has been engen- dered in recent years a consciousness of unsatisfied yearning. Not satisfied with the mere abstracted ceremonialism of mod- ern synagogs a revival was sought in the guise of spirituality. The feeling of elation which ensues from the exercise of an emotional impuise was among the excitations sought by a people accustomed to storm and stress. The intellectuality of the syn- agog in America had bereft the worshipper of this psychic expe- rience. Again the appeal of the pulpit tended to depart from the stern realities of existence impelled perforce in the propa- ganda of Reform Movement, and aimed to please in a mild and innocent way a soporific congregation whom it sought to enter- tain instead of arouse. The pulpit began to dwell on those phases of activity disconnected from economic and political rela- tions. The preachment strove to be eminently safe and sane. The message of the pulpit was diverted from the stern rebuke of ethics and duty and consecration. The pulpit sought these cooling shades of safety in order to be safe and “spiritual” amid coddling easement. Aesthetics displaced ethics. All references to duties entailed in social relations of employer and employed and of mutual responsibility in each were avoided. Many rabbis were warned on threat of professional ostracism to refrain from criticizing either the theory of private property, the present eco- nomic system, or the administration of public affairs, when leg- islated in favor of the privileged class. The consciousness of this hiatus was the more keenly felt by the American Jews since they are heirs to a religion which is concerned in the relationships of man to man. Every phase of man’s existence is under the consecration of religion. Judaism does not segregate religion into a series of religious ceremonials of worship. The Temple of the Lord which the Jew enters to praise his God is an equipment station, outfitting him spirit- ually, for his pilgrimage through life. It is not an end in itself, but an agency for service. The instant the traditional intent of Judaism is ignored (and the traditional regard is simply a large and inclusive concern in the totality of human existence) an element alien to Judaism intrudes. This alien element, it has more than one manifestation, 262 AMERICAN JUDAISM is a clamor for “spiritualizing Judaism.’** It marks a departure from the traditional function of the Jewish religion, which is to prepare men to live at peace here on earth among their fellow- men. The basis of the Torah, said R. Simlai, is the performance of deeds of loving kindness.?® This Talmudic dicta is an index of Jewish thought. Strictly applied, Judaism would not hesitate to urge the enact- ment of legislation that seeks to remove obsolete legal infringe- ments on human rights. The intent of the Jewish religion is to ennoble man. All that appertains to man’s welfare Judaism sought to foster. And to this end all Jewish ceremonials tend. This includes business and industry.2* There are brutalities countenanced in business today and in all fields of industry that are inhuman and debase rather than ennoble the worker, a con- *In this connection one must call attention to the movement known as Jewish Science, now being inaugurated. Alfred G. Moses, who has writ- ten a book on the subject, claims that it is “the science of life and reality” (p. 97). His treatise is a device to lead Christian Science into the back door of the synagog. It is better to realize that Jewish Science, he says, teaches that by correct understanding and application of the laws of mind, diseases may be gradually cured and he marshals for the therapeu- tics of mental healing the usual posse of spiritual constabulary: silence, affirmation, faith, and a liberal dosage of Curéism: every day in every way I am getting better and better. “Create in me a pure heart and a right spirit, renew Thou in me,” represents the Jewish standpoint, a proper mental attitude is essential for every act. To concentrate on this attitude and exalt it into a technique of healing is another thing. Judaism per- mits and contains all the elements of healing in stressing action and deed done collectively, not individually. The natural discharge of the duties entailed in living contain within themselves curative properties. To em- ploy formulas of escetic mintage, or incantations, does not prosper one much. The movement is interesting, in that it reveals the possibilities and potentialities of Jewish consciousness, and is an emanation of the pietistic revival and mysticism outflowing from the reactionary measures instituted against Reform Judaism. ThOOtawal4as “The social element in the Sabbath observance, it is now recognized, is the original contribution made by Judaism to civilization. The Sab- bath was in a large measure the agency whereby the human race was humanized. Wherever the Sabbath was introduced, it became a bulwark of defense and a protection for the manhood of the working man. The institution of Sabbath protected the weaker against the exploiting selfish- ness of the economically stronger. More than this, the Sabbath is the patent of man’s nobility. Through it he declares his freedom. It is the proclamation of Labor’s high dignity. God labors and rests. In labor and rest man expresses his heritage of godliness and freedom. Labor freed from the tyranny of slavery is creative. On the Sabbath, read in the light of the social implications imputed to it in the Jewish religion, the human being observing the Sabbath, expresses his sovereignty over nature. REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 263 dition calling for correction. Judaism never repudiated Labor. It emphasized the value and worthiness of Labor. But, con- nected with this injunction, followed the corollary—that the laborer was worthy of his hire.?® Legal fiction renders justifi- able, according to legal decisions, the notion that wages award the worker. The maladjustments of industrialism are many. The serious fault with the present system is in this field and in the kindred realm of motivation and incentive. Beholden as Judaism has been to the laws of morality, there has never been such rigidity of legal process and procedure as characterizes the decisions rendered by our modern courts in regard to labor. Decisions have been handed down which do not inspire respect for civil law, but embitter the citizens of the nation against the bar, and feed the suspicion that “special privilege” rather than justice dictated the opinion. A religion so intensely human as Judaism is ever on the side of the dispossessed, the exploited, the helpless victim of oppression, whatever its nature. Hence the dismay occasioned by the cult of mysticism which is now invading the synagogs of America becomes the more offensive in light of traditions, of social justice inhcrent in the Jews. This neo-chassidic tendency portends weakness rather than strength, since Judaism does not pamper emotionalism but engages in a combat for decency and a just regard for every son of Adam. Rationalistic as Judaism has ever aimed to be, there has ever been a current of mysticism withal flowing through Jewish thought, as there has been in Christianity, Buddhism and all historical religions.2® Dr. Kohler says the mystics accepted lit- erally the anthropmorphic pictures of Deity in the Bible and did not care how much they might affect the spirituality and unity of God. The philosophic schools had contended against the anthropomorphic views of the mystics, and set up a philo- sophic concept of God, man and the world) But when ration- alism had spent its force, the reaction came in the form of the Kabbalah with its secret lore.*° Aweary of the combats with the stern abstractions of philosophy, there germinated a demand for a God whose revelation brought the solace pendent on an 28 Liberal Judaism and Social Service, by Harry S. Lewis, pp. 151, sqq. “An impartial Jewish theology must take cognizance of both sides: it must include the mysticism of an Isaac Luria and a Sabbathai Horowitz as well as the rationalism of Albo and Leo da Modena. Jewish Theology, by Kohler, p. 14. ” Opus Cit., p. 89. 264 AMERICAN JUDAISM exultant faith in His nearness, reality and indwelling in the soul of each.** The mystics of Germany and Safed, Palestine, opposed the one-sidedness of legalism and intellectualism, says Dr. Kohler, and endeavored to instill elements of deeper devotion into the Jewish soul through the introduction of their Kabbalah. Their excursion in esoteric tradition was but the reaction to the exces- sive rationalism of the Spanish-Arabic period. Later he says: “As the ultimate source of religion is not reason, but the heart, so the cultivation of the intellect at the expense of the emotions can only be harmful to the faith. The legalism and casuistry of the Talmud and Codes appealed too much to the intellect, disregarding the deeper emotional sources of religion and moral- ity; on the other hand, the mysticism of the Kabbalists over- emphasized the emotional element and eliminated much of the rational basis of Judaism. The menace in the movement today is of this caliber, it vaunts mysticism instead of social justice as the fulfillment of Judaism.*? | Mysticism attempts to create a supersensuous world and that is the menace engendered by it for those who, like the neo- chassidim, encourage this excursion into the unreal. The peril their appeal for mysticism projects is the denial of reality in this world, and their acceptance of the alleged verities of a supersensuous world, with which they have direct sensory com- munication as the ultimate good of all existence. Platonism to be sure has never been accepted in Judaism. They seek to cre- ate this supersensuous world of reality in which action is dis- placed by meditation and hence favor “silence” in the synagog as an evidence of spirituality. Contact’ with this supersensuous realm of reality awards one with such bliss as is held in store ~~ *Rationalism in the outcropping of the philosophies projected during the heyday of Spanish Jewry was dependent on freedom, and freedom was the lot of the Jews of that era. Synchronous with the advent of the inqui- sition trooped the mystic hosts, Periods of persecution have ever been fertile fields for pietism, mysticism and chassidic cults. The oppressive wave of reaction in this country and Europe tends to stimulate the mystic proclivities of the Jew. In those perilous moments, the harassed and hounded seek refuge in other realms. The devout Christian has a perma- nent anchor in heaven. The Jew, having abandoned his original “Gan Eden,” devises a new one and labels it “mysticism,” “spirituality,” “Piety,” “indwelling consciousness of God.” It matters not what name is carved on the entablature of this airy edifice, it represents for all practical purposes a haven of escape, a means of release from the pressure of. persecution. 82 An opinion shared by A. Cropsey in his article, “The Shame of the Churches,” The Nation, Jan. 16/24. ' REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 265 for those who exercise their emotions. On them is bestowed greater solace than the hard and harsh garishness of earth ad- mits and in the seclusion of their parlor or pew they may obtain intimations of God’s indwelling consciousness, all of which is useful when it leads to action. On the side of psychology, the mystics assume that in addition to the habitual manner of viewing the world there is another of which they have vivid sensuous sensations. Their transcen- dental world is the reality while our ordinary area of conceptial thought is the unreal. This, of course, means that there are two processes of thought: the ordinary impressions arising from the senses and another transcending this, permitting closer immedi- acy with an alleged reality than is afforded by our senses. The fallacy of mysticism, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, is the setting up of a dualism in our nature which psychology no longer accepts. Mysticism seeks to establish just this dual relationship in man and it is as futile, as futile as spirituality although a modern rabbi high in rabbinical circles said: ‘We must revive our soul and bring it back to life by feeling and nourishing it with spiritual fare; real wholesome food such as will save our souls from death.” Yet no thought is so unJew- ish as this conception of duty and doctrine, removed from action toward rendering earth more serviceable for mankind. “There is among American Jews today a very real spiritual hunger and unrest,” says Dr. S. S. Wise, “a hunger which orthodoxy as it is cannot satisfy, an unrest which Liberal or Reform Judaism does not avail to compose; a hunger and unrest which are due in no small part to an explicable and even justified discontent with the synagog, orthodox and liberal alike.” One would like to have more evidences than a mere verbal accusation. To appease this hunger, spirituality or mysticism (cults that are anti-Jewish) are projected. Yet this is not the ambition of Judaism. “These are the things,” says the Mishnah, the fruits of which a man enjoys in this world: honoring father and mother, the practice of charity, timely attendance at the house of study, hospitality to wayfarers, visiting the sick, dower- ing, attending the dead and making peace between man and his fellow. But the study of the law is equal to them all.* Rabbinical Judaism proffers a suggestion in this admonition for more wholesome and useful things than clamor for spiritual- * Singer’s Prayer Book, p. 5, 266 AMERICAN JUDAISM ity. In fulfilling these social duties, man serves his humanity. Piety among Jews ever consisted in social service.** For the purpose of the Torah was to make man love and serve this humanity. All gifts of mind or purpose or property were but loaned to man that he might dedicate them to the uses of his humanity. Whomsoever in fidelity and gladness of heart will- ingly served his humanity, manifested the only real genuine piety Judaism fostered, Love of man {fulfilled all the obligations of spirituality. They preached fulfillment of the commandments that ultimately their humanity might be bettered. More than this spirituality can not do. There is still another spirituality which is indigenous to American Judaism and this conception of spirituality, if this term be adopted, calls upon each to remain true to what his Creator intended him to be. Whoever fulfills himself and real- izes the gifts and faculties implanted in his nature is working with God for the establishment of the kingdom of righteous- ness. God is manifested through the work of man and this is the intent of the implication that man is fashioned in the image of God. To conquer the earth and till it is to have dominion over the earth. Without man this earth would be a wilderness. Upon man is imposed the duty to alter this condition. Man is to be a creator. He is to transform this earth from uninhabit- ableness to habitableness, and this transformation is only pos- sible by labor. Work is sacred. Only through working can man become the image of God upon earth. As the Torah was given as a covenant, so was work ordered as a covenant, it is said in the Aboth of Rabbi Nathan. Work is a covenant representing the moral relation between God and man. If, then, to work is a covenant, work is a fundamental doctrine of the Jewish religion. In the Sabbath ordinance the work of six days precedes the celebration of the Sabbath day of rest. The Sabbath day can only be truly observed and enjoyed when it follows six days of labor and attests to the excellence of the work accomplished. Work fashions us in the image of God, Judaism contends. When any one carries out his divine intent by exercising such abilities and powers as possesses and contributes his share to the common wealth of humanity or participates in the efforts * Liberal Judaism and Social Service, p. 66. “ This construction is an elaboration of doctrines expounded by Samuel Hirsch in his ‘‘Catechism.” a REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS 267 of subduing earth to the use of man, he fills a place in society. The consciousness of his labor fills him with dignity. He enjoys the esteem of his fellows and the consciousness of labor worthily performed creates in him a certain self-esteem that is as valuable as piety. The work of conquering the earth and subduing all things earthly is not the task of an individual alone, but is that labor enjoined on all mankind. To labor with one’s fellow-men is as essential as to do one’s own work. In fact this collabora- tion would provide a common aim and impose a share of service upon all engaged in transforming the earth. It is synonymous with the modern slogan: “service, above self!” To transform the earth and make it fit for human habitation is the sort of “spirituality” Judaism recognizes as worthy of cultivation. For this sort of spirituality assists in the work of creation and each of us thus become partners with God in His unending process of creation. That work can never be completed. Whatever has been attained in one age is only the material offered by that generation to their posterity, who in turn must transform it anew to the wider demands and uses made by each new generation. For man did not come forth from the hands of the Creator either good or bad. His goodness consists only in not feeling satisfied with what he finds in the world or within himself, and the effort put forth to make mate- rials and himself more useful. In an endeavor to improve the circumstances and conditions of earth, in attaining a greater perfection himself in whatever he has ventured, and in securing a better living condition for humanity upon earth, there is dis- played all the spirituality Judaism can vouchsafe. In its prag: matic intent, Judaism is in accord with modern thought, so fat as this doctrine is concerned, From this injunction of living, it follows that to oppress the laborer in any form of tyranny or domination, is to belie God and defile the image of God in the wrong doer as well as him or her wronged. How can man walk in the ways of God, or even “cleave to God,” and countenance the defilement of earth and man in our day? Man is a worker with God. He is a partner of the Holy One, Blessed be He, in the work of creation. The consciousness of having lived up to this thought is genuine spirituality and the highest reward for man. Blessed is the man who has found his work. Let a man find his work and his work shall make him free, when together with 268 AMERICAN JUDAISM his fellows they labor to subdue earth for the use of man. This construction of life has wide and far-reaching applications. Let no one mistake the significance of these constructions, Far easier of fulfillment is “‘spirituality” that cleaves to God and stays put. But it involves no labor, Judaism insists on stirring man to partake of the creative force engaged in bettering earth and man’s lot, in uprooting the inhumanity within man. Who shall say that he or she gifted with artistic inspiration, is not spiritual when responsive to their genius, they paint a picture; write a poem; sing a song; carve a statue; make something by hand? Who is not spiritually-minded when planting a garden; a tree; a flower? Why are not the sons of toil equally spiritual with the neo-chassidim whose only claims of distinction are their vocal chords? Spirituality is esoteric in Judaism save in the light of labor. There is bound to be more cooperation in move- ments tending to conquer earth literally and figuratively. There is sure to be more participation in whatever movements mani- fest the truth of man’s partnership with God. This is to be a better place for all of us to live in and it is to be a labor of love for our humanity that will make earth worth living, a garden as H. C. Wells intimated earth was planned to be, neither man nor beast shall trample down. To this end neo-chassidim and all spiritually-minded men and women might well direct their energies and talents. For let none forget the words of Rabbi Chananya, son of Akashya who said: The Holy One, blessed be He, was pleased to make Israel worthy; wherefore he gave them a copious Torah and many commandments,* as it is said, “It pleased the Lord, for his righteousness’ sake to magnify the Torah and make it honorable.” (Isaiah xlii, 21.) * Also Targum Song of Songs to 1:10. ee DHE ONEX TS CAGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN JUDAISM The foregoing chapters have endeavored to establish the thesis of an American Judaism. Its history, content, its achievement and reactions or frustrations have been outlined—from the view- point of one individual, albeit that interpretation aimed to be objective, impersonal, while at the same time conscious of liberal inclinations and reform proclivities. The argument sustained the assumption that there is a bona fide American Judaism which, it was conceded, is a literary phrase intended to capti- vate the patriotic pride of the Jewish people of America and means literally that there is no geographical divisions of Juda- ism, but that Judaism is manifested variously in various peoples everywhere and in these United States finds expression among a large portion of the Jewish population in terms of what has been unfortunately labelled “Reform” but might be designated as Prophetic or Liberal Judaism. This prophetic construction or continuation of Jewish inspira- tion, it is shown, is no aberration of Jewish genius, but a ful- fillment of the evolutionary process characteristic of this phe- nomena. Judaism has ever been in a state of flux. The spirit of God, the consciousness of the indwelling of a spirit, with one’s self, that makes for righteousness and relates one in a cove- nantal kinship with a non-Self in terms of love and devotion, is the quintessential core of the Jewish religion. This covenan- tal bond enjoins such behavior as tends to increase peace in the world and is the prerequisite for establishment of the brotherhood of man. It makes for democracy, political and economic, since the impersonation of these ideas summarize the mass-apperception of the God-concept among the Jews today, among those, at least, of the Liberal and Prophetic wing, who entertain any speculation whatosever on matters of this sort. This view, while modern, is a fulfillment of prophecy in the sense that ever since that inspiring moment when Elijah lashed by the fury of the elements heard the still small voice telling him the source of authority, until this last moment of recorded 269 270 AMERICAN JUDAISM time, Judaism has enlarged from within cardinal doctrines of doing justly, loving mercy and walking the earth with reveren- tial mien. And thus being in harmony with the natural order of the universe, the creative genius of the Jewish people attrib- uted freedom to God and set Him and them above nature. American Judaism is therefore not an end in itself, but a medium or an expression whereby the Jewish people identify themselves with their God who is the symbolization of those deeds of love and justice, of truth and enlightenment that liberate men from ignorance, selfishness and bigotry, and so coordinates them with the universal will or the natural order of the world. This interpretation, in contrast to orthodoxy which recognized the covenantal relationship in terms of inviolable laws to fulfill which constituted Judaism as orthodoxy defined it. Orthodoxy reduced the religion of the Jewish people to a series of codes, discharging which sanctified and enhallowed the life of the Jews as the myriads of martyred Jews and Jewesses testify, but it also contracted life. It hedged them behind their ghetto walls, and, while the world was narrowed by superstition and tyranny, safeguarded them on all their ways. But in the glow of toler- ance, and warmed by the sun of political democracy, the larger contacts with humanity demanded larger sanctions. These sanc- tions were not imposed on the Jewish people, from without, but obtained from within Judaism. The potentialities of Judaism liberated and released the Jews and enabled them to find their places in the sun. Responsive to this impulse the Jews re-read their literature and history. From critical study of these, their election, as providentially designed, to be a priest people, which is in other words the ethical urge among humanity, was reaffirmed. Like- wise their historical purpose and identity as a people invested with this momentuous task was stressed. This role assigned them a spiritual objective, an ideal affecting all humanity, which lent meaning to their lives. This task is imposed on the Jewish group by the antecedent forces of history. These conditions precedent circumvent cosmopolitanism or a colorless humani- tarianism. The Jew is a distinct factor in civilization. He is that element which works for humanization or love. He upholds the liberation of man from tyrannies, be these political, religious or economic. His God is conceived of in terms of freedom and is superior to nature, master of circumstance and condition. ee THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 271 Therefore, as God gave the Jew the Sabbath as a protest against mechanization of man, and in defiance of natural law, to the end that man may be enthroned and made little less than the angels, with dominion over the works of The Creator. Man is accordingly crowned with glory and honor. Born a free man, he is fashioned in the image of a free God. To proclaim this truth, the Jew was summoned. His appoint- ment challenges him to battle against error and brutal selfish- ness. His arena is the world, and his foeman those who hate their fellow-man. Being annointed with the oil of a consecrated purpose, the Jew could not, in loyalty to his providential appointment and messianic mission, segregate himself within the confines of a country which he outgrew. American Judaism has therefore never been nationalistic in the sense that it assumed Judaism to be an end in itself, to realize which one might retire to an outworn state of previous servitude, even if this realm be storied with tender memories and is enshrined in the affections of all Israel as their cradle land. American Juda- ism has been consistently anti-Zionistic, although the pathos of Israel’s suffering in Europe has always moderated the inten- sity of opposition to the Zionistic propaganda. A hard-pressed and long-suffering people often accepted the refuge of Zion as their last resort. Whether rational or fanciful, Palestine spelled hope. It is no wonder that Zion’s national song is “The Hope.” He is without charity in his heart who does not sympathize with the zeal of the Zionists for a haven of refuge. When all the world has gone mad with rabid nationalism, it is natural that the Jew, the sorriest victim thereof, should seek some means of an escape to save himself alive. To this extent one can aid the Zionists, but not their policy. The upbreak of the Zionist scheme of national restoration, or a politically secured homeland in Palestine resulted in depriv- ing many of that following in this country of any Jewish interest. Instead of prospering Reform Judaism, expanding it and using its technique for the furtherance of social justice and the libera- tion from economic despotism of the host of their humanity, many ignored it. The Reform Movement was halted and held in a state of arrested development. Being unable to expand, it retrogressed. The reaction of American Judaism, manifested in mysticism, pietism and “the advent of the layman,” who has put business in religion and sells religion as if it were a com- 272 AMERICAN JUDAISM modity of merchandise, warn the devout and sincere that this spiritual heritage of the pioneers may go the way of all flesh unless it be vitalized in the life of those chosen from among all peoples to exemplify it in their lives by service unto man. “For I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee,” said Hosea’ to his generation, and this injunction has not staled nor its imperative fulfillment become flat through changing years. This summons still calls all Israel, no less than the Jews of these United States. The outline of American Judaism set forth in this blue print of description explained the content and achievements, the reac- tions it remains for this concluding chapter to prognosticate the possible forthcoming events on the next stage of its develop- ment. It was shown that retrogression aimed to revive the out- worn and inadequate. All progress depends on the inadequacy of the impulse and since the ceremonial was cast in the discard it has no appeal. Discontent craves new stimulation. These stimuli have often been emotional with excesses that jeopardize the healthy naturalness of the Jewish religion. Judaism does not regard religion as something imposed on man in fear or coercion, but the natural method of living in society. Hence protests have been registered against the unnatural emotionalism which regards religion as an exercise of a personal thrill or elation, and not a duty towards humanity, the blending of the self with the social whole. Judaism is a social religion. Judaism and humanity are synonymous. Particular pains were taken to force these truths home, since in light of its achievements American Judaism enjoyed unusual opportunity to illumine these present years with the brightness of this inspiration which, read in terms of the social sciences, is thoroughly modern, thoroughly social and free from the dross of selfish individualism and rabid nationalism. The Jew is in a position today to declare his message beyond the walls of the synagog and join forces with his fellowmen who feel that there is no wealth but life, and to enhance life the mission of each. All humanity should be arrayed in the struggle to dethrone privilege and give unto all their due. To assist in attaining that state of industrialism when production for use and not for profit will be the normal order. The Jews can well find place and cause as a substitute for his outworn, exhausted, rabbinism "Hosea 11:9, THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 273 and nationalism. It is in this spirit that a forecast is proffered. There is a natural curiosity imbedded in all of us to forecast or at least to anticipate the future. It is with an eye on the future that we predicate many statements of a political or eco- nomic nature. This applies to individuals as well as groups, and since at no time has Judaism shut itself off from the world, and more particularly at present, there is a natural inclination to speculate on the possible eventualities of Jewish thinking and activity in the next few years. Beyond the near horizon of the immediate future it is not given mortal man to penetrate, nor is it even desirable. In attempting then to project the possible tendencies of the near future, the endeavor has been to avoid the role of prophet to which no one is heir, whether a son of a prophet or not. Given the data of reality, the currents of Jewish thought in the next decades are liable to flow in those channels cut by Jewish tradition? and in accordance with the religious genius of the Jew as it has developed in his consciousness through the ages. Juda- ism in America being the outcome of processes released in other ages, as it has been shown, the next stage will in turn be an unfolding and development of what has come to consciousness here and now in the present generation of American Jews. It is therefore not a matter of wild speculation nor a fantastic conjecture to outline the contour (on the spiritual plane) of that Judaism most likely to be affected by the sequence of philosophy. Having steered clear of the Charybdis of nationalism and the Scylla of soporific pietism, the American Jew is now able to walk under the burden of his religious obligations valiantly, at least with more self-reliance than the halting gait effected in the past. He is likewise assured of the sure foundation of his Americanism. No self-respecting Jew, rich or poor, regards his Judaism in the light of a baneful misfortune ladelled out from the caldron of fate. Those American Jews whose religion enables them to do justly, to love their humanity and walk this western continent hand in hand with their fellow American citizens, do not consider Judaism a misfortune no more than a Protestant believes Protestantism a misfortune or the Catholic, Catholicism. Religion is being interpreted by all as a harmon- ization of the self with a non-self—a coordination of man’s will 2“The road of tradition which is ultimately that of Instinct and the road of Reason are the two roads by which we may travel towards moral ends of life.’—Havelock Ellis. 274 AMERICAN JUDAISM with God. European cynicism, bred of poor digestion, malicious nationalism, oppressive imperialism, and cut-throat trade com- petition was guilty of embittering the Jews against Judaism in many instances, and sired a coterie of atheists, nihilists, mate- rialists, whose deity was economic deteriorism. There is no occa- sion for these harsh doctrines in America, and the American Jew rejects corrupting cynicism as a European custom to be discarded along with kings, princelets and the trumpery of knighthood and the oppression that went along with the system of alleged superior beings. In the unfolding of Judaism there are ascertained methods which have been developed by centuries of practice. There are certain attitudes of life acceptable to Judaism whether these are evolved within the group or adopted from alien peoples. What- ever phase of thought is destined to predominate, the genius of Judaism will not cease to protest against attitudes and values, inhospitable if not antagonistic, to the fructifying impulses of Jewish thought and the Jewish outlook on the meaning of life and what message life imparts, which, as has been explained, are dominatingly social. This, in the light of Jewish tradition, is incumbent on the Jew today, and there has not been a let up in the opposition of the Jew against those versions of life (Paulinianism, for example, or Christian Science) which stultify humanity instead of stimulating the sons of man to rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things in the service of their humanity. The protest against a religion of somnambulance, such as Pietism, is weaponed with rebuke against the perverted chican- ery of foisting emotionalism on unguarded and undisciplined minds of men and women, because it does not lend the agency of service to subdue the earth and render it more habitable. A protest equally vigorous is directed against revived nation- alism which is the front and base of Zionism, and Zionism is a menace, as Henry Morgenthau® declared, to the Jews of America if not to all the world, since it is contrary to the destiny, the “daemon” of Judaism and a man’s “daemon” is his God, said Heraclitus. Judaism in America is once and for all time unalter- ably and irrevocably opposed to political Zionists, because the Jew, as embodiment of his religion, is summoned to identify and symbolize God and His attributes in his service towards *>“All in a Life Time,” by H. Morgenthau. a THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 275 humanity—his collective action for the commonwealth, and not to engage in a political excursion in material and physical domains. American Judaism is opposed to systems of thought which verge on superstitions. Christian Science is a conspicuous exam- ple of a movement whose ambition is selfish, parochial and reactionary; whose appeal is rooted in a feeling of indulgent comfort and smug security* and not in service to humanity. In protesting against these tendencies of our own era, a certain fidelity to Jewish tradition is displayed. For those scholars who have investigated the origin of the prayer book, substan- tiate the thesis that the composers of these liturgical outpour- ings of sentiment and confidence in man took care always to avow those convictions in the covenantal relation and kinship olf God with man. Judaism takes issue with the theology and dogma of church or mosque, and announces in no uncertain terms an unyielding adherence to a faith in human welfare and social action. That the world, for example, is under sin, a favorite confes- sion of Paulinian Christianity, is contrary to Jewish thinking and rejected in the prayer: “My God the soul which Thou gavest me came pure from Thee. Thou didst create it. Thou didst form it. Thou didst breathe it unto me; Thou preserved it within me and Thou wilt take it from me, but wilt restore it unto me hereafter. So long as the soul is within me, I will give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, my God and God of my fathers.”® The emphatic thought of this prayer, be it noted, is directed against Christian dogmatics that man is conceived in sin and must be “redeemed” thru the blood of the Christ, and so is the touching declaration that the soul of each mortal come pure from God’s hand. Every participant in public worship repeats this assertion. It is a characteristic protest against the contrary assumption of the church and fills the worshipper with the con- sciousness that he is a “partner with God in the daily work of creation.” Another familiar prayer of the ritual, “O Lord of all World, we cannot plead the merit of our deeds before thee,” also rings a protest against the assertion of Paulinian dogmatics that the Jews rely on their righteousness or self-sufficiency as we might 4“Judaism and Christian Science,” Yr. Bk. C.C.A.R., Vol. 22. ®* Union Prayer Book, p. 66. 276 AMERICAN JUDAISM say today. It is indignantly denied in this prayer: “Not on account of righteousness do we presume to make supplication unto thee. But whatever we are we are through Thee and Thy divine aid.’””® In view of the protest evoked by challenging the fundamental assumption of Judaism, it is not too much to say that almost every dissertation on the contents of Jewish philosophy and the- ology was inspired by injecting into Jewry influences alien to it. This is as true of Biblical days as it is in the case of the teachers of the Middle Age and provides us a method in our own period of establishing the drift of Jewish thought. It will take on the aspects of protest and at the same time present the thesis of the Jewish religion. To orientate Judaism anew in these days and from this survey is the particular engagement at hand. To obtain intimations of the direction that craft must be steered in its voyage on the sea of unborn time, it is necessary to charter the currents on the sea of modern thought. This is obvious, if we wish to weigh tendencies, we must measure movements. Those influences that have crossed the boundary lines of Juda- ism train in the camps of non-Jews. All our constructions and philosophies bear the imprint of non-Jews as the philosophers among modern Jews, such as Husick’ and Neumark,® explain. It is said that the analysis of the tenets of Reform Judaism, as David Einhorn dictated, shows unmistaken traces of the German philosopher of transcendental idealism, namely Frederick Shelling. It is well known that Samuel Hirsch employs the Helgelian method to correct Hegel and expose the fallacy of his thesis, that of an ultimate and final true religion which the state philosopher of Prussia had argued was Christianity. These illustrations show that Jewish philosophy is responsive to those various theories current at various periods, as the form of expression wherewith to announce the content of the Jewish revelation, that is, the Jewish Religion. We must inventory the prevailing philosophic and cultural movements of our age in order to obtain an insight into those systems of thought that influence Judaism in America. One system of thinking still active, despite benighted and absurd opposition in backwoods communi-. SOpus) Cite ‘ip. 67: ™The Philosophy of Judaism, by I. Husick. "The History of Jewish Philosophy, by D. Neumark. THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 277 ties and men, is the evolutionary method. By this system Jewish scholars have read the development of Judaism. A gradual unfold- ing of a religious instinct coming to consciousness in the Jew in terms of service to humanity which he is called upon to do as a condition of living. In the middle and nineteenth century, 1859, Darwin upset the established theology of the “Church” by the publication of his “Origin of Species.” It was the most revolutionary and illumi- nating theory ever framed to account for the creation of the world. A veritable biography of earth and those who tenanted it was written therein, and the pedigree of all creatures regis- tered by means of it. A few years after the appearance of this startling volume, every domain of human action and thought was ploughed over in new explorations for knowledge, and to be explained in light of the process or law governing their growths. Old truths were reset in light of the new bearings revealed by evolution, and since many of these “truths” dealt with dogmatic religion, a new statement of religion was forced. A new story of heaven and earth, of man and animals, of religion and moral- ity ; of civilization and society had to be learned. As late as February 1922, more than half a century after the appearance of the “Origin of Species,” legislation was sought in Kentucky against teaching evolution or any aspect of it within that commonwealth.® This measure indicated the great peril the “Church” feared that the new wine brimming in the cup of knowledge would make the old communion element unpalpable and this is the bone of contention between “Fundamentalists” and “Modernists.” In consequence of this distaste for the old dogmatic version of a spontaneous creation as outlined in Gen- esis, it was feared God’s altars would crumble and the pillars of morality would be weakened, by accepting a theory that all came to pass as an unfolding from within outward according to an inner urge or energy. American Judaism, or any phase of Judaism, has nothing to fear from an evolutionary interpretation of life and nature, since creation is called into being according to the will of God True it is that the theory of evolution does not comport with the story of creation recorded in the first chapters of Genesis. For this ° Other states have legislated against the teaching of evolution and admit only such teachings on creation as set forth in Genesis. 7 Singer Prayer Book, p. 3. 278 AMERICAN JUDAISM book is not, nor did it ever pretend to be an infallible manual of natural science, geology or anthropology, as the Fundamen- talists would manipulate it. The use made of these chapters in Christianity and that interpretation put on them by Judaism differ. To the Christian, Genesis provides the account of the “first man” and his first earthly abode. Yet this is a myth and is not countenanced by Judaism.14_ In the primitive fall of the “first Adam,” which is a ritual dogma of Christian theology ; American Jews have no concern. For the non-Jew this is all-essential. If the first Adam was not actual, as the science of biology and anthropology argue—there being a gradual evolution towards man, why the need of the second Adam? If the sin of the first Adam, who could not possibly have been in existence—there being no first man, did not make all of this progeny co-defend- ants for this act, then there is no need for a second Adam, in this case Christ, to justify by his death and vicarious atone- ment all the sons of man in the eyes of God, very much after the conception of the “Goel,” redeemer or ransomer of semitic- religion. Judaism teaches nothing of this sort, a personal redeemer, but of his own will man eschews the evil and accepts the good. If the sons of man come by any attribute naturally or by reason of their birth, it is not sin, but goodness. Original goodness expresses much more truthfully the belief of Judaism than does original sin. Above all, man is born free, is empowered himself to express his genius. According to the tenets of that faith, American Judaism announces, the ascent of man is more in alignment with the order of his creation than his moral descent. The natural order of man is a progressive one, towards a fuller and better life, and larger participation in the activities and engagements of life. As he engages in these movements, he outdraws his genius and excercises those talents and qualities which identify him. Thus employed, he grows into a clearer truth of his destiny and harmonizes his will with the creative will of God, which permeates the universe in the guise of energy. The account of the creation of man given in Scripture’? may be dismissed or revered as poetry. As poetry there is in this version a wonderful revelation. In it there has come to con- sciousness one fundamental conception in the religious expres- “ American Judaism accepts the Genesis and Biblical stories as Folk- lore, touched with ethical and religious injunctions. * Folk-Lore and the Old Testament, by J. G. Frazer, Chap. I. THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 279 sion of American Judaism: Man is made in the image of God! What is attributed to God in amplitude is incarnated in man. There is a notion abroad today that man creates God in his own image. Artist that he is, this is most likely true. Granted for argument’s sake that this is so, what kind of God has the genius of the Jew fashioned? The God as revealed in the image of their ideal-as set forth in Genesis is also Creator. Man then, insofar as he is made in the image of his Creator, responds to the cosmic urge and creates. In conjunction with his fellow- man they convert earth and make all that is thereon useful for man; that is, aligns himself to his inner impulse that pushes and prods him to express himself in whatever form he wills for the common purpose of subduing the earth and rendering it habit- able for humanity. In our day, the speculative interpretation of God, man and the world, is told in terms of this philosophy of energy. A conception of God as cosmic energy carries with it the view of the human being as a creature, endowed with the potentialities which is manifested in a service for humanity. Energy is thus effected through ethical actions. The cosmic urge in the conscience of the Jew is known as benevolence, love, justice, all inhibitions of the impulse the exercising of which renders ethical all deeds of man. American Judaism runs no risk in adhering to the method of evolution. For by following this method its future is forestalled. Surely no reaction is so pronounced today as the inclination of the Jewish nationalists to mistrust American Judaism because it is aligned with modern philosophy. The neo-chassidim there- fore dismiss American Judaism on the assumption that it is a product of the exile and hence un-Jewish. They will have none of it as a religion exacting a consecration to humanity, but are literally calling in stentorian tones for “the good old faith of our fathers,” for a “Revival of Judaism,” for conservatism! Now the good old faith of our fathers and all reactionary measures are ritualistic Judaism with the elaborate performance of rites and ceremonies of ancient lineage reintroduced in the home and synagog. One of the modern curiosities which the evolutionary theory sponsored was the comparative study of religion and folklore which American Judaism accepted and thus established the conviction that these ceremonials were exhausted. The preoccupation of these sciences was in a measure concern- ing the origin of rite and ritual. Many a ceremony believed 280 AMERICAN JUDAISM to have been of Hebrew device and institution given by Law divinely revealed, was disclosed to be of universal prevalence. These religious rites expressed certain primitive conceits whereby men at a certain stage of religious and ethnic develop- ment were enslaved in will and fancy and betokened the limited range of their knowledge and intelligence at that age. This had a decisive bearing on the ritual appointments of our Ameri- can synagogs. When the question of retaining or abrogating a rite was under debate the conclusion of love, anthropology— comparative religions were borne in mind.1* The precedent for abolishing** a custom of the synagog, such as the segregation of sexes, dietary laws, philacteries, ritual baths, or whatever other taboo it might have been, was sustained by referring to the deductions of the sciences concerned and furthermore by citing the practice*® of modification and amplification of rabbinical laws to adjust them to the exigencies of the day which had prevailed among the codifier of rabbinical laws and ordinances in other eras. Scholars after the order of Leopold Zunz and Abraham Geiger had shown that Jewish history was a process, a progressive onmarch from crude fetishes and bungling concepts to a more lucidly unfolding truth. The prayer book, as Zunz explained, was the register of this groping within the soul of Israel for ampler and fuller life. These men revered tradition, but were not enslaved by it. Tradition, they showed, was not super- imposed on Israel from without or from above, but in all cases was a slow growth from within the soul of the Jewish people and coming from stages below the present era on which decisions were made which were transmitted to succeeding generations. Hence the “chain of tradition” held together the peoples of many eras and decades. In all these periods certain eliminations of ritual were made and constant adaptation of originally non- Jewish rites in the synagog and how these were reshaped to symbolize new Jewish ideas and convictions. The Sabbath, for instance, is borrowed, possibly from Baby- lonia. Prophetic Judaism invested this day with a new content as explained in another chapter. The dietary regulations which * Pittsburgh Platform, C.C.A.R. of 1885. “Consult Frazer’s Folk-Lore and Old Testament on “Seething a Kid in the Milk of Its Mother” as an illustration of precedent. * None of these practices are strictly or originally Hebraic, but general, even universal in prehistoric society. OE ea eee eee. — oe THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 281 were in many cults primarily binding on the priesthood alone were later appropriated to the priest-people as distinctive marks of their separation from other peoples. Later generations observed these dietary laws not for sanctification but for them- selves, regardless of their origin and purpose. American Judaism is not likely to be disturbed by reactionary tendencies prevalent today and clamorous for a return to the “spirituality” of the old regime, since it is built up on scientific foundations. Nor will it yield to nationalism which is sympto- matic of another passion characteristic of the latter part of the nineteenth century. A truer appreciation of human worth loathes to appraise the value of men, or determine their natural loyalty, one of the aberrations of war hysteria, in accordance with radical qualities inherent in their blood. This race fana- ticism has proven to be the most perilous obsession to which men have succumbed in modern times.7* The Jew, in particular, has been victimized by it since the dictates of this dogma of pseudo-science rated the Semite, meaning thereby the Jew, below the superior classification assigned the Indo-Germanic races. The anti-Semite is equipped for his slander with the rusty weapons taken from the antiquated arsenal of this spurious anthropology which rates races from the angle of the dogma and not deed. Among the first of European nations to apply racial theories to politics was France. The role to be played by the Latin races was caste by this nation which applied racialism to politics. This application of race theories to national destinies was the forerunner of the various political programs crystalizing in that frenzied conflict for trade, which was later converted into the agonies suffered by all the world, and is accountable for the untimely death of ten million young men. Racialism has been responsible for the bastard brood of Pan-Latinism, Anglo-Sax- onism, Pan-Teutonism, Pan-Slavism, and that most venomous infection, Anti-Semitism, which is slaughtering its holocaust of Jews. The fatal error in this doctrine of racialism is its method of operating on unproven theories instead of scientific facts. Its very terminology is vague, such as the modern term “Nordic.” No two authorities agree on what constitutes a race. In our * Note the invention of spurious anthropology to defend alleged but unfounded “Nordic” races. 282 AMERICAN JUDAISM present civilization no pure race may be found.’? Take for instance that group from which the Jews sprung. Historical evidence abounds that the Hebrew race, so-called, has as liber- ally and fruitfully absorbed non-Hebrew elements and com- ponents as have other races.** To the seed of Abraham has been given qualities which are keenly responsive to the monotheistic construction of life and the world. This interpretation of the world in terms of a unified process, including a kinship of man based on mutual aid, is the distinctiveness of the Jew. But in the course of his age-long pilgrimage he has appropriated ideas taken from other peoples, such as art, philosophy, science, com- merce as understood today. For the Jewish people it is not an obsession that because of their monotheistic construction of the world, they are superior to all other people and consequently an exclusive or clannish sect. The roots of American Judaism are not imbedded in such quicksand but reared on the firm foundation of democracy and commonsense such as that exhi- bited by the Pharisees. Nationalism, however, is the ruling passion of the day. This doctrine pretends to ascribe noble birth to those whose claim of pride and presumption is attested by forged documents of their superior endowments such as the “Nordics.” It would have been a miracle had Jewry not been visited by an epidemic of nationalism, too. Zionism is an offspring of nationalism and nationalism is largely the precipitate of hatred and arrogance. Jewish nationalism, under the bitterness revoked by anti- Jewish nationalism everywhere the world over, utilized an old sentiment, the love of Zion slumbering in the soul of Israel, as a medium of propaganda. Orthodox Judaism prayed and waited for the national resurrection of Israel ever since the Roman legions razed the temple at Jerusalem. But in Rabbinical ortho- doxy the national restoration of a race was not an end, as modern Zionists demand, but a means. Exiled from Palestine, Orthodox Judaism was bereft of the sacrificial rites prescribed; to discharge these and not the self-determination of a race, was their ambition. Exile or “Golah” was a divinely ordained punishment for sin, they argued, and while Israel was in that state, Jewry was therefore under probation. It was even not “In H. G. Wells’ Outline of History, the interdependency of races is fully shown. 7% All western civilizations have absorbed the Old Testament. THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 283 their business to make an effort to end the sorrowful day of exile. God alone could decree the termination thereof in His own good time. According to “the way of a sign,’ by means of a miracle, this exile would come to an end. This method does not accord with political agitation of the past few decades. Organization of the restoration of the ancient patrimony was not the way of orthodox Judaism, as it is of the modern. The Jewish nationalists have no portion in American Judaism nor have they any patience with this religious philosophy of orthodoxy anent Zionism. They have spurned the notion that the genius of the Jewish people came to full flower in the unfold- ing of his religious convictions regarding service toward man- kind, that this is the distinction of Judaism from other cultures, namely, the emphasis and stress on the religio-ethical. The monotheistic outlook they discard in toto. Due to this construc- tion placed on Judaism by American rabbis, it is not a religion or a church in the sense in which Christianity is both a church and a religion. The Jew combines a religion and a group con- sciousness dedicated to a cause. The Jews in this country, in particular, are conscious of the fact that they are a people, a group historically differentiated from other groups and orien- tated by certain religio-ethical concepts of God, man and the world and the particular service demanded of the Jew towards his humanity.?® By insisting on this fact, they are a historical people bound by a common destiny to become purveyors of universal ideals of brotherhood and peace, justice and love, the Jewish people stand for more than is connoted by the term, Nation. There are nations that are not wholly one people. They are peoples who are nationally disunited, like Switzerland or Russia. We have become Jews by birth, not by confession of articles of belief, just as by birth the natives of this land become American. There is no conflict and clash between the group conscious- ness of the American Jews,”° and their national consciousness which is theirs by virtue of their birth on the free soil or by adoption of America as their political identity. American Juda- ® This view pervades Kohler’s “Theology of Judaism” and characterized the preaching of E. G, Hirsch, Max Landsberg ,and the Reform Rabbis as a whole. ” This group consciousness is motivated by tradition and reason. When manifested the religion of the Jews of America is found to enhance and inspire service in terms of citizenship. 284 AMERICAN JUDAISM ism will therefore not pact with a conception of existence which refuses to recognize that the group consciousness of the Jew is manifested in loyal service to America as an expression of his religion. He has ever held before him the thought that the Jews are destined to be a light unto the nations, which in this country requires him to give time, talent and treasure to the national good. In that light he still appeals for peace among his humanity, that men be drawn together instead of parted. It is not along the line of nationalism and the resurrection of Hebrew as a spoken language for a small nation in a corner of anterior Asia that the Jew has been summoned in this war- fare of humanity. The purpose of his survival is to witness to the doings of God who made man in His own image and a “partner” with Him in the process of creation, that by his life all men may learn to love one another. Persistent as Jewish reactionaries are in upholding their panacea of a national revival and resurrection, the development of Judaism in the United States is not along these travelled roads. The original contributions made by Judaism to the treasure-house of vital ideas is the prophetic emphasis on right- eousness, justice and mercy. This contribution is not yet com- plete, but is in a process of outflowing today, as of old. It is for us to ascertain wherein this revelation is manifest in our genera- tion. It will be found in the social conscience, collective action, and in the protest against the enslavement of our citizens. To the Torah which Israel is still writing, a new chapter on health, joy and success is to be added, as a regular portion of man’s inalienable right. The next stage of Judaism in America is certain to make room for the modern insistence on health as an essential condition of adequate living, and for such social and collective action as will make it possible for all to obtain healthy environment. As Rabbi Alfred G. Moses says in his book on “Jewish Science:” No adherent of Judaism need step out of the portals of his faith to find these truths, “namely that God is the Creator, the supreme mind, and that God is spirit, love, goodness.” “It is passing strange,” he adds, “that Jews should so flagrantly disregard their own gospel to enter cults that simply reword the original Jewish thought—the central truth of divine unity and creativeness is the intuition of Jewish genius.” There is a menacing drift to other cults of healing from the THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT | 285 synagog.”* Some seeking social distinction join these cults which have not thus far been guilty of persecuting the Jews.?? By affiliating with these new cults an alleged prestige of liberality is gained, so it is presumed. Admitting that the sincere secession- ists outnumber the social climbers, these new cults are under the ban of Judaism because they are anti-Jewish.2* None of them contain truths whose glow extends beyond the reach of Judaism’s vision. God’s creation of the world and the inherent goodness of the world are Jewish conceptions, as has been explained. When the goodness or harmony prevailing in the universe is stressed in modern cults as the essential tenet of the new faith, the devotee receives no blessing of joy of success denied him in his synagog wherein he has been taught the good- ness of the Lord whose mercy is everlasting. And good health becomes his portion who willingly follows the law of the Lord as American Judaism constructs it. Each one enters into a spiritual enrapportment with God when responsive to one’s own nature, one carries out one’s own personal destiny.** Nothing is so hygienic as the satisfaction of materializing ideas and ideals in obedience to one’s inner light. These truths are taught of Judaism. Who lays hold of them approaches Divine Unity, and shares the blessings of the All-Giving and Forgiving Father. Again potentialities of healing are inherent in Judaism. Rabbi Moses avers our synagog has neglected “soul culture” and the practical message of Judaism on every day life has not been taught. They, the rabbis, stress “that God is one but fail to bring out that he is the Power that makes for life and well- being.” * * * “When our Jewish pulpits sound in the clear tones the note that God is the Healer of the sick of His people, then “There is no doctrinal objection to the preachment of health in the synagog. Holiness includes the totality of man’s existence and to obtain holiness or wholesomeness represents the motive of the Jewish religion on the side of religion and doctrine. Whatever protest has been regis- tered by the Jewish pulpit against the various health cults and physical culture fads has been based on the sound policy of opposing a selfish practice. An exclusive doctrine of well-being does not take into account the equally vital necessity of well-doing, and to do well has been rated by the wise men of Israel as of more importance than to be merely well. There is little doubt that many Jews join Christian Science churches for social prestige. 3 The subject has been treated in full (Yr. Bk. C.C.A.R., Vol. 22, p. 300): “The attitude of Judaism toward Christian Science.” *“The inventor has a temperament attuned to the temperament of nature.’—Havelock Ellis. 286 AMERICAN JUDAISM the affirmations of this factor of healing in the Bible and in Post-Biblical literature will counteract the drift.” It may call forth a Jewish science using that word science in the technical sense devised by other cults. The thesis, that mind influences body, cannot be denied. The body is the “extension of the mind,” and its status is determined by various moods, emotions and sentiments. Our conduct is the direct reaction of our soul’s dictates, whether for good or evil, well-being or sickness, success or failure. Whatever state or disease we experience can be traced to our enrapportment with God or our lack of harmony with the universal laws of the world that restore and make sure our appointment on this earth. Our divine heritage is the soul. Coming pure from the source of creation, it unites us with all that lives and partakes of the universe. By means of our souls, we have dominion over the beast of the field and the fowl of the air. Our soul is a mani- festation of divine energy. Harmonizing our inner impulse or energy with the cosmic urge or universal energy, we outdraw the forces inherent in us. Moved by these universal currents, we partake of the world. We become God-like, being in all things and partaking of all that is. At one with the source of being we merge with the elemental Oneness and are identified with it. In this espousal there is neither severance nor dissen- sion, good nor evil, health nor sickness; but a serenity of spirit breathing the calmness of setting sun and harmonizing us with the universal will as shadows unite at the footsteps of night. Conceding to Judaism the psychic process, but not the tech- nique or healing and happiness which this religious revelation contains, the genius of the religion was never expressed in these terms alone. The Jew has always set a very high value of life because life was to witness to God and to sanctify Him. The Jew believes in safety first as a rule of conduct for all, and in guarding health. Life is holy since it is to him the impress of God’s handiwork along with sun and stars. Hence the lives of all people are as sacred and holy as that particular segment which includes himself. The Jew is concerned in realizing his own life and equally solicitous of his humanity of which he partakes by virtue of living on this earth with them, a co-worker with all men in making earth livable. To this end he does not dedicate himself exclusively to the selfish or the self-centered goal of obtaining by psychic processes THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 287 ef consciousness or subconsciousness a complete and perfect enrapportment with God, the All-Father. This attainment of a state of Atonement is the reaction or outcome of action done in accordance with the Divine Will and cannot be sought as an exercise of emotion detached from service.. The protest of the Jew against Christian Science rests on this basis, mainly, that Christian Science is essentially selfishness. This cult is unrelated to social service. It does not, for example, help anybody out of employment or any one who is overcome by adversity. It has thus far failed to serve any cause that embraces the welfare of a group nor would it ameliorate the harshness of that struggle for existence in which the vast host of humanity are engaged. It is not even religious or ethical in the sense Judaism is both. Its essence is not conduct, a discipline or ethics, but mere health- fulness, a state of physical comfort for the affluent, opulent and optimistic. The followers of this cult do not primarily seek to live the right ethical life, but to prolong their own lives as if a prolongation of one’s individual existence were the summum bonum of existence and not the contribution one makes to human welfare the test of life. As Dr. Stephen Wise said, Christian Science is a “religion of comfort for the well-to-do rather than like the religion of Israel, a constraint to do well. Its everlasting command is: Thou canst get well, rather than, Thou shalt do well. The great word of Judaism is justice or righteousness between man and man. The great word of Christianity is love. The great word of science is health.” Mere health, it is true, is not the goal of Judaism. Happiness is not the sacramental consecration of the Jew either. More than either of these pursuits the Jew seeks to be worthy. A life of worth and worthiness he would make of his existence, and he who so lives, enjoys riches and honor, so the Jew believes and acts. Furthermore, Judaism is a religion that accepts reality and does not screen the facts of existence. God created all things and beings and these are the products of divine intelli- gence, too. These realities of the objective world are known through forms of time and space and can not be dismissed as errors of mortal mind, because perchance these may be pleasant to see or work with. Man is surrounded by a world of actuality, to which he must adjust himself. This world makes demands of him and exacts a just measure from him in terms of service, 288 AMERICAN JUDAISM which is labor. In order that he may get, he must give. Life is a process of reciprocity, mutuality, as well as adjustment, and this striving entails struggle. No magic phrase or mystic chant will annul the evil that abounds in the world whether that evil be disease or man’s inhumanity towards his fellow-man, unless man, through labor, banishes it or subdues it. There is only one thing to be done with evil, granted there is a certain unanimity of opinion, a consensus as to what is evil, and that is to battle with it personally and collectively, now and ever. And as for pain, which in Christian Science the healer strives to absolve, there should be a prayer in their service reading somewhat like this: “Blessed art Thou, Creator of the Universe, who uses pain and pang as a signal for foreboding of evil.” Bodily pains are veritable warnings of danger, and {foretell dire consequences. Heeded, they spare. Neglected, they destroy. To eliminate pain is to court peril. To make one impervious or oblivious to pain is to fly in the face of nature, which is not hoodooed by wordy formulas and is not under the bondage of phrases, as most cults of this sort. Incessant struggle is our price for life, and the achievements of the race obligate us to do our part today that those who come after us may benefit. Judaism in America proposed to use those aids of stimulation radiating from the Jewish conception of health and healing, for the purpose of strengthening each one who inherited duties imposed by his Jewish birth to do his manly part as a valiant champion in waging the combat against injus- tice, error, ignorance. He must do his part in this world of realities whether or not they contribute to his comfort—usually they do not. To shirk them by apostacy is to be most despised in America, a quitter and rejected of all men as a coward. The unfolding years call for direct action on the part of men and women of good will, who would have peace established on earth. The preachment of ethics as a system of belief, even the monotheistic concept of the world, is not sufficient, because Judaism is more than a religion. A religion draws up a scheme of belief, a creed. Accepting these articles of faith, one becomes a follower of that religion for the time being. It is an act of one’s will or emotion, but does not embrace one’s descendants. The Jewish people are involved in a cause affecting all humanity. Their destiny is contained in their Jewish birth, which endowed them with a consciousness which they manifest and are obligated to stimulate. But this consciousness is ethical in its manifesta- THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 289 tion and to make it real, American Jews will participate more fully in the affairs of their fellow-citizens. Ethics unrelated to politics and economics is as meaningless as the wailing before the fragment of the old Temple Wall. Religion concerns busi- ness, the social group as well as the individual. The conflict today rages about this expansion. The report of the committee on Social Justice adopted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis at a recent session, voices with manly sincerity the ardent conviction of those teachers of American Judaism.”® These American rabbis have inherited the ethico-historical destiny of Israel first announced by their prophetic ancestors. Israel is destined to be servant of Yahweh. This is his career. He is to become a light to the nations in their human relationships, particularly on the plane of industry. It is thoroughly in keeping with the religious ambition of Judaism to illustrate in industrial and business con- duct those ethical concepts of considerateness which have been identified with Israel since that day the law went forth out of Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem. Poets and sages of Israel interpreted God in the actions of man. The love of God is a synonym for the love of man. Insofar as man loved his fellow-men and behaved according to this reverence for his humanity, did he actually trust and believe in God. Man cannot serve God without serving man. American Judaism would be without vital significance were its teaching and preachment dissociated with concrete social, industrial and economic situations. In the near future the exploi- tations, maladjustments, the terrible inequalities of distribution arising from the economic status, must be dealt with directly under the sanction of Judaism as the fulfillment of religious duties as sacred as the performance of those rites which char- acterized Jewish worship. In the adjustment of economic rela- tions there must be a more vigorous participation of American Judaism directly in human relationship. The enslavement of man under whatever form, political or economic, calls for release. There can be no real democracy without economic liberation. Judaism with a flaming sword of justice battles for release from debasement and defilement of the human being through eco- nomic tyranny and the entrenchment of privilege and vested interests, and no one denies that our present industrial order ® Yr. Bk. C.C.A.R., Vol. 33, p. 241. 290 AMERICAN JUDAISM permits slavery and every sort of debasement. The drift in economic thinking by modern economists, such as Veblin, exposes these tyrannies in our economic system. Our present industrial order is based on personal profit. It is esentially a selfish scheme which denies to humanity certain inalienable conditions. It does not concede the prerogative of health, even as an essentiality of human needs. The sanctity of life has to be safeguarded by long and persistent legisla- tive measures, against which even the hand of the Law is arrayed; humanitarian measures, such as Child Labor and a Minimum Wage law. A system of economics founded on individual com- petition has served the purpose of liberating man from a pre- vious thraldom, it is admitted. But now that earth is partially subdued, organization in production and distribution must dis- place chaotic competition for profit only. Collective organized industry must be installed, and production for use fostered to enable each of earth’s children to enjoy a decent respect among men as a fellow worker with others, and not as a chattel to be exploited. Labor has the right to bargain collectively in the various labor organizations, through representatives of their own choosing, on the assumption that Labor is not a commodity but a human life. In return for the recognition, labor will be in the disposition to enter into managerial responsibility, a par- ticipant, not a mechanism, in production. A closer affiliation of employer and employee in both production and distribution is necessary, and it is the bounden duty of American Judaism to officially announce this policy and to bring it to pass by direct effort and action.?¢ * Summary of Declarations on Social Justice by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1920: (1) The Conference recognizes the right of Labor to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of its own choosing, in order to secure its rights at the hands of employers. It calls upon Labor as well as Capital to exhaust all the resources of peaceable settlement before resorting to the strike or lockout. It maintains that the welfare of the public should take precedence over the interests of any class or classes. (2) The Conference condemns any and all violations of Law and all defiance of constituted authority, and declares its faith in the adequacy of the peaceful Constitutional processes by which changes may be brought about. At the same time, the Conference asserts the right of all citizens to strive for changes in the Law and to protest against abuses of power and of Constitutional rights. It declares its abhorrence of all interfer- ences, whether by private citizens or by officials, with the exercise of free- dom of speech, oral or written, and of freedom of assemblage, both of which are guaranteed by the Constitution. And it further condemns the THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 291 It is for American Judaism to denounce the use of violence in the settlement of industrial disputes and strikes, just as the Quakers have taken their stand against all forms and practices of warfare. So might American Jews, who were the world’s first pacifists. It is within the sphere of Jewish duties to attempt to establish an eight-hour day. To engage with those laboring to abolish child labor, and to assist in the enactment of legislation that will provide the worker with adequate compen- sation in cases of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, old age and unemployment, and a minimum wage for men and women. The foregoing are a few of the industrial situations in our day. It is needless that more be detailed. In maintaining an attitude of humane consideration towards the worker exploited by a brutal, a selfish industrialism, and heartlessness, there is being crystallized the ethics of American Judaism, which is use of private police under the guise of and in the capacity of public administrators of the Law as tyrannical and conducive to injustice and violence. (3) The Conference holds that the following industrial norms are ax- iomatic: the eight-hour day as the maximum for all industrial workers; a compulsory one-day-of-rest in seven; regulation of industrial conditions to secure for all workers a safe and sanitary working environment; abo- lition of child-labor; adequate workingmen’s compensation for industrial accidents and occupational diseases and provision for the contingencies of unemployment and old age. (4) The Conference views with dismay the attempt on the part of some employers in the period of post-war deflation to break down industrial standards which are essential to the well-being of the employe. It rec- ognizes that the changed economic conditions require numerous readjust- ments of wages without any diminution of production. But there are standards in the industrial world, which after years of effort and struggle, have been established as necessary for human welfare. The Conference condemns any decrease of wages to a point lower than is consistent with a proper standard of living for the worker and his family, and any in- crease in the length of the working day beyond that which has been accepted as the maximum. The Conference urges all leaders of industry to maintain these just and humane standards both as a matter of justice and as a condition of industrial peace. (5) The Conference advocates that the National, State and Municipal authorities create free employment bureaus, the operation of which shall be coordinated and standardized in a thorough-going manner; and it fur- ther advocates that a co-operative study of Unemployment Insurance be undertaken by Labor, Industry and Government with a view of evolving a plan of Insurance which will protect Labor in periods of enforced idle- ness. (6) The Conference declares its abhorrence of lynching and denounces all who participate in and abet this brutal practice. It advocates legisla- tion which shall make lynching a Federal offense. 292 AMERICAN JUDAISM asserting the dictates of humanity, in social and industrial rela- tions. Belief in God is a mockery, unless translated into conse- quent regard of each individual for his brother; into responsi- bility towards his fellow human beings. City, state, nation, are only collections of units of human beings, who must be regarded as mortals, not abstractions. The foundations of the republic are endangered unless there is a more pervasive recognition of the individual’s humanity, which is the essence of democracy. To avert this impending doom is the purpose the Jew serves. He teaches love of man, not the enslavement of man. According to a will transcending his own, the Jew has been ordained to establish this love of man for his neighbor, that together they may labor to render earth habitable and pleasant. To this end must he persist until man unlearns his inhumanity towards his fellow-men. The martyr’s role is his, but heroically must he bear his assignment, that from his life men take increased devo- tion towards their fellow-beings. And this is a world of workers. Work is a holy business. It is not intended to be the drudgery ofa slave. No drudgery is blessed. Work is not intended to be a Slave’s assignment, but a joy, and it can be a common joy when together men labor for a common good or purpose. More joy is to abound in the world for those who go to their work in the morning and toil until the end of the day. To make this possible is the task of Judaism in America for the coming years. The technique of this social functioning has not been yet developed in full, but social conscience, as it is called, registers the desire and from this anxiety there will evolve the various means and methods of fulfillment. Prudential reasons can no longer restrain the rabbis from discharging the intent of the social justice prayer of their Day of Atonement service. The social creed of the churches, as Dr. Cronbach proves in his elaborate study of that theme that therein “Angelican agrees with Catholic, Catholic with Quaker, Quaker with Baptist, and Baptist with Jew. The brotherhood of man takes shape amid the work that the brotherhood of man inspires.”?7 Naturally. Nothing is so important to man as how to live, and there is a growing conviction that under the present industrial system no one lives a normal, complete and self-realizing existence. There is likewise a conviction that can not be stayed nor bludg- eoned into forgetfulness, that the present order of society fol- * Social Creed of the Churches, Year Book, Vol. 33. THE NEXT STAGE IN DEVELOPMENT 293 lows the process of decay and decline that attends every little system. It, too, was an outgrowth and a sequence of a former industrial state, and it, too, tends to disappear or become absorbed in another order or process. There is no denial that the social order of the future will be less individualistic. What- ever label attached to it in the order of society which is to succeed the present, service not self will be the sacramental word, which is merely recasting the love of man for man. To incarnate these ideas in action requires an organization. Gradually these ideas, born of the social conscience of the age, are being transmuted into action. There is a perceptible adapta- tion, now reluctantly assumed, of these ideas based on the doctrines preached by religion, particularly those influenced by Judaism. One dare not become optimistic, since there are so many frightful and flagrant frustrations of religion. Still stands the ancient sacrifice of service and love, as the immutable obli- gation of man and these were the words felt to be quick with life in our own day that prompted the Conference of American Rabbis, a representative body of our own era, to set forth their social creed. The future of Judaism will be fashioned after this pronouncement. It is not a new, nor is it a radical departure from the path Israel has ever trodden. It is the way of the Torah. Judaism would have no basis whereon to stand, were the teachers of Israel deprived of a platform dealing concretely with the industrial, social and economic problems of our own day, and the situations arising therefrom. For these are the vital contests and controversies of our age. Judaism was the first among religions of the western world to advocate the principles of justice. To do justly is rated by the rabbis as the virtue most akin to godliness. No truth has the preachment of Judaism forced home with more telling effect than the conviction that insofar as man serves and labors with his humanity for their common good, he has labored for God and executed His will. These are the truths Judaism has ever taught. The Torah begins and ends with deeds of loving kindness: God clothed the naked in Eden and buried the body of Moses. In their pictorial way, the sages of the Talmud stated the front and base of the Jewish religion. Their insistence of deeds of loving kindness as the essential motive of the Jewish religion vitalized it. In the generation now coming to consciousness, the application of this construction will be the next step of religious activity. As their 294 AMERICAN JUDAISM fathers freed Judaism from rabbinism, the children of this age will free it from mere doctrinal expression or ecclesiasticalism and set it to enhallow their own lives and that of their humanity, by freeing them and all the sons of man from the slavery of despotism in the economic realm, or in any other realm that holds sovereignty over the sons of man.