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 The diverse eClements of 
 religion 
 
 
 
 
 
THE DIVERSE ELEMENTS 
 OF RELIGION 
 
BY THE SAME'AUTHOR 
 
 ASPECTS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 THE JEWISH LIFE 
 
 THE SYNAGOGUE IN MODERN LIFE 
 THE VARIED BEAUTY OF THE PSALMS 
 THE EFFECTS OF RELIGION 
 
 THE FAITH OF ISRAEL 
 
 THE ALLIED COUNTRIES AND THE JEWS 
 THE WAR AND THE BIBLE 
 
 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS 
 
 THE ADEQUACY OF JUDAISM 
 
 THE JEW AND THE WORLD 
 
 
 
\ GF PRIN 
 
 
 
 
 
 OCT 20 1924 
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 THE 
 DtverseE ELEMENTS 
 of 
 RELIGION 
 
 by 
 H. G. Enretow 
 
 THE BLOCH PUBLISHING CO. 
 NEW YORK 
 1924 
 

 
 
 
 
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TO MY FRIENDS 
 
 _ Mr and Mrs NATHAN J. MILLER 
 

 
XII 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Mystic Element in Religion.... 
 The Communal Element in Religion. 
 The Educational Element in Religion 
 The Ceremonial Element in Religion 
 The Ethical Element in Religion... 
 The Sacrificial Element in Religion. 
 The Vicarious Element in Releion! z 
 The Democratic Element in Religion 
 The Progressive Element in Religion 
 The Theological Element in Religion 
 
 The Poetic Element in Religion..... 
 
 11 
 
 19 
 
 The Universal Element in Religion. . 107 
 
“And the Lord will guide thee contin- 
 ually, and satisfy thy soul in drought. 
 And thou shalt be like a watered gar- 
 den, and like a spring of water, whose 
 waters fail not. And thou shalt be 
 called The repairer of the breach, the 
 restorer of paths to dwell in!” 
 
 —TIsarau 58, 11-12. 
 

 
I 
 
 THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “When Moses went in before the Lord 
 that He might speak with him, he took the 
 veil off.”—Exodus 34, 34. 
 
 -A.S we read the story of Moses at 
 Mount Sinai, we must realize one 
 thing often overlooked. I refer to 
 
 the mystic quality of Moses. As a rule, 
 
 we think of Moses in every other capa- 
 city: he is the leader, the emancipator, 
 
 the lawgiver. But, withal, Moses was a 
 
 mystic, which, no doubt, was the chief 
 
 part of his equipment and the secret of 
 his activity. Perhaps this is what is 
 meant by the veil which, the Bible re- 
 lates, he put on his face after speaking 
 to the people, and which he removed 
 when he conversed with God. For, is not 
 this the essence of all mysticism: an 
 alternation, a merging, of disclosure and 
 concealment, of the revealed and the 
 hidden, of the rational and the more 
 than rational? 
 
 11 
 
There is good reason at present for 
 considering the place of mysticism in 
 Religion, and especially in the Jewish 
 religion. First, because we hear so much 
 about mysticism nowadays. Everybody 
 talks about mysticism in religion, in art, 
 in literature. But do people really know 
 what they mean by the term? Often 
 they mean by it the very opposite of 
 what all true mystics have sought and 
 striven for. Whatever is obscure, occult, 
 fantastic, some regard as mystical. They 
 mistake mummery for mysticism. On 
 the other hand, there are those who, 
 enamored of the word, complain that 
 Judaism is lacking in the mystic ele- 
 ment. It is nothing but a prosaic, legal- 
 istic, rationalist creed, as far as they 
 ean see; whereas, of course, quite the 
 contrary is true. 
 
 The mystic element of Religion, I be- 
 lieve, consists of three parts, which we 
 may call briefly the mystic starting 
 point, method, and way. 
 
 First, all mystical religion begins with 
 a personal experience. This is where 
 
 12 
 
every true mystic starts, whether in art, 
 or literature, or religion. It is not what 
 he has studied, or been told, or believed 
 that to him is of prime import; but what 
 he has experienced personally, no matter 
 how this experience may have come. St. 
 Francis of Sales, for example, the Catho- 
 lic saint, the third centenary of whose 
 death occurred recently, had such an 
 experience, when during a period of 
 spiritual anguish he entered a certain 
 church and felt a sudden illumination 
 dissolving his agonizing doubts. On the 
 other hand, Rabbi Isaac Lurya, the cele- 
 brated Jewish mystic who about the 
 same time lived and taught in Palestine, 
 received his own mystic enlightenment 
 by spending some twenty years in soli- 
 tary meditation on the banks of the 
 Nile. Such an experience Moses had in 
 the desert, when he saw the Burning 
 Bush—and all his life was transformed, 
 just as Isaiah had it when suddenly he 
 beheld the Temple flooded with the 
 Divine glory and heard the Divine Voice 
 calling. Something similar has occurred 
 in the case of every person to whom the 
 word mystic may justly be applied. He 
 13 
 
has had a personal experience, a per- 
 sonal realization, of the truth, the 
 beauty, and the force of Religion. 
 
 And by what method does this hap- 
 pen? The mystic’s answer is, By Con- 
 templation. Moses, we are told, spent 
 forty days and forty nights on Mt. Sinai, 
 as he sought Divine truth. Why did it 
 take forty days, ask the Rabbis, to pre- 
 pare the Tables of the Law, while, ac- 
 cording to the Bible story, it took only 
 six days to create the world? To show, 
 say the Rabbis, how much more difficult 
 it is to create something spiritual than 
 to create something material. Only by 
 contemplation, all mystics are agreed, 
 spiritual truth can be attained—by long 
 and devout concentration of one’s entire 
 being upon the theme of one’s search. 
 Where such contemplation exists, more 
 is attained than by the aid of mere tra- 
 dition or reason. The reward of contem- 
 plation is illumination, which comes 
 through fusion with the object of one’s 
 desire, by complete union of one’s own 
 personality with the object of one’s love 
 and pursuit. 
 
 14 
 
And what follows is the mystic way. 
 Some regard the mystic as a recluse, 
 caring nothing for the world. This is 
 far from true. Genuine mystics have 
 cared greatly for the world and served 
 it ardently. Their mystical experience 
 is the very cause compelling them to 
 serve the world, as we read in regard to 
 Moses that after his communion with 
 God, he came down to the people and 
 told them what he had been commanded 
 to say. Wayetsawem eth kol asher dib- 
 ber Adonay itto. No doubt, he did not 
 serve the people as they may have 
 wanted; he did not join in their dance 
 around the golden calf, as they might 
 have liked: he served them rather as he 
 had been bidden in his sacred moments 
 on the Mount—the most benign and en- 
 during way of serving them. But, as he 
 came down from the Mount, his face 
 shone, though he knew it not. What he 
 brought down from the Mount was light, 
 ardor, and joy—ecstasy—for the work 
 he was to do, in spite of all hardships 
 and disillusionments—in spite of the veil 
 between himself and the people. 
 
 15 
 
And the same has been true of all 
 mystics. Their personal experience of 
 God, their seasons of contemplation— 
 this has endowed them not only with the 
 desire to exert themselves for the com- 
 mon good, but also with ‘light and 
 strength and joy on their way, in their 
 work. The genuineness of ecstasy, af- 
 firms St. Teresa, shows itself in its fruit- 
 ful effects, and, above all, in acts of 
 humility. Similarly, Jewish saints often 
 have maintained that the chief desire of 
 the devout should be not to return their 
 soul to its supernal source, but rather to 
 draw the celestial soul into the affairs 
 of this world. This, they maintain, is 
 why our world is so imperfect. God 
 might have made the world perfect. But 
 out of love for man, He made it other- 
 wise. He wanted to give man the oppor- 
 tunity of perfecting it, of becoming His 
 own fellow-worker. Only by man’s work 
 can the world grow perfect. 
 
 If this be the essence of the mystical 
 element of Religion, then surely they are 
 mistaken who deny its existence in Juda- 
 ism. Of course, Judaism lays stress on 
 
 16 
 
law and tradition, but both of them be- 
 gin and end in mystical experience. There 
 is no such division in Judaism between 
 law and mysticism, as is found elsewhere 
 (though some exponents of the subject, 
 like Dr. Horodetzky, misled by alien 
 example, would make it so appear). And 
 this has been to the advantage of Juda- 
 ism, protecting it against many an ex- 
 cess and aberration. “The secret things 
 belong unto the Lord our God; but the 
 things that are revealed belong unto us 
 and to our children forever, that we may 
 do all the words of this law.” In the 
 true sense, the Patriarchs, the Prophets, 
 and most of the rabbis were mystical. 
 Religion was to them a personal reality, 
 contemplation was part of their practice, 
 and they carried into their conduct the 
 glow, the radiance of their faith. Moses 
 summed it up in his classic command: 
 “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
 all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with 
 all thy might.” With all thy heart— 
 emotionally, by personal experience; with 
 all thy soul—by focusing your entire 
 spiritual and mental force; and with all 
 17 
 
thy might—in your daily contact with 
 the tasks of life. 
 
 We need more of the mystical element 
 in our own religious life. Often we 
 criticize our religion and its interpreters, 
 because we do not get from them what 
 we think we need and are entitled to. 
 We have many grievances against God. 
 But even Moses would have had no revel- 
 ation, if he had not sought it. Many 
 want the boon for which Matthew Ar- 
 nold prays: 
 
 “Calm soul of things, be it mine 
 
 To feel, amid the city’s jar, 
 
 That there abides a peace of thine 
 Man did not make, and cannot mar!’ 
 
 Let us use more of the mystic’s method! 
 Let us have more of the habit of con- 
 templation! Thus, we shall gain the 
 mystic experience—a personal discovery 
 of the Divine truth and glory—and the 
 mystic reward, which is joy and light 
 and strength for our work in the world. 
 “Light is sown for the righteous, and 
 joy for those of upright heart.” 
 18 
 
II 
 
 THE COMMUNAL ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “And Moses assembled all the congrega- 
 tion of the children of Israel.” 
 —Huwuodus 35, 1. 
 
 HE opening words of the thirty- 
 
 fifth chapter of the book of Exodus 
 
 are very significant. They read 
 simply: “And Moses assembled all the 
 congregation of the children of Israel.” 
 Long ago the attention of the rabbinic 
 exponents of the Bible was arrested by 
 the emphasis of these words. ‘Moses 
 assembled all the congregation of the 
 children of Israel.” Wherein lies their 
 importance? In this: they remind us of 
 the communal side of the religion and 
 activity of Moses, of their social, com- 
 munal aspect—a reminder particularly 
 needful at the present time. 
 
 People sometimes find it difficult to fix 
 the place of Moses in the history of 
 Israel. Some regard him as the founder 
 of Judaism. But he was not its founder. 
 The Jewish religion existed long before 
 
 19 
 
him. It goes back to the Patriarchs. 
 When he appeared before the Jews in 
 Kgypt, the Bible tells us, he addressed 
 them in the name of the God of their 
 fathers. If, however, he did not found 
 the Jewish religion, what did he do? He 
 made of Judaism a communal religion. 
 That was his merit. Before him Judaism 
 was the religion of individuals, of fami- 
 lies. He made it the religion of a com- 
 munity, of a people, and thus he not 
 only saved it from dissolution, but ren- 
 dered it an immeasurably potent factor 
 in the history of mankind. All the teach- 
 ings and institutions of Moses were im- 
 pregnated with a communal purpose. The 
 Decalogue was a brief summary, a 
 solemn summary, of this social object of 
 Moses’s religious teaching. The tent of 
 meeting was its symbol. A French writer 
 has said truly: “It is not so much that 
 Moses created a religion for a people; he 
 created a people for Religion.” He 
 breathed the social spirit into’ the faith 
 and into the soul of Israel. 
 
 If we study history, we learn that it 
 is this communal element that has 
 
 20 
 
formed the glory of the Jewish religion, 
 on the one hand, and, on the other, it 
 has saved Israel from extinction. 
 
 There has been much debating in the 
 world as to what makes for the excel- 
 lence of a religion—concern for the in- 
 dividual soul or solicitude for the wel- 
 fare of society. Quite a few have af- 
 -firmed that the best religion is the one 
 pre-occupied with the needs and the des- 
 tiny—the salvation, as some call it—of 
 the individual. Others have held the op- 
 posite view, regarding as most desirable 
 the kind of religion that stresses the col- 
 lective interests of society. 
 
 The distinction of Judaism, however, 
 has consisted in the teaching that there 
 is no separation between the individual 
 and the community; as far as Religion 
 is concerned. The moral and spiritual 
 destiny of the individual is bound up 
 with that of the community, and the 
 reverse. There can be no perfection 
 of character and happiness for the in- 
 dividual without reference to the life of 
 the community, nor can the community 
 
 21 
 
attain perfection without considering 
 the fate of the individual. This belief 
 has formed part of the doctrine of all 
 Jewish masters, and especially the 
 Prophets. If your religion is genuine, 
 they taught, and if it is to do any good, 
 then it must find expression in communal 
 action, in social relations, in such a con- 
 duct of the business of life as would ac- © 
 cord with the law of right, of justice and 
 mercy. 
 
 This dominant fact of the Jewish 
 teaching no one can ignore, no matter 
 what else one might fail to see in Juda- 
 ism. It is the communal spirit of the Jew- 
 ish religion. And, on the other hand, this 
 spirit has helped the Jew to survive. It 
 developed a sense of solidarity, of fel- 
 lowship, of communal responsibility, 
 among the Jewish people, which has 
 triumphed over all the devices and cruel- 
 ties of those who sought to destroy it. 
 
 It is such a communal character that 
 Religion needs today, if it is to help hu- 
 manity at large. We hear a great deal 
 of discussion as to what the world must 
 
 22 
 
do to be saved. All kinds of remedies 
 are being proposed. Religion occupies a 
 prominent place in these debates. But 
 some people demand why it is that Re- 
 ligion has not done more in the past, why 
 it did not prevent the present condition 
 of misery in which the world finds itself. 
 May we not answer that it is because 
 men do not seem to have realized the 
 social implications of true religion? In- 
 dividual salvation, rather than human 
 welfare, has formed the chief concern of 
 Religion for the majority. 
 
 Some ten years ago, Professor Durk- 
 heim, of the Sorbonne, published an im- 
 portant work, in which he asserted that 
 Religion sprang originally from the col- 
 lective needs and aims of human groups, 
 and he tried to prove his thesis by many 
 illustrations from the life of primitive 
 peoples. If this be so, then we must con- 
 clude that among civilized peoples Re- 
 ligion has deteriorated rather than pro- 
 gressed, seeing that for many a day in 
 discussing Religion they have been in- 
 sisting on the wants and the happiness 
 of the individual rather than that of the 
 
 23 
 
community. It is only now that men are 
 beginning to demand a socialized reli- 
 gion, as was done the other day by the 
 editor of one of our leading magazines. 
 Speaking of the numerous predictions 
 one hears nowadays concerning a return 
 of the Dark Ages, he suggested that 
 mankind adopt a course which instead of 
 bringing back the Dark Ages would 
 bring about a new Renaissance, and 
 among the things needed he named the 
 socializing of Religion, the socializing 
 of both its teachings and institutions. 
 
 This is what the Jewish Prophets de- 
 manded many centuries ago. According 
 as such a religion becomes a reality, the 
 world will be redeemed from its troubles. 
 
 Isn’t this the more reason for the Jew 
 to remain loyal to his own religion? 
 There are those who say, Why keep up 
 this ancient religion—it is nothing but 
 a relic of the past—and besides, religion 
 is a private affair! 
 
 The answer is, that Judaism is indeed 
 ancient, but by no means a relic. Its 
 
 24 
 
teachings are only now beginning to get 
 recognition. Nor is religion so entirely a 
 private affair as some fancy. It may be 
 private in origin, but its effect is com- 
 munal, social, as wide as the world. It 
 is like a great river which may have 
 its beginning in some hidden recess 
 of a mountain, but the course of which 
 is toward the vast open sea. “Faith,” 
 says Mr. Augustine Birrell, “is our 
 largest manufactory of good works and 
 whenever her furnaces are blown out, 
 morality suffers.” A good deal of the 
 decay of morals, which we hear lamented 
 so often, is due to the diminution of 
 faith in the hearts of modern men and 
 women. 
 
 Loyalty to Judaism means loyalty to 
 the people which has carried the burden 
 of this religion throughout the ages and 
 to the ends of the world. And such 
 loyalty we manifest by taking part in the 
 work and the worship of the community. 
 
 This is what Moses tried to teach when 
 he called together all the people of Israel. 
 
 25 
 
He taught them to stand together, to 
 pray together, to study together, to work 
 together for the common good. Let us, 
 also, try to do these things: thus, we 
 shall enrich our own lives and enhance 
 the happiness of the world! 
 
 26 
 
Il 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “And thou shalt teach them diligently 
 unto thy children.’—Deuter. 6, 7. 
 
 activity of Moses, we are impressed 
 
 by the effort he made to educate 
 his people. Without ceasing, he tried to 
 teach them the laws of life and happi- 
 ness. “I have set before thee life and 
 death, the blessing and the curse: there- 
 fore, choose life!” As a matter of fact, 
 the chief title by which Moses is known 
 among Jews is that of teacher, Moshe 
 Rabbenu, “Moses our Teacher.” And this 
 might well remind us of the educational 
 element in Religion, as Judaism has 
 viewed it. 
 
 A S we read the biblical account of the 
 
 Such a reminder we need today, be- 
 cause this particular aspect of Religion 
 is often misunderstood. Quite a few are 
 convinced that Religion has been inimical 
 to education, that its object has been to 
 
 27 
 
keep people in a state of ignorance in 
 order to maintain its own hold upon 
 them. Because such a course has been 
 followed by some individuals or groups, 
 they think it has been the policy of Reli- 
 gion as such. 
 
 On the other hand, there are people 
 who do not recognize the fact that the 
 religious life itself involves the cultiva- 
 tion of the mind, the application of in- 
 telligence to the mastery of religious 
 truth and the exercise of the practices 
 of Religion. All too often Religion is 
 taken to mean the acceptance of some 
 miscellaneous traditions and the mechan- 
 ical performance of some fixed tasks, 
 rather than a _ process of spiritual 
 enlightenment. 
 
 It is one of the glories of Judaism that 
 it has not countenanced such a narrow, 
 one-sided interpretation of Religion. 
 From earliest times it has stood for 
 education in the broadest and deepest 
 sense. 
 
 28 
 
When I say deepest sense, what do I 
 mean? I mean that Judaism has de- 
 manded of its devotees an earnest effort 
 to understand the teachings and com- 
 mands of Religion, and not to be content 
 with a mere superficial acquiescence, 
 with a mere repetition of phrases and 
 formulae. 
 
 _ Take, for instance, the classic cry: 
 “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the 
 Lord is one!” It is commonly considered, 
 and rightly so, as the keynote of Juda- 
 ism. It is the supreme summation of 
 the Jewish doctrine and purpose. It has 
 been hallowed by the tradition of thou- 
 sands of years. Millions of Jewish babes 
 have lisped these sacred syllables as their 
 first confession of faith; and many 
 martyrs throughout the ages have pro- 
 claimed them as their last message to 
 the world. Yet, who would say that 
 Judaism had regarded the mere recital 
 of the Shema as a sufficient indication of 
 the religious life? Again and again we 
 are told by the Rabbis—of all schools— 
 that we must try to master the meaning, 
 
 29 
 
the implications, the Intentions of the 
 Shema, that we must recite it with 
 Kawwana, if our utterance is to have any 
 worth. | 
 
 Knowledge has been one of the re- 
 quirements of Judaism. “Where,” asks 
 the talmudic rabbi, “have we a short 
 passage on which depend all the chief 
 concerns of Religion? In the verse: ‘In 
 all thy ways know thou Him, and He will 
 make straight thy paths !—(Prov. 3, 6).” 
 
 Of course, it is better to do what 
 Religion teaches without understanding 
 it fully than not to do it at all. But in 
 order to attain the richest religious life, 
 Judaism has insisted, one must seek to 
 cultivate one’s mind, one’s intellectual 
 faculty, one’s reason. One must use, 
 develop, one’s reason in order to go down 
 to the depths of religious truth. “Every- 
 body should know,” we are told by a 
 modern author, “that Reason is a sacred 
 faculty. Indeed, it is Heaven-appointed.” 
 This sounds like an echo of the medieval 
 Jewish rabbi who called Reason the 
 angel between God and man. 
 
 30 
 
And, similarly, Judaism has encour- 
 aged education in the broadest sense, by 
 which I mean that it has taught its 
 adherents to cultivate every branch of 
 knowledge as a means to the perfection 
 of the religious life. Hokhmoth ba-hutz 
 tarona barehoboth titten qolah. “Wisdom 
 erieth aloud in the street: in the broad 
 spaces she uttereth her voice’—we read 
 in Proverbs. All forms of wisdom— 
 hokhmoth—blend harmoniously in the 
 street of Religion; it gives forth its voice 
 on all the roads of life. Whatever serves 
 to widen the domain of human knowl- 
 edge and enlightenment, helps to estab- 
 lish and effectuate the true religious life. 
 
 That this has been the traditional 
 Jewish attitude to education, is testified 
 by our history. And by nothing more 
 so than the nature of the spiritual 
 leaders of the Jewish people. 
 
 Nowadays our ideas of what consti- 
 tutes a Jewish spiritual leader are rather 
 confused. Often we display peculiar 
 notions about his proper qualifications, 
 
 31 
 
and our whole spiritual life is none the 
 better for it. 
 
 It is significant, however, that hitherto 
 the spiritual heads of Israel have been 
 teachers. Moses was a teacher, leaving 
 for ignorance no pretext (as Josephus 
 said of him), and addressing his instruc- 
 tion to all the people and not only to a 
 few chosen ones, as was done by the 
 Greek masters. So were the ancient 
 priests of Israel. This was their original 
 function—dispensers of knowledge. It 
 marked the deterioration of their office, 
 when they became offerers of animals on 
 the altar—an adaptation to alien custom 
 and example. “The priest’s lips shall 
 preserve knowledge’—this was the true 
 Jewish ideal,—‘‘and from his mouth they 
 shall seek instruction, Torah: for he is 
 a minister of the Lord.” And what were 
 the Prophets, if not teachers? - Their 
 example was followed by the Rabbis. 
 Moreover, it cannot be ignored that the 
 outstanding rabbis of all ages—from 
 Judah Ha-Nasi to Moses Maimonides and 
 Abraham Geiger—were eminent in secu- ’ 
 
 32 
 
lar knowledge, as well as in the laws 
 and lore of Judaism. Education, both 
 deep and broad, has been a prerequisite 
 of spiritual leadership in Israel, and 
 formed an important element in the 
 religious life of the Jewish people. 
 
 At present we observe a renewed 
 emphasis on the connection of Religion 
 with education. And for this we might 
 be grateful. For, why is it that Religion 
 lags in the world, and that so many are 
 indifferent to it? It is because we are 
 not sufficiently educated in regard to its 
 contents and commands. We talk about 
 it, but we.don’t know what it really 
 implies. This is why we fall behind our 
 professions and below our alleged stand- 
 ards. “An ignorant person (said our 
 rabbis) cannot be truly religious.” 
 
 Modern leaders of all religious groups 
 are getting to recognize the truth of this 
 maxim more and more. “It is the relig- 
 ious duty of all men,” writes Mr. David 
 Graham in his recent work on “Religion 
 and Intellect,’ “to gather their wits 
 
 33 
 
about them and to think vigorously and 
 conscientiously about everything — es- 
 pecially about everything spiritual—that 
 concerns them.” This is what Judaism 
 has taught always, even at the risk of 
 seeming too intellectual. The more edu- 
 cation we put into our religion, the 
 purer, the stronger, and the more de- 
 pendable our religious life shall grow. | 
 
 34 
 
IV 
 
 THE CEREMONIAL ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “And the fire upon the altar shall be 
 kept burning thereby: it shall not go out.” 
 —Leviticus 6, 5. 
 
 EADERS of the book of Leviticus 
 R are struck by the numerous cere- 
 
 monies recorded in its pages. 
 Various rules are laid down for the 
 conduct of priests and people in connec- 
 tion with the religious ritual. There is 
 no attempt to explain these rules; they 
 are given as commands of Moses, which 
 he himself is said to have received from 
 God, and which are assumed to have a 
 value of their own, though not always 
 apparent. From time immemorial at- 
 tempts have been made to explain these 
 ceremonies. But, as far as we are con- 
 cerned, though they may not interest us 
 in detail, they are valuable for one par- 
 ticular reason: they call our attention to 
 the importance of ceremonies in the 
 promotion of the religious life. 
 
 35 
 
That such a reminder is wanted at 
 present, no one can deny. For, we hear 
 a good deal of arguing in regard to the © 
 place of ceremonies in Religion, and the 
 views expressed are often diametrically 
 opposed to one another. Some insist 
 that the trouble with Religion is that it 
 is entangled with too many ceremonies; 
 —if only it did away with all those 
 ancient trappings, and confined itself to 
 spiritual and ethical teaching, they are 
 sure, Religion would recover and even 
 extend its hold upon mankind. On the 
 other hand, who has not heard people 
 make the contrary complaint? The 
 trouble with our religion is, according to 
 them, that we have done away with the 
 old ceremonies. We have made it too 
 aerial, nebulous, insubstantial a thing, 
 they say. Reform Judaism, in particu- 
 lar, is supposed to be guilty of such 
 despoilment of Religion and to be marked 
 by such tenuity. And that, they aver, 
 is why Religion has decayed among us. 
 That these views are contradictory, is 
 evident. Can we reconcile them, and 
 what grain of truth is there in each of. 
 
 them? 
 36 
 
As far as human experience goes, the 
 truth seems to be that certain ceremonies 
 are necessary to the maintenance of the 
 religious life. Wherever we find Relig- 
 ion among men, we find certain forms 
 and rites. It is natural for men to seek 
 an outward expression for their religious 
 sentiments. 
 
 When we come to the Jewish religion, 
 what do we find to have been the object 
 of its ceremonies? There are those who 
 would have us believe that the object of 
 Jewish ceremonies is to maintain the 
 Jews as a separate nation. For this 
 reason, they maintain, even such Jews as 
 do not believe in the Jewish religion, in 
 its teachings about God and the world, 
 should keep up the practice of the tradi- 
 tional ceremonies. They offer as illustra- 
 tions certain modern Jews, such as the 
 Hebrew writer Perez Smolensky, who is 
 said to have acted on this principle. But 
 such a view is at variance with the his- 
 torical Jewish attitude. 
 
 If we go to the Bible and the later 
 exponents of Judaism, what are we told 
 
 37 
 
about the function and purpose of relig- 
 ious ceremonies? 
 
 First, that they are meant to give out- 
 ward expression to religious emotions, 
 such as gratitude, humility, confidence. 
 This is the object of the ceremonies we 
 encounter in the stories of the Jewish 
 Patriarchs. When Abraham has his first 
 vision of God, he builds an altar: “And 
 he builded there an altar unto the Lord 
 who appeared unto him—and called upon 
 the name of the Lord.” Similarly, Jacob, 
 after his own vision of God, sets up a 
 pillar as a token of his profound relig- 
 ious experience. | 
 
 Secondly, the ceremonies are meant to 
 keep alive the memories of the past, and 
 to revive those memories periodically. 
 Remembrance, said a medieval rabbi, is 
 the basis of Religion, the pivot of 
 religious practice. If we forget the past, 
 and neglect the observances linked with 
 it, we are likely to let the thought of 
 God slip from our lives altogether. 
 Rabbi Moses of Coucy, the renowned 
 
 38 
 
French rabbi, writes that it was shown 
 him in a dream that the cardinal rule of 
 the Divine Law was contained in the 
 biblical words: “Beware lest thou for- 
 get!” Thus, many Jewish ceremonies 
 were designed to keep alive the remem- 
 brance of the past and of the religious 
 duties flowing from it. “In order that 
 thou shalt remember the day thou 
 wentest forth from the land of Egypt.” 
 “And thou shalt see it and remember all 
 the commandments of the Lord.” 
 
 Thirdly, the purpose of Jewish cere- 
 monies has been to stimulate the ethical 
 and spiritual life of the people, to keep 
 awake continually the desire for a good, 
 pure, and upright life which, according 
 to Judaism, is the essence of Religion. 
 We-esh ha mizbeah tugad bo—‘“The fire of 
 the altar shall be kept burning thereby.” 
 
 If the history of Jewish teaching tells 
 us anything, it tells us this much. Cere- 
 monies are desirable and necessary in 
 order to keep burning the fire of Relig- 
 ion. But, on the other hand, ceremonies 
 
 39 
 
are of no use, and worse than useless, 
 if they are mere performances with 
 nothing behind them, mere outward 
 practices devoid of spirit, mere conven- 
 tional or traditional gestures. Without 
 spirit, ceremonies may become a menace 
 to the real purpose of Religion. This 
 is why the Prophets of Israel condemned 
 the sacrifices which their contemporaries 
 were wont to bring, as well as the rest 
 of their ritual; they had lost value, be- 
 cause they were not attended by a true 
 religious life. “To what purpose is the 
 multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?” 
 the Lord demands, according to Isaiah. 
 “When ye come to appear before Me, 
 who hath requested this at your hand, 
 to trample My courts? I cannot endure 
 iniquity along with your solemn as- 
 semblies!” And Ezekiel breaks in upon 
 his outline of the order of sacrifices in the 
 new temple with the challenge: “Thus 
 saith the Lord God: Let it suffice you, O 
 princes of Israel; remove violence and 
 spoil, and execute justice and righteous- 
 ness; take away your exactions from My 
 people, saith the Lord God!” “My princes ° 
 
 40 
 
—he demands—shall no more wrong My 
 people!” Otherwise all their sacerdotal 
 ceremonies shall be futile. 
 
 This view was adopted by the leaders 
 of Reform Judaism. If one accuses 
 Reform Judaism of having wantonly 
 thrown away the ceremonies of Israel, 
 or to have flouted the ceremonial element 
 in Religion, one says what is not true. 
 This may have been true of some icono- 
 clasts or spiritual vandals sailing under 
 the flag of Reform. It was not true of 
 the real leaders of Reform Judaism, of 
 such men as Abraham Geiger, David 
 Hinhorn, or Isaac M. Wise. They realized 
 that certain ceremonies had outlived 
 their usefulness, were not observed in 
 practice, and the best thing to do with 
 them was to let them die. But they 
 retained such observances as were still 
 vital, and introduced others to take the 
 place of the old. The ceremony of Con- 
 firmation, for example, was introduced 
 by Reform Judaism, which surely would 
 not have happened if the pioneers of 
 Reform Judaism had regarded all cere- 
 
 41 
 
monies as a superfluous part of Religion. 
 “Among the most needful and most 
 effectual appurtenances of Religion,” 
 wrote Abraham Geiger, “undoubtedly 
 are the ceremonies which sprang from 
 the poetry of the life of the people and 
 in which the most inward part of the 
 human spirit attaches itself to the insti- 
 tutions of Religion and adorns them with 
 its most attractive productions.” 
 
 We of today need religious ceremonies 
 for the same reasons as of old. We need 
 them to stimulate our religious life, to 
 link us with the great past of the Jewish 
 people, to body forth our own religious 
 emotions and promptings. There may be 
 some few who require no such outward 
 helps and channels, but the majority of 
 us need them. On the other hand, if we 
 abandon altogether the observances and 
 outward forms of Religion, Religion 
 itself is likely to disappear’ from our 
 lives. But we want to be sure, also, that 
 our ceremonies are charged with spirit- 
 ual worth, that, in the words of Geiger, 
 we do not have mere crushed and soiled ~ 
 
 42 
 
paper-flowers instead of beauteous and 
 fragrant flowers of faith. 
 
 This ig one reason why we should 
 welcome the feast of Passover, and the 
 ceremonies that go with its proper ob- 
 servance, and why we should continue to 
 keep all our festivals. Some complain 
 that they do not get from Judaism the 
 help, the radiance, the joy, which 
 Religion ought to give. But these things 
 we shall obtain from our religion if we 
 maintain it, as did our fathers before us. 
 Let us preserve both the ideas of our 
 religion and the forms designed to 
 express them. Thus, we shall fill our 
 lives with beauty and strength! 
 
 43 
 
‘ m i ‘i 
 o 
 
 i ' \ ie i 
 ‘i Nn uN) 
 
 ual! 
 Ka 
 
 ‘iy Pied 
 
 Ne; Kit 
 MF bis ihe 
 
 
 
Vv 
 
 THE ETHICAL ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “The ways of the Lord are right, and the 
 just shall walk in them.”—Hosea 14, 9. 
 
 T is an old custom with Jewish people 
 | to devote part of every year to the 
 
 study of Pirge Aboth—the Sayings of 
 the Fathers. This ancient book contains 
 a wealth of wisdom on the conduct of 
 life. There are numerous ethical teach- 
 ings in its pages, each of which deserves 
 careful consideration. But, in a general 
 way, the custom of discussing this an- 
 thology of moral maxims on the Sab- 
 baths between Passover and Tabernacles 
 (or Weeks) is valuable because it em- 
 phasizes the place of the ethical element 
 in Religion. | 
 
 A renewal of this emphasis is desirable 
 at present. For, there is no subject 
 which we hear debated more often than 
 that of the relation of Religion and 
 Ethics. There are those who believe that 
 
 45 
 
Ethics is quite independent of Religion 
 —that one does not require the help or 
 the guidance of Religion in the pursuit 
 of a good and happy life. Others, how- 
 ever, treat Ethics as a matter of 
 secondary, of subordinate, import in 
 Religion. If they exercise certain rites 
 of Religion, comply with certain regula- 
 tions, they consider themselves religious, 
 no matter what their ethical practice. 
 
 It is the distinct merit of Judaism to 
 have accentuated the place of Ethics in 
 Religion as well as the place of Religion 
 in Ethics. 
 
 From the very beginning Judaism has 
 felt and taught that Religion is Right- 
 eousness, which means that it is bound 
 up with right action, with clean conduct, 
 all the way from the private life of the 
 individual to the corporate conduct of 
 the whole world. Crookedness and 
 Religion cannot go hand in hand. 
 
 This Judaism has stressed from the 
 very time it appeared on the scene as a 
 distinct religion. For this reason, accord- 
 ing to some old rabbis, the special tal- © 
 
 46 
 
mudic collection of ethical teachings is 
 called Chapters, or Precepts, of the 
 Fathers, implying that our ethical teach- 
 ings go back to the very fathers of the 
 Jewish religion. Clear indications of this 
 fact we find in the very first book of the 
 Bible. Abraham, we are told, was chosen 
 by God, in order that he might train his 
 descendants and his household in the 
 practice of what is right and just: ’maan 
 asher yetzawah eth betho we’eth banaw ahraw 
 laashoth tzedaqa umishpat. (Gen. 18, 19). 
 This is called the Way of the Lord— 
 Derekh Adonay. And even before Abra- 
 ham, Noah is saved because he is a 
 righteous man, just as entire cities and a 
 whole civilization are said to have been 
 destroyed, not because they failed in the 
 performance of proper religious rites, 
 but because they failed in ethical 
 conduct. 
 
 Thus, from the very outset the Jewish 
 religion insisted on the paramountcy of 
 the ethical element in the carrying on of » 
 Religion. And, this insistence continued 
 in the work of Moses, of the Prophets, 
 and of all their successors. It matters 
 
 47 
 
not how elaborate a ritual you may have, 
 how many prayers and sacrifices you 
 may make, how many forms you may 
 observe (all these men kept on repeat- 
 ing) if you do not live a righteous life, 
 your religion is nothing worth. 
 
 Is not this what the Prophet Jeremiah 
 tried to make clear to the people of 
 Jerusalem, as he saw them passing into 
 the Temple with their sundry gifts and 
 gewgaws? “Trust ye not in lying 
 words!” he cries, “The temple of the 
 Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple 
 of the Lord! Thus saith the Lord of 
 hosts, the God of Israel: Mend your ways 
 and your doings, and I will cause you to 
 dwell in this place!” Indifference to 
 ethical admonition, Jeremiah tells them, 
 has destroyed their religion. “This is 
 the people that hath not hearkened to the 
 Voice of the Lord their God, nor 
 accepted moral instruction: therefore, 
 Religion is lost and cut off from their 
 mouth.” 
 
 But with equal force Judaism has 
 taught the value of Religion to Ethics. ° 
 
 48 
 
There are many human beings who 
 would like to live ethically, but, for one 
 reason or another, they fail. This is 
 where our tragedy often lies. In what 
 way does Religion help, or can it help, 
 in the promotion of the ethical life? 
 
 To this question Judaism has given a 
 threefold answer. 
 
 First, Religion inspires moral conduct, 
 if it conceives the Divine Being as the 
 Jewish religion hag conceived Him: as 
 perfect in righteousness — in holiness. 
 “Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your 
 God am holy.” It is an inevitable sign 
 of our love of God to strive after a 
 moral life. Thus, Religion stimulates the 
 ethical life. 
 
 But, secondly, it serves to enlarge, to 
 augment, ethical power. “The perma- 
 nent value of Religion is,” says Matthew 
 Arnold, “that it has lighted up morality; 
 that it has supplied the emotion and 
 inspiration needful for carrying the sage 
 along the narrow way perfectly, for 
 carrying the ordinary man along it at 
 
 49 
 
all.” There is many a thing of an ethical 
 nature that people have done through 
 the love of God, which otherwise they 
 would have been too frail to do. Think, 
 for example, of charity: some of the 
 greatest charities were inspired by re- 
 ligious motives, while people from whose 
 heart such motives are absent often are 
 content with mere niggardly perform- 
 ance of a social duty. The same is true 
 of every other ethical quality and prac- 
 tice: honesty, purity, sobriety. 
 
 Religion means not merely ethical 
 duty: it means ethical power. Indeed, 
 this is what constitutes part of the 
 essence of Religion, according to Emile 
 Boutroux, the French philosopher. “The 
 originality of Religion,” he tells us, 
 “dwells in the fact that it proceeds not 
 from power to duty, but from duty to 
 power.” Jewish history offers abundant 
 testimony to this particular truth. Time 
 and again, the Jew, both as an individual 
 and as a people, has shown wellnigh 
 superhuman power of action and endur- 
 ance, impelled and fortified by his relig- ° 
 
 50 
 
ion. “They were swifter than eagles, 
 stronger and more courageous than 
 lions, to do the will of their Creator,” 
 as the old Jewish liturgy says concern- 
 ing the many martyrs of Israel in all 
 ages, including the present. 
 
 And, finally, Religion sustains our 
 faith in Righteousness. And what is 
 there that so often we need more than 
 this? It is the good, the righteous per- 
 son that often suffers disappointment 
 and defeat,—not merely material loss, 
 but, what is much more serious, a seem- 
 ing defeat of the spiritual and moral 
 ideal upon: which his whole life is based. 
 At such a time, faith in the intrinsic 
 worth of the Right, derived from Relig- 
 ion, is of supreme import. 
 
 It must be clear to everyone that what 
 the world needs today is just such a 
 fusion of Ethics and Religion as has 
 formed the soul of Judaism. The world 
 has religions in abundance—it has an 
 innumerable multitude of creeds and 
 denominations, all vieing with one an- 
 
 51 
 
other for recognition and homage. But 
 what the world has not is a clear-cut 
 insistence on the part of all these relig- — 
 ions upon Righteousness as the soul and 
 goal of Religion. What is the soul of 
 Judaism? Righteousness. And what has 
 been the goal of Judaism? The reign of 
 Righteousness. This is the meaning of 
 our Messianic Hope. For the Jew the 
 coming of the Messiah would mark not 
 the end of the world, but the beginning 
 of the universal rule of righteousness on 
 earth. It is Religion with such a goal 
 the world needs today, and only such a 
 religion will help it out of its troubles. 
 
 Let us try to keep up the connection 
 between Religion and Ethics. Let our 
 religion find expression in ethical con- 
 duct, and our ethical conduct be inspired, 
 enhanced, and sustained by our religious 
 faith. Thus, we shall put beauty and 
 power into our own lives, as well as bliss 
 and hope into the world! 
 
 52 
 
VI 
 
 THE SACRIFICIAL ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “J saw the Lord standing beside the 
 altar.”—Amos 9, 1. 
 
 HE entire book of Leviticus is 
 
 devoted to the sacrificial order of 
 
 ancient Israel. Many of the ordi- 
 nances laid down in its pages, and 
 recorded in the name of Moses, went out 
 of use long ago, if indeed they were ever 
 actually put into practice. Yet this book 
 is not devoid of spiritual value. It con- 
 tains many passages of everlasting 
 worth, such as the nineteenth chapter, 
 with its lofty commands “Ye shall be 
 holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” 
 and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself”’—the importance of which all 
 acknowledge, though their Jewish origin 
 quite a few are prone to ignore. But, 
 as a whole, this book is valuable because 
 it calls our attention to the element of 
 sacrifice in all true religion. 
 
 53 
 
If we study the history of Religion 
 we are struck by the fact that in all 
 forms of Religion, sacrifice holds a cen- 
 tral, or a basic, place. This is true of all 
 systems of religious belief and practice 
 —from the most primitive to the most 
 advanced. Mr. Frazer, in his learned 
 and fascinating work, “The Golden 
 Bough,” shows to what an extent the 
 idea of sacrifice has dominated the wor- 
 ship of primitive races. On the other 
 hand, the whole Christian religion is 
 founded on the idea of the self-sacrifice 
 of Jesus in behalf of the human race. 
 
 What does the universality of this 
 element in human religions show? That 
 in its ideal moments and moods, which is 
 one phase of Religion, mankind has 
 regarded sacrifice as of supreme im- 
 portance. It makes no_ difference 
 whether we think the idea was implanted 
 by the Deity or originated in. the human 
 mind, nor does it matter so much what 
 was the original purpose of sacrifices— 
 whether they were meant as gifts, or as 
 means of appeasement and expiation, or ° 
 
 54 
 
what not. Theories will differ. The 
 fact that in the entire domain of 
 Religion such stress is laid on the sacri- 
 ficial element proves that men have 
 always regarded it as of great conse- 
 quence in the conduct of the ideal life 
 and the attainment of ideal ends. 
 
 That Religion is right in this em- 
 ‘phasis, is borne out by human experi- 
 ence. It is an undeniable fact that 
 nothing great has ever been achieved, by 
 individuals or groups, without sacrifice. 
 Whatever we possess in the form of art 
 or letters or science rests on that foun- 
 dation. If Socrates bequeathed to the 
 world a philosophy of enduring worth, 
 if Dante has given it poetry of unfading 
 splendor, if Pasteur has enriched it with 
 the beneficent results of science—it is 
 because each of them was willing to 
 offer up his own temporal advantage on 
 the altar of the ideal. And this has been 
 true of every other person who has ever 
 attained to anything of lasting moment. 
 Moreover, the civilization of the entire 
 human race has been due to men’s 
 
 55 
 
capacity for sacrifice, and practice of it. 
 It is this truth that Mr. Benjamin Kidd 
 sought to point out (some thirty years 
 ago) in his book on “Social Evolution.” 
 If it had not been for man’s willingness 
 (he tried to show) to offer up his own 
 immediate welfare for that of the race, 
 and the advantage of the present for 
 that of the future, there would have 
 been no such thing as human progress. 
 
 Nowhere is this shown more convinc- 
 ingly than in the records of the Jew. 
 There is no greater miracle in the world 
 than the survival of the Jew. People 
 swarm to the tomb of the dead Pharaoh; 
 yet one live Jew might well cause them 
 more wonder than many a dead Pharaoh. 
 But what has made it possible for the 
 Jew to live on—to outlast all the condi- 
 tions created against him? One thing 
 only: the spirit of sacrifice. 
 
 It is said that Jesus taught that he 
 who loses his life shall find it. This 
 is what the Jew was taught from the 
 very beginning. If you want life, you ° 
 
 56 
 
must welcome suffering. Im hayyim ata 
 hafetz yesurin ata hafez. Whatever good 
 gifts the Lord gave to Israel, say the 
 Rabbis, both material and spiritual, were 
 gotten at the price of pain. It is a 
 Jewish Prophet that first spoke of the 
 Suffering Servant—Ebed Yahweh—called 
 to endure woe and affliction for the 
 benefit of others. This noble ideal the 
 Jewish Prophet proclaimed over five 
 hundred years before the birth of Jesus, 
 which, indeed, makes Professor Gunkel 
 call him a “Forerunner of Jesus.” 
 
 Throughout the ages, the Jew has been 
 ready to endure suffering, to make all 
 manner of sacrifice for ideal ends, for 
 his God, for the Torah, for his faith. 
 There were times, as during the Cru- 
 sades, when entire Jewish communities 
 chose rather to die than to betray their 
 faith,—men, women, and children slay- 
 ing one another for the sake of their 
 God. The blood of uncounted martyrs has 
 watered the tree of Judaism. This is 
 why the Jew has survived, and, besides, 
 
 57 
 
has been able to enrich mankind with 
 precious treasures of the spirit. 
 
 And today, what is there men need 
 so much as the sacrificial principle and 
 practice in Religion and life? Frequently 
 we are asked to consider the wrongs of 
 modern life, the diverse social and 
 private ills afflicting us. We are asked to 
 stop and think of modern strife and 
 misery, on the one hand, and of the orgy 
 of pleasure-seeking and extravagance, 
 on the other, with its concomitants of 
 vice and crime. Is not most of it due to 
 the fact that men have not yet learnt 
 altogether the law of sacrifice? These 
 things will exist as long as men are gov- 
 erned by lust, and have not learnt to 
 sacrifice anything for their own good or 
 for that of their fellows. In spite of 
 history, men have not yet mastered this 
 lesson. It seems the hardest lesson of 
 all for man to master. 
 
 This is why, according to the Rabbis, 
 the book of Leviticus begins with the 
 words: “And the Lord called to Moses.” ° 
 
 58 
 
After Moses had faced Pharaoh (say the 
 Rabbis), and brought Israel out of 
 Egypt, and crossed the Red Sea, and 
 given the Decalogue, and provided food 
 for the people in the desert, and erected 
 the Tabrnacle, he thought he was done, 
 his work finished. But no, said the Lord, 
 the hardest task still lies before you: 
 You still have to teach them the laws 
 ‘of purity and impurity, the law and the 
 manner of bringing sacrifices. This is 
 why the Lord called to Moses, anew, 
 though the latter thought he was done. 
 
 Thus, with all mankind. We may have 
 gained political freedom, obtained ethical 
 systems, devised economic plans, and 
 established religious institutions; but the 
 hardest task still lies before us: we have 
 to learn how to make sacrifices for our 
 own good and for the good of the race. 
 Then only shall we be able to advance 
 and to secure peace for mankind. “Who- 
 soever brings a sacrifice,” say the Rabbis, 
 “brings peace to the world.” 
 
 And we, in our own way, as individual 
 men and women, yet have to acquire the 
 
 59 
 
habit of sacrifice. Time and again we 
 criticize Religion in general, and our own 
 in particular, complaining that it does 
 not yield us the benefits, the spiritual 
 advantages and consolations, Religion is 
 supposed to contain. We have many 
 quarrels with the Holy One: mahlogoth al 
 Ha-Qadosh barukh hu. But whose fault is 
 it? How can we expect Religion to 
 benefit us as long as we have not gotten 
 into the habit of making any sacrifice 
 for it? Yet this is the last thing most 
 of us ever think of doing. We want the 
 gifts of Religion, but not its laws. It is 
 seldom we are ready to give up anything, 
 by way of pleasure or material profit, 
 in order to advance our spiritual life. 
 Even our children we accustom to regard 
 everything else—even amusements and 
 minor accomplishments — as preceding 
 Religion in importance. Yes, we may 
 have achieved many things: we may 
 have gone far in organizing politically, 
 socially, even religiously. But the 
 supreme lesson we have to learn still: 
 actually to make sacrifices for the sake 
 
 of our religion. 
 60 
 
As such a time the teaching of Moses 
 concerning the sacrificial element in 
 Religion takes on new meaning and im- 
 portance. Let us try to live in accord- 
 ance with it! Thus, we shall put true 
 happiness into our own life, and con- 
 tribute to the welfare of the world. 
 
 61 
 
fp) 
 
 i tO atan 
 " sh? ; 
 
 
 
Vil 
 
 THE VICARIOUS ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “And thou shalt take the Levites for the 
 Lord.”—Numbers 3, Al. 
 
 in the book of Numbers, we can’t 
 
 help being impressed by their un- 
 usual character. They composed a 
 whole tribe of men who were willing to 
 forgo material possessions for the sake 
 of devoting themselves to the service of 
 the sanctuary. They acted as substi- 
 tutes, as vicars, for the entire Jewish 
 people in everything that belonged to the 
 work of the tabernacle. “They are 
 wholly given unto Me—in place of every 
 first-born child in Israel have I taken 
 them unto Me.” 
 
 A S we read the account of the Levites, 
 
 Today, however, the institution of the 
 Levites—their readiness to act as sub- 
 stitutes and servants of their people at 
 the cost of personal wealth—may well 
 serve to remind us of a subject seldom 
 
 63 
 
discussed among us, namely, the vicar- 
 ious element in Religion, and especially 
 in Judaism. 
 
 Among us, I say, this theme is seldom 
 discussed. Why? Because most people 
 are under the impression that the idea of 
 vicariousness is not tolerated by Juda- 
 ism. Judaism, they say, does not believe 
 in substitutes, or in one’s gaining any 
 religious advantage by the merit of 
 somebody else, through somebody else’s 
 virtue. Judaism, we are assured, insists 
 on individual autonomy, on _ personal 
 responsibility and merit: you and I must 
 each work out our own salvation. 
 
 Moreover, we are told that this forms 
 the difference between Judaism and 
 Christianity, for, according to Christian 
 teaching, Jesus died for the benefit of all 
 mankind, in the sense that his death is 
 supposed to have served as a means of 
 purging all others from sin- and saving 
 their souls from perdition. Thus, while 
 in Christianity the vicarious element is 
 paramount, we are constantly asked to 
 believe that in Judaism it does not exist. 
 
 64 
 
But such a portrayal of Judaism is far 
 from true. It is not complete. Nor is 
 it just. It is polemical, rather than 
 historical. 
 
 It is true that Judaism emphasizes 
 with all its might the part of the indi- 
 vidual in the sphere of religious aim and 
 achievement—the duty, the responsi- 
 bility, the potencies of the individual 
 man and woman. The Jewish masters 
 have insisted on the freedom of the 
 human will insofar as one’s moral and 
 spiritual destiny is concerned. “Though 
 everything is foreseen,” taught the 
 heroic Rabbi Aquiba, “free-will is given, 
 and, though the world is judged by 
 grace, yet all is according to the abund- 
 ance of work.” 
 
 Nevertheless, Judaism has not gone to 
 the extremes of individualism. It has 
 been far from suggesting that a man’s 
 life is shut up within his own shell, and 
 that it has no relation to other lives, 
 whether in the past or the present or the 
 future. On the contrary, human lives 
 
 65 
 
are interrelated, they are bound together 
 by many cords. “All of God’s creatures 
 borrow from one another,’ say the 
 Rabbis. Each life owes much to others, 
 and it attains its highest worth, relig- 
 iously, when it strives to do something 
 for others. This is what we may call 
 the vicarious element in life, and who- 
 ever knows the true character and 
 record of Judaism must know that this 
 very element Judaism has emphasized 
 and sought to develop. 
 
 Let us recall some of the Jewish teach- 
 ings bearing on this subject. 
 
 There is, first of all, the teaching con- 
 cerning the Merit of the Fathers—Zekuth 
 Aboth. This is one of the unique parts of 
 Jewish doctrine. Mr. James Frazer, in 
 one of his books, pleads for a more lively 
 recognition of what mankind owes to 
 the primitive pioneers of civilization. As 
 for the Jew, a sense of his debt to his 
 forbears has been part of his religion. 
 The exalted faith, the self-sacrifice, the 
 piety of his forefathers has acted upon 
 
 66 
 
him throughout the ages as an incentive 
 to rectitude, confidence, and devotion. It 
 made, on the one hand, for humility, 
 seeing that in whatever he achieved he 
 beheld partly the merit of his ancestors; 
 and on the other, for unwavering trust, 
 as even in his darkest seasons—of 
 trouble or temptation—he did not 
 despair of the merit of the fathers which 
 -would come to his aid. Thus, we have 
 always been taught that it is the spiritual 
 and moral excellence of the Patriarchs, 
 of the Jewish pioneers, that has served 
 to the advantage of all their descendants. 
 We of today are benefitted and helped 
 by the heroic efforts, the sufferings, the 
 struggles of those that went before us. 
 
 Similarly, the Jew has been taught 
 that all Jews are responsible one for 
 another. What we do, for good or ill, 
 has not only an individual, but also a 
 communal, a general aspect. It is 
 vicarious. The exponents of Judaism 
 have never wearied of trying to bring 
 this truth home to us. They have not 
 wanted the Jew to wait for his foes to 
 
 67 
 
remind him of his unity, to urge him to 
 solidarity. The unity of Israel is as 
 much part of Jewish teaching as the 
 unity of the Deity. God is not only one; 
 He is indivisible. Nor is Israel divisible. 
 Whatever one Jew does or experiences 
 affects the others. This is why Israel is 
 likened to a lamb, say the Rabbis: if 
 you touch one part of its body, it shivers 
 throughout. One Jew sins, and all are 
 blamed. Conduct is vicarious. We have 
 no right to do things which, aside from 
 ourselves, will involve our fellowmen in 
 its evil effects. It is like a man—say the 
 Rabbis—finding himself on the high seas 
 in a boat with many others. On a sud- 
 den, he begins to bore a hole in the 
 bottom of the boat. May he say that 
 his act does not concern his fellow-pas- 
 sengers? 
 
 And, finally, the Jew has been taught 
 one doctrine which is the essence of 
 vicariousness: namely, that the best must 
 be ready to work and suffer for the good 
 of the rest. There is no problem that 
 has troubled men more than this: Why 
 
 68 
 
do the righteous suffer? Why do the 
 best men and women so often get off the 
 worst? Judaism has said: It is for the 
 good of the rest of the world. Such are 
 the suffering servants of the Lord. They 
 suffer that others might be healed, they 
 toil and strive and sacrifice for the en- 
 noblement of mankind. Ebed Adonay— 
 the Servant of the Lord—the man of 
 ' pains and acquainted with disease, smit- 
 ten and afflicted, crushed and wounded, 
 for the welfare and healing of others— 
 it is the Jewish Prophet that gave this 
 concept to the world, as well as the term, 
 and the Jew has suffered and endured 
 under its hallowing influence. “The full 
 emergence of this conception into the 
 religious consciousness,” say the authors 
 of “The Making of the Western Mind,” 
 “is one of the gifts that Hebraism helped 
 to give the Western world, and the 
 clearest signs of it meet us first in 
 Isaiah.” 
 
 There is, no doubt, a real need today 
 for the emphasizing of this vicarious 
 element in life, and in our religious 
 
 69 
 
teaching. For two reasons. First, be- 
 cause in our excessive modernism we are 
 apt to forget what we owe to our fore- 
 fathers. We think wisdom was born 
 with us. As a matter of fact, we owe a 
 great debt for our spiritual and ethical 
 possessions to our predecessors. On the 
 other hand, we have to consider that 
 nothing is so fine as to work for the 
 common good without expecting full 
 reward, or immediate reward. Often 
 this causes us hardship and doubt: why 
 have we toiled and done our best, with- 
 out gaining what would seem our due? 
 Why have we labored and sacrificed for 
 years and years only that another might 
 come and gather the harvest? 
 
 The Rabbis tell us that the Patriarchs 
 of Israel did not receive full reward for 
 their virtues: the residue was left for 
 their descendants. Why, then, they ask, 
 shall we expect complete compensation 
 for what we do? 
 
 Let us put forth our own best effort 
 in the moral and spiritual life: but let 
 
 70 
 
us also think of what we owe to others, 
 and let us be willing to toil for others, 
 as others have toiled for us! Thus, we 
 shall put beauty and strength into our 
 own lives and advance the welfare of the 
 world. 
 
 71 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 aN qs" eat ane ss vente 
 rae iene me Dienst? 
 hgh hana tele aa to em 
 : UG anid Mie my eee te 
 i fee ana teens wees. 
 Ay Pe) aa ley vain m Aik ttt ihe ‘ee 4 
 My Tae be iv tke mi iden red | 
 as" ? ovis deal Nid Bis a My ae ‘sai ; 
 Bay Abie lun etna ge tel {nd Gera 
 net a Tee Ee we at, at Ae j ny boi b Laaplay 
 batik i josh nam i wethe the hn Ae he ! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Se ken 
 ee vy oy : ; PTY ae Lo 
 i o ahs nea 
 
 ee vine ere 4S chia ve 
 Bij wae rae gy hd 1S ens ei fee Bal 
 4 i ee | f eee ts GEES ‘pie pee er pe 
 Os, UL) eee i: Rae wie yi hari , 
 Ni masts ay! oe ae nat: i 
 teal tre hi: 
 
 
 
Vill 
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “All the congregation are holy, every one 
 of them, and the Lord is among them.” 
 —Numbers 16, 3. 
 
 HERE is no subject discussed more 
 
 widely at present than democracy. 
 
 If this theme has always been popu- 
 lar in America, the Great War has 
 served to make it even more so. The 
 word democracy is frequently drawn 
 nowadays into the discussion of Religion. 
 We want more democracy in Religion, 
 we are told. It seems appropriate, there- 
 fore, to try to answer the question: What 
 does the democratic element in Religion 
 mean? What does it imply? 
 
 This is the question, I believe, Moses 
 tried to answer when he was confronted 
 by Korah and his band of rebels. 
 
 For, Korah rebelled against Moses in 
 the name of democracy. The story goes 
 
 73 
 
that just when Moses was busy leading 
 and training his people, seeking to 
 satisfy their various wants and making 
 plans for their future—just then Korah 
 with his followers started a revolt. And 
 what was the gist of his complaint? 
 Democracy. Are not all the people 
 equally holy, he demanded; then why do 
 you, Moses, and your brother Aaron, lift 
 yourselves above the rest of the people? 
 We are as good as you, Korah insisted. 
 “Ye take too much upon you!” he cried, 
 “seeing all the congregation are holy, © 
 every one of them!’ 
 
 This was Korah’s conception of democ- 
 racy. And what was the answer of 
 Moses? He did not deny the equal holi- 
 ness of the entire people. Indeed, he 
 could not deny it, for this was the doc- 
 trine he himself was trying to teach. 
 “Ye shall be holy, for the Lord your God 
 is holy!” But, he insisted; the proof of 
 holiness lies not in prestige, but in 
 service; true distinction means the per- 
 formance of one’s duty rather than the 
 seizure of a place for which one is not 
 
 74 
 
qualified and which is occupied by an- 
 other. “Is it not enough that the God 
 of Israel hath separated you from the 
 congregation of Israel, to bring you near 
 to Himself, to do the service of the taber- 
 nacle of the Lord, and to stand before 
 the congregation to minister unto them 
 —and seek ye the priesthood also?” 
 This was the question Moses put to 
 ’ Korah and his fellows. 
 
 In a way, we have here a summing up 
 of the democratic principle in Religion 
 as taught by the great exponents of 
 Judaism—not only by Moses, but by all 
 his successors. 
 
 Students of history agree that the 
 Jews were the most democratic people 
 of antiquity. No reader of the Bible can 
 fail to recognize this fact. In their 
 political, economic, and general social 
 system—everywhere we find the demo- 
 cratic note struck in a manner found 
 nowhere else in antiquity. 
 
 What was responsible for it? No 
 doubt, it was due to the teachings of the 
 
 75 
 
Jewish religion. For, from the very 
 beginning the Jewish religion contained 
 and accentuated all the elements of a 
 democratic faith. It taught that all men 
 were the children of one God, that all 
 men, whether poor or rich, were alike in 
 the sight of God, that they were all sub- 
 ject to the same moral law, and that all 
 had equal access to the avenues of com- 
 munion with their God. “The Lord is 
 nigh to all that call upon Him, to all that 
 eall upon Him in truth.” 
 
 But all this would not have been suffi- 
 cient if the Jewish masters had failed 
 to add one particular teaching—namely, 
 that equality of relationship to God 
 means also equality of obligation, of 
 responsibility, in the field of religious 
 duty and service. When Korah affirmed 
 that all the people were equally holy, we 
 are told that Moses bowed his head; he 
 assented: but then he proceeded to make 
 clear to Korah that the function and ful- 
 filment of democracy lay in every man’s 
 doing his duty and serving, rather than 
 in seeking undue place and privilege. 
 
 76 
 
“Take you censers, Korah and all his 
 company! And put fire therein!” said 
 Moses. Do your duty, and by and by we 
 shall know whether or not you are holy! 
 
 Who will deny that this is the lesson 
 we need to learn today for the good of 
 democracy? All the world now is talk- 
 _ing about democracy. Professor Stuart 
 Sherman, in his fine book, called “Ameri- 
 cans,” rightly says that at the present 
 time the central current of the world, 
 in spite of obstacles and cross-currents, 
 is making toward democracy and he 
 summons all those who would help 
 fashion the future of civilization to join 
 in this movement. But if democracy 
 really is to flourish and thrive, we need 
 to learn the lesson Moses tried to teach 
 Korah and his associates. 
 
 Today also we find two different con- 
 structions of what democracy means. 
 Some think it means merely that all are 
 born free and equal, with emphasis on 
 the “equal’; that everybody is as good 
 as the next; and that there is no need 
 
 717 
 
of bowing to any authority or standard 
 of excellence in any sphere of life— 
 whether in art and literature, or. in 
 ethics and religion. Men are all equally 
 excellent—this is the dogma of this par- 
 ticular school, and none can fail to 
 perceive the deleterious effect of such a 
 self-deceiving belief on the various 
 phases of our life—on our art, our 
 literature, our morals, our politics. Many 
 a scribbler fancies himself as good as 
 Dante and Shakespeare, many a self- 
 styled philosopher deems himself as 
 much an authority on ethics as Isaiah 
 and Plato, while if a man has made lots 
 of money in business he is apt to regard 
 himself the equal of any one in science 
 and statecraft. We are all equally holy, 
 equally good, equally competent—such is 
 the leading notion of these modern 
 disciples of Korah. 
 
 On the other hand, there are those 
 who believe that democracy means some- 
 thing entirely different—that it means 
 equality not in political arrogance and’ 
 
 78 
 
intellectual impudence, but rather of 
 opportunity, for self-development and 
 for the pursuit of happiness; accom- 
 panied by the duty to serve for the 
 benefit of oneself and the community, 
 according to one’s powers and place. It 
 is not in the denial of distinction to the 
 leaders of mankind, not in pusillanimous 
 
 criticism of their merits, that democracy 
 - consists; but rather in doing one’s own 
 duty and performing one’s own service. 
 Quality, as well as equality, is essential 
 to the security and the success of 
 democracy—the high quality of every 
 individual’s service for the common pur- 
 pose. “Take you censers, and put fire 
 therein!” 
 
 If this applies to every sphere of 
 democratic life, how much more to 
 Religion! We hear a constant demand 
 nowadays for more democracy in Relig- 
 ion. If only Religion were made more 
 democratic, we are told, all would be 
 well. Religion would become popular 
 and the world come nearer perfection. 
 
 79 
 
Let us be sure, then, we understand 
 the true meaning of the democratic 
 element of religion. Censers, not censor- 
 iousness, is the true test. Let us not 
 repeat the mistake of Korah and imagine 
 we are religiously democratic simply 
 because we assail our leaders, criticize 
 all authorities and traditions, and main- 
 tain we are as good as anybody else. Let 
 us rather make sure that we try to do 
 our duty as taught by our religion, and 
 to perform our service in life according 
 to our power and position. Thus, and 
 not otherwise, shall we demonstrate our 
 belief in the democratic nature of 
 Religion, and help the cause of Religion 
 toward vindication and victory. Thus, 
 we shall make the best of our own lives 
 and add to the weal of the world at 
 large! 
 
 80 
 
IX 
 
 THE PROGRESSIVE ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “And the children of Israel journeyed— 
 toward the sunrising.”—Nwmbers 21, 10-11. 
 
 HE book of Numbers is devoted 
 
 largely to the story of the voyage 
 
 of the Israelites through the Wilder- 
 ness, and the difficulties and tribulations 
 which formed part of it. We are told 
 that the special reason why that hard 
 and circuitous route was chosen was to 
 train the people physically and morally. 
 All these hardships were meant to make 
 for the progress of the people, and to 
 teach them the law of progress. Out 
 of the rock they were to obtain water. 
 And this may well prompt us to stop to 
 consider a theme of particular interest 
 at present, namely, the progressive ele- 
 ment in Religion. 
 
 There are several reasons for consider- 
 ing this subject. First, because the ques- 
 tion of progress as a whole has been 
 
 81 
 
debated a good deal since the close of 
 the War. There are those who have been 
 led to the conclusion that progress is 
 impossible, in a permanent sense. Men 
 advance and retrograde in turn, civiliza- 
 tions rise and fall (they say), and some 
 are convinced that the entire Western 
 civilization, which we were wont to 
 regard as the proudest achievement of 
 all the ages of human history, is doomed 
 to decay in the near future. On the 
 other hand, there are not a few left who 
 proclaim progress as the law of life. 
 Frequently, however, they object to 
 Religion on the ground that it is un- 
 progressive. Religion is static, they say, 
 whereas it is the business of life to 
 change, to grow, to advance. 
 
 Whoever thinks of Religion in such 
 terms, overlooks Judaism, or fails to do 
 justice to it. For, Judaism has been a 
 progressive religion. If it had not been 
 for the presence of this element in its 
 character, it could not possibly have 
 maintained itself for so many thousands 
 of years and amid such a large variety 
 
 82 
 
of surroundings. What constitutes the 
 progressive quality? First, capacity for 
 growth, and, second, adjustment to new 
 environments without sacrifice of the 
 essentials of one’s own character. This 
 has been the story of Judaism. It has 
 existed for these many years. It has 
 grown in content and extent. It has 
 come in contact with all kinds of cul- 
 ‘tures and schools of thought. It has 
 accumulated and assimilated a great deal 
 of knowledge and experience, without, 
 however, departing from its central 
 truths and essential doctrines. 
 
 Moreover, Judaism has tried to teach 
 the law of spiritual progress to its 
 devotees. The religious life, it has taught 
 them, is a process of ethical effort and 
 spiritual advancement. There are those 
 who think that Religion can be acquired 
 in a moment, or in an hour, by some one 
 special act, by passing through some 
 ceremony or reciting a formula or creed. 
 Has Judaism ever sanctioned such a 
 view? I doubt it. Of course, we have 
 ceremonies, symbols, and even a creed— 
 
 83 
 
and they all have their part in the relig- 
 ious life. But they are only parts, 
 moments, fragments. They are not the 
 whole of the religious life. 
 
 The religious life as such means a 
 continuous effort of growth—an unceas- 
 ing determination to become better and 
 deeper and more loyal in everything that 
 appertains to the moral and spiritual 
 realm. That is why when the Jewish 
 masters sought to define Judaism, they 
 did it in terms of the active spiritual 
 life, rather than otherwise. Thus Micah: 
 “What doth the Lord require of thee, O 
 man? But to do justice, to love mercy, 
 and walk humbly with thy God!’ Do— 
 love—walk: these are mobile words, im- 
 plying energy and effort. And even so, 
 the talmudic rabbi: “What does the 
 spiritual order rest upon? Torah—Wor- 
 ship—and Acts of Loving-kindness.” 
 Ethical and spiritual progress are the 
 true task and aim of the religious life of 
 the individual. 
 
 Similarly, Judaism has made progress 
 the goal for mankind as a whole. There 
 
 84 
 
is a certain class who criticize Judaism 
 for not having made enough of the here- 
 after, of the other world. It dwells too 
 much, they say, upon affairs and con- 
 cerns of this world. In a sense, this is 
 true. The Prophets of Judaism have 
 held that the Kingdom of God was meant 
 for this planet as well as for any other, 
 and that it is the duty of mankind to 
 help bring about such a divine dominion 
 upon earth. And this can be done, if 
 men would only embrace the principles 
 of true Religion and make them opera- 
 tive in their relations. This is the 
 highest goal of mankind. If thus far 
 men have not attained to it, if thus far 
 the common life of humanity is so im- 
 perfect and unsatisfactory, if there is 
 still so much strife and evil and misery 
 among men, it is because they have not 
 put into practice the principles of Relig- 
 ion, though they have professed them 
 abundantly. 
 
 “From the Wilderness to Mattanah’— 
 we read in the Bible. What does this 
 mean? It means, say the Rabbis, that 
 only when a man makes himself like the 
 
 85 
 
wilderness, open to all, free from selfish 
 passion, he is granted Mattanah, the gift 
 of the Torah, of Religion, and thereby 
 he obtains Nahliel, he secures the Divine 
 possessions and rises to the heights of 
 life—Bamoth. But if, having gained the 
 heights, he is filled with pride and lust, 
 then he is thrust down again to the low 
 places—yes, his life turns to a desert— 
 “from Bamoth to the valley which looketh 
 down upon the desert.” (Numbers 21, 
 18-20). 
 
 Led by Religion humanity has risen to 
 the heights. It is pride and greed that 
 imperil its civilization and threaten to 
 thrust it from the heights, overlooking 
 the Promised Land, back to the desert. 
 
 This is why we need Religion today. 
 We want the world to advance, civiliza- 
 tion to flourish, mankind to mount above 
 the misfortunes and maladies of the 
 present. Let us, then, try to carry into 
 effect the principles of spiritual growth 
 and ethical effort. Thus, we shall add to 
 the wealth of our own lives and the weal 
 of the world! ; 
 
 86 
 
xX 
 
 THE THEOLOGICAL ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “JT will betroth thee unto Me in faithful- 
 ness; and thou shalt know the Lord.” 
 —Hosea 2, 22. 
 
 our age is the unpopularity of 
 
 theology. There was a time when 
 theology was regarded as queen of the 
 sciences; it was called sacred. But at 
 present theology is scorned not only by 
 infidels but also by such as style them- 
 selves religious. Even rabbis have 
 fallen into the habit of belittling it. But 
 thoughtful people must pause occasion- 
 ally to ask themselves whether such an 
 attitude is right, whether such indiffer- 
 ence, such hostility, to theology helps or 
 hurts. Religion. 
 
 : Orr of the striking phenomena of 
 
 My answer is that such antagonism to 
 theology is hurtful to Religion, and must 
 continue to injure it as long as it lasts. 
 For what is theology? I know it has 
 
 87 
 
gotten such a bad name that people do 
 not even stop to find out what it means; 
 just, for instance, as people who don’t 
 like socialism consider it unnecessary to 
 inquire what it really stands for. [If 
 there is anything in the field of religious 
 theory or practice which does not appeal 
 to them, they brush it aside as theology; 
 and that ends it. 
 
 But what is theology? It is the study 
 of God, the science of Religion. This is 
 what the word means: Daath Elohim: the 
 knowledge of God, as the Hebrew has it. 
 It is the business of the theologian to try 
 to ascertain all possible knowledge of 
 God and of His relation to man. Relig- 
 ion signifies the relation of man to God 
 —and theology is the science of God and 
 of man in the light of this relationship. 
 In other words, theology is just as much 
 the science of Religion as medicine is the 
 science of healing, or astronomy is the 
 science of the stars, or mathematics and 
 geometry are the sciences of the en- 
 gineer. Now suppose physicians came 
 to make light of medicine, or engineers ° 
 
 88 
 
began to ridicule geometry and mathe- 
 matics, what effect would that have on 
 the arts of healing and construction? 
 It is obvious that these two arts would 
 deteriorate by reason of neglect of the 
 sciences underlying their practice. No 
 less certain it is that the art of the relig- 
 ious life, the practice of Religion, is 
 - bound to deteriorate by the ridicule or 
 general neglect of theology. 
 
 If we turn to history, we find some 
 valuable light on the subject. We dis- 
 cover that those ages which paid most 
 attention to Religion and took its pre- 
 cepts most seriously, were the ages that 
 occupied themselves a great deal with 
 theology. 
 
 Take the Bible, for instance. Now and 
 then we are told by some sociological 
 enthusiasts that there is no theology in 
 the Bible—it is just a sanctified sociol- 
 ogy. This, of course, is preposterous. 
 The Bible is full of theology, though it 
 may not be presented in the form to 
 which we are accustomed. Even the 
 
 89 
 
social teachings of the Bible are based 
 upon its theology, and permeated by it. 
 Indeed, the one thing the masters of the 
 Bible try to do continually is to make 
 clear the difference between Jewish 
 theology and heathen theology, between 
 the theology of the Prophets and the 
 theology of their opponents. Is there no 
 theology in Hosea? Is there no theology 
 in the tenth chapter of Jeremiah, in the 
 sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, or in the 
 seventy-third Psalm? Is there no 
 theology in the book of Job? Many a 
 treatise has been written on the theology 
 of the Bible, and nothing could be more 
 absurd than the persistent proclamation 
 of the sociological ecstatics among our 
 present-day rabbis that there is no 
 theology in the Bible. 
 
 Or take the middle age as another 
 example. It is often referred to as the 
 age of faith—its life, its literature, its 
 art, all was dominated by the religious 
 motive, by the religious passion. Well, 
 during that period we find theology 
 flourishing. The outstanding figures in 
 
 90 
 
the Christian and Mohametan world 
 were theologians. And the same may be 
 said of the Jews. St. Thomas Aquinas 
 the Christian, Ibn Roshd the Mohame- 
 tan, Maimonides, the Jew—were masters 
 of philosophy and science, but their 
 crowning interest and chief effort was 
 devoted to the discovery of the truth 
 about God and His relation to man. 
 - Though we may not approve of all their 
 theology, though we may find it imper- 
 fect, as indeed we regard every other 
 science of those days as imperfect, we 
 cannot deny the grandeur of their effort, 
 the vastness of their knowledge, the pro- 
 fundity and vigor of their intellects, nor 
 yet the effect of their theological thought 
 on the actual religious life of their times. 
 And, similarly, it would seem that today 
 we can expect a real revival of religious 
 life only according as we have a renewal 
 of interest in theology and a new éstab- 
 lishment by the aid of theology of those 
 truths which are at the base and the 
 core of the religious life. 
 
 Nothing offers a better illustration 
 than our contemporary Jewish life. It 
 
 91 
 
is certain that there is among us a great 
 deal of indifference to Religion. What 
 is the cause of it? No phrase has be- 
 come so current in our midst as the one 
 “T am not religious.” Mind you: this 
 among us whose frequent boast it is that 
 we had given Religion to the world and 
 no less frequent assertion that Religion 
 is our sole reason for existence. For 
 this irreligion diverse explanations are 
 offered, and a multitude of remedies. 
 But in reality there is one cause only: 
 it is the lack of belief—or, at least, of 
 certainty in regard to the central asser- 
 tions of Religion. 
 
 Let us be frank about it! There 
 would not be so much irreligion among 
 us if we were certain about the reality 
 of God, the nature of the human soul, 
 the value of prayer, the hereafter—and 
 other themes associated with Religion. 
 Am lo yabin yilabet-—as the Prophet has 
 said: because we do not understand, we 
 are confused, distraught. And there is 
 but one cure. Insofar as we can con- 
 vince men of the reality of these things; 
 
 92 
 
demonstrate these truths to their satis- 
 faction, we may hope to bring about a 
 real revival of the religious life. Other- 
 wise, our religion must remain super- 
 ficial, no matter how much we talk about 
 it (a molluscous religion, as Professor 
 Girgensohn puts it, mere structurless 
 feeling and turbid chaotic “life’). And 
 such demonstration, clarification, en- 
 . lightenment can come only from theology 
 —not a theology which would reproduce 
 only the knowledge and the arguments 
 of the past, but a theology which, as 
 earnest and energetic as the old, would 
 derive its material and method from all 
 the thought and the light we have 
 gained in modern times. 
 
 This is why I say we must change our 
 modern attitude. Let us cease throwing 
 stones at theology. To do so, means to 
 hurt Religion. Let us rather do all we 
 can to encourage and diffuse the study 
 of Religion—the knowledge of God and 
 of His relation to man, which is the 
 theme of theology. Let us support our 
 theological seminaries, and let us in- 
 
 93 
 
struct them not to neglect the cultivation 
 of theology, and thus omit the Prince of 
 Denmark from Hamlet. Let us try to 
 create a theological literature fit for our 
 modern needs. And let us study such 
 works as we have. Thus, we shall lay a 
 firm foundation for our own religious 
 life and add to the effectiveness of 
 Religion in the world! 
 
 94 
 
XI 
 
 THE POETIC ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “Where is God my Maker, who giveth 
 songs in the night?’—(Job 35, 10) 
 
 beautiful and profound passages. But 
 
 none, perhaps, is more suggestive than 
 the one in which Elihu complains of the 
 absence of such as would look for God in 
 the true spirit and seek to find in Him the 
 highest He has to offer. “By reason of 
 the multitude of oppressions,” says Elihu, 
 “they cry out; they cry for help by reason 
 of the arm of the mighty. But none saith, 
 Where is God my Maker, who giveth 
 songs in the night; who teacheth us more 
 than the beasts of the earth, and maketh 
 us wiser than the fowls of heaven?” 
 
 [: the book of Job there are many 
 
 Elihu knew of people with whom the 
 quest of God was a cry for help from 
 oppression, a protest against the wrong- 
 doing of the mighty, an ethical clamor 
 and complaint. But he looked for those 
 
 95 
 
with whom the quest of God was some- 
 thing finer and deeper, a seeking of Him 
 who is the Maker of all, who is behind all, 
 who is the harmoniser of all discords, the 
 sweetener of all sorrows—who giveth 
 songs in the night—who fills the night of 
 human experience with songs of peace 
 and joy and the realization of whom 
 makes us greater than the beasts of the 
 earth and wiser than the fowls of heaven. 
 This latter form of God-seeking, Elihu 
 felt, was the highest, the most exulting, 
 the most helpful form of religious quest. 
 
 This is the poetic side of Religion—a 
 side which is often overlooked nowadays, 
 since it has become customary to dwell 
 chiefly upon its social or ethical side, but 
 which is nevertheless its most essential 
 and most influential element. It is cer- 
 tainly true that what the finest and most 
 devout spirits of all ages have sought and 
 found in Religion has been this particular 
 thing accentuated by Elihu—the poetic 
 element. God as the great Reality behind 
 the seen world, the Harmony beneath the 
 numeruos discords, the Peace amid the 
 
 96 
 
multitude of tribulations, the Wisdom and 
 the Light of the World, and, above all, the 
 Giver of Songs in the Night—this is the 
 God-idea that has been cherished most by 
 the deepest and devoutest natures, that 
 has been the fountain-head of inspiration 
 to men and women of the profoundest 
 religious insight and longing. It has 
 formed the poetry of Religion, which is 
 even deeper than the ethics of Religion, 
 and which has helped augment the poetry 
 of human life. 
 
 “God my Maker, who giveth songs in 
 the night!” There is no more suggestive 
 characterisation anywhere in the Bible or 
 the rest of religious literature! Itisa 
 description reminding us of the close kin- 
 ship that always has been felt to exist 
 between Poetry and Religion. 
 
 When M. Solomon Reinach, some years 
 ago, wrote a history of universal religion, 
 he chose for it the title “Orpheus,” be- 
 cause among the Greeks Orpheus was 
 regarded as the first musician and poet 
 as well as the first teacher of Religion and 
 
 97 
 
revealer of its mysteries. The father of 
 Poetry was identical with the father of 
 religious worship. As for the early Jews, 
 we know from the Bible how closely 
 related were their faith and their poetry. 
 The greatest poetry of Israel, which has 
 become part of the foremost poetry of the 
 world, was the product and expression of 
 his religious aspirations and needs. The 
 lyre and the harp among the Hebrews 
 were the instruments through which the 
 soul of man poured out its yearnings for 
 
 God. | 
 
 This association of Religion with 
 Poetry, which we encounter in ancient 
 Thracia and Judea, has persisted through - 
 the ages and come down to our own time: 
 an association due not only to the fact 
 that some of the greatest poets have dealt 
 with religious themes — such as the 
 Psalmists, Dante, and Milton — but also 
 to the feeling that essentially Religion 
 and Poetry stand for the same things, 
 imply the same ideals and qualities, and 
 seek to accomplish the same ends. “The 
 strongest part of our religion today,” 
 
 98 
 
wrote Matthew Arnold some thirty years 
 ago, “is its unconscious poetry.” And the 
 saying, some one has added, might have 
 been reversed to read that the strongest 
 part of the poetry of the day was its 
 unconscious religion. What Matthew 
 Arnold wrote a generation ago we see a 
 poet like Alfred Noyes re-affirm today, 
 and a philosopher like Mr. Santayana 
 ~seek to demonstrate. Poetry and Relig- 
 ion, the latter tells us, differ only in the 
 way in which they are attached to practi- 
 cal affairs: “internal poetry is religion, 
 and external religion, poetry.” Thus, men 
 of insight time and again have indicated 
 the essential kinship of Poetry and Relig- 
 ion, thanks to certain qualities which are 
 common to both and by which they have 
 been most useful to human life. 
 
 What are some of these qualities shared 
 by Poetry and Religion? 
 
 First, they both appeal to the imagina- 
 tion and demand the cultivation of the 
 imagination: neither Poetry nor Religion 
 is possible without it. If a Shakespeare 
 
 99 
 
or a Homer or a Goethe is impossible 
 without the power of imagination, so is a 
 Moses, an Isaiah, or an Amos; and if no 
 man can appreciate the products of 
 Poetry without the exercise of imagina- 
 tion, neither can one without it appreciate 
 the message and the purpose of Religion. 
 
 Then, comes sympathy, which is a 
 quality essential both to Poetry and Re- 
 ligion. What made Burns, the humble 
 young peasant, into a poet of Nature and 
 Humanity? What enabled Wordsworth 
 to sing the joys and sorrows of people of 
 all classes? What gave Browning his 
 vast array of themes? The quality of 
 sympathy. And without this quality 
 Hosea could not have spoken concerning 
 God’s love for Israel, Ezekiel could not 
 have dedicated his life to the consolation 
 and restoration of his people, Amos could 
 not have thundered forth his demands in 
 behalf of the poor and oppressed, and 
 Micah and Isaiah could not have forecast 
 the golden age of peace and happiness for 
 all men. 
 
 100 
 
And, thirdly, Poetry and Religion have 
 in common the mystic feeling of the 
 Beauty, Harmony, Peace that underlies 
 and envelops the universe. “All great 
 poetry, all great art,” says Alfred Noyes, 
 “brings us into touch, into communion, 
 with the harmony which is the basis of 
 the universe, the harmony in which all our 
 discords are resolved. All our great art 
 ‘does this, and this is the one test of its 
 greatness.” And all our great religion, 
 also, does this, and this is the one test of 
 the greatness of Religion. 
 
 In its lesser and lower moments Relig- 
 ion may be concerned with minor ques- 
 tions of duty and advantage; but in its 
 highest moments it seeks to bring us into 
 touch, into communion, with the Har- 
 mony which is the basis of the universe, 
 the harmony in which all our discords are 
 resolved, all our difficulties overcome, all 
 our doubts cleared, all our sorrows are 
 turned into song, all our needs are met. 
 Goethe’s great line “On all summits there 
 is peace’ may serve to symbolise the 
 heights of Poetry and Religion alike: 
 
 101 
 
their highest aim and achievement is the 
 exaltation of the spirit of man to the 
 heights of harmony, tranquility, and 
 repose. 
 
 In the annals of Israel we find manifold 
 evidence of the poetic character and 
 power of Religion. “Thy laws have been 
 my songs in the house of my pilgrimage,” 
 the Psalmist sang long ago. And this is 
 what Religion has meant to the Jew 
 throughout the ages, and in the various 
 stages, of his pilgrimage. How often has ~ 
 not life been broken for him by failure 
 and suffering, how often has he not been 
 perplexed by calamity and doubt, how 
 often was he not brought to the very 
 brink of despair! Yet, he was saved, 
 comforted, fortified, restored, by Religion 
 —with its hopes, its compassion, and its 
 prophetic vision. Storms might rage, 
 malice and cruelty might grow beyond 
 measure, evil might spring ever anew 
 from the ground—but he is invincible, 
 because in his heart and in his home, in 
 his synagogue and in his soul, there con- 
 tinues to shine the radiance of Religion. 
 
 102 
 
“He who maketh peace in His heights,” 
 the Jew has kept on affirming, “He shall 
 make peace for us and for all Israel!” 
 
 For the sake of the qualities which they 
 have in common, we need both Poetry and 
 Religion in our modern life. Unfortu- 
 nately, it is just these qualities we are in 
 danger of losing nowadays; yet we must 
 _ admit that their loss means an impover- 
 ishment of life. What is life without the 
 play and reach of the imagination? What 
 is life without sympathy? What is life 
 without the faculty of feeling that behind 
 the cold facts of the visible world, behind 
 its discords and tribulations, behind its 
 cries and woes, there is a higher Reality, 
 an eternal Order, a sweeter Harmony and 
 Peace? Elihu felt the need of this deeper 
 perception and nobler yearning: Oh, he 
 said, I know there are those full of right- 
 eous indignation at the abuses of the 
 world, those that cry out against evil and 
 oppression, those that protest against 
 wrongdoing and crime, and think that is 
 all there is to religious effort; but who is 
 there crying out for God the Maker, 
 
 103 
 
yearning for Him that giveth songs in the 
 night, longing for Him who makes us 
 wiser than beast and fowl? It is-this 
 deeper sense of Religion, its poetic ele- 
 ment, we are in peril of losing these days; 
 yet, we need it most. 
 
 For, in the first place, our life has 
 become very prosaic. We have banished 
 imagination not only from our serious 
 pursuits, but even from our amusements. 
 Take the theatre, for example: its glaring 
 fault is neglect of the imagination; and 
 this has brought other evils in its train. 
 Poets like Mr. Synge and Mr. Yeats are 
 not the only ones clamoring for a restora- 
 tion of the imagination to the English 
 stage. Moreover, in the hurry and ab- 
 sorption of our modern industrial life our 
 sympathies are dulled, and civilization is 
 ever more in danger of becoming selfish, 
 which, of course, means the loss of all the 
 gains of civilization and an unconscious 
 return to barbarism. It is the growth of 
 sympathy that has marked the advance 
 of civilization; the diminution of sym- 
 pathy means deterioration. And, lastly, 
 
 104 
 
our latter-day worship of facts, our ab- 
 sorption in the visible world, is only too 
 apt to blind us to the supreme fact that 
 material facts do not explain everything 
 nor constitute everything, that the world 
 we can see and touch does not answer all 
 our needs nor satisfy all our desires, and 
 that there is many a moment when our 
 - heart cries out for something that lies 
 away beyond the mere facts that sur- 
 round us. 
 
 The decay of insight, the diminution of 
 sympathy, the banishment of the imagin- 
 ation are the perils of our modern life. 
 In order to counteract them we need the 
 two great kindred forces that have made 
 for the increase of sympathy, imagina- 
 tion, and insight—Poetry and Religion, 
 two forces which in reality are one, which 
 sometimes by diverse paths and often by 
 the same path have led men up to the 
 summit of the hill of the Lord. 
 
 105 
 
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XII 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL ELEMENT IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 “And Moses went out to meet his father- 
 in-law, and bowed down and kissed him; 
 and they asked each other of their welfare; 
 and they came into the tent.” 
 
 —Exodus 18, ". 
 
 HE story of Jethro and of his meet- 
 | Pee with Moses is, in some ways, one 
 
 of the most important chapters in 
 the Bible. Not only does it relate a very 
 interesting incident in the life of Moses, 
 but it reminds us, also, of the universal 
 element in the Jewish religion, a remin- 
 der particularly desirable, I believe, at 
 the present time. 
 
 Among sensible people we find just 
 now a great craving for unity—for 
 something to harmonize and knit to- 
 gether the different groups of the human 
 family. There is so much division and 
 conflict in the world—so much trouble 
 and suffering brought forth by diverse 
 differences rampant among men—that 
 
 107 
 
the heart of all friends of humanity 
 yearns for means of unification. If 
 Religion, however, is to contribute to- 
 wards such an end, it must be of a 
 universalistic nature—its tone and trend 
 must be comprehensive. Is Judaism such 
 a religion? Does it possess the universal 
 quality? Some say No, and they would 
 have none of it. They regard Judaism 
 as a narrow, tribal, national creed. But 
 those who really know the soul and the 
 story of Judaism will be loath to accept 
 such a view. 
 
 That Judaism is strong in the univer- 
 sal quality, we know, first of all, from its 
 teaching about God, the world, and man. 
 One God—one Creation—one humanity 
 —and one divine goal for all men: this 
 is the real burden of the Bible. The 
 account of the Creation in the Bible may 
 not be in the manner of modern scientific 
 authors, but this in no way affects the 
 spirit and the idealism behind it. The 
 teaching of unity permeating it—this is 
 what counts: all men have the same an- 
 cestry, created divinely. 
 
 108 
 
Similarly, in the story of Jethro there 
 is much to consider. Jethro is a non- 
 Jew. He is a priest of Midian. Yet 
 what do we find? He is a friend of 
 Moses, his father-in-law, and he con- 
 verses with Moses intimately about the 
 religious concerns and destiny of Israel. 
 Wayobehu ha-ohelo: they came together 
 into the tent—the tent of the Torah. 
 The Prophet of Israel and the priest of 
 Midian are friends. There is nothing in 
 Judaism to prevent this. Indeed, the 
 whole hope of the Jewish religion is that 
 some day such friendship would embrace 
 all mankind. The day will come, say the 
 Rabbis, when all the nations shall realize 
 that God clings to Israel and they shall 
 join Israel in worship. ‘On that day (as 
 the Jewish Prophet has predicted) the 
 Lord shall be One and His name shall 
 be One.” 
 
 Careful reading of the Jethro story, 
 moreover, will reveal another side of the 
 universal quality of the Jewish religion. 
 It is its readiness to learn from every- 
 body, to welcome Truth, no matter 
 
 109 
 
whence it may come. Jethro, we are 
 told, taught Moses an important lesson 
 in regard to the administration and edu- 
 cation of the people. Some modern 
 interpreters would even have us believe 
 that the very name of the Deity Moses 
 got from Jethro. Anyway, the Bible 
 tells us that the idea of the elders, or 
 judges, which was destined to become an. 
 important Jewish institution, Moses got 
 from the Midianite priest. This illus- 
 trates the readiness with which Judaism 
 at all times has taken suggestions and 
 ideas from other sources, incorporating 
 them into its own system of truth and 
 idealism. 
 
 Some critics have sought to depict this 
 as a sign of Judaism’s inferiority, or lack 
 of originality, as did Frederic Delitzsch, 
 who died the other day. Because certain 
 stories found in the Bible are found also, 
 albeit in crude, primitive form, in Baby- 
 lonian literature, Professor Delitzsch 
 wanted us to believe that there was no 
 originality in the Bible. But one might 
 as well deny originality and poetic merit 
 
 110 
 
to Shakespeare, because Hamlet and 
 Macbeth and the rest of his dramas were 
 based on some old chronicles. No—its 
 very readiness to learn from all, is one 
 indication of the universal quality of 
 Judaism—its aliveness to the Divine 
 presence everywhere and its perception 
 of the spiritual implications of other 
 men’s traditions and gropings. When 
 * the Lord revealed Himself to give the 
 Torah to Israel, say the Rabbis, He ap- 
 peared to them not from one quarter but 
 from all four quarters. This is why we 
 read in the Bible, they said, “The Lord 
 came from Sinai—He rose unto them 
 from Seir—He shone forth from the 
 mountain of Paran,” and why Habakkuk 
 added: “God cometh from Teman.” From 
 all parts, from diverse cultures and 
 philosophies, Judaism has gathered re- 
 ligious inspiration, remaining true, how- 
 ever, always to its own central wisdom 
 and supreme purpose. 
 
 And, finally, we must not forget the 
 influence Judaism has exercised on the 
 outside world. This is another proof of 
 its universalism. 
 
 111 
 
What makes for the universality of a 
 work of literature or art? It is this: 
 that while it was created for its own 
 time and place, it contains something 
 which appeals to the people of all ages 
 and places. This is the secret of the 
 universality of Dante’s Divine Comedy, 
 of Shakespeare’s King Lear, of Goethe’s 
 Faust. Each was written for a particu- 
 lar age and public; yet it is full of mean- 
 ing to this very day, for readers of all 
 kinds and places. This is true of all 
 great works of art, whether in painting 
 or music or poetry. They combine in 
 their appeal the particular with the 
 universal, the immediate with the per- 
 ennial. 
 
 The same is true of Judaism. While 
 Judaism was meant primarily for the 
 Jew, its outlook was upon the world. The 
 Prophets prophesied not only upon 
 Israel, but upon all the peoples round 
 about. The Psalmists wrote for all men. 
 “In thy offspring shall all the children of 
 the earth be blessed”: such was the 
 promise and the command to the first 
 
 112 
 
Jew of history, Abraham—and a recent 
 non-Jewish writer in The Hibbert Jour- 
 nal rightly calls it the first teaching of 
 universalism on record, as well as the 
 foundation, the starting-point, of all 
 subsequent teaching of this nature. 
 
 It is a gross error to think of Judaism 
 as a religion intended solely for the Jew. 
 “Tt is too light a thing,” says Isaiah, 
 “that thou shouldst be My servant to 
 raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to 
 restore the offspring of Israel: I will also 
 give thee for a light of the nations, that 
 My salvation may be unto the end of the 
 earth.” 
 
 The destination of Judaism is the 
 whole world. This is, according to the 
 Rabbis, why the Torah was given in the 
 wilderness. As the wilderness is free to 
 all, so the Torah. Had the Torah been 
 given in the land of Israel, the other 
 peoples might have thought it was not 
 intended for them as well as for Israel. 
 It is meant for all nations, though they 
 have not yet realized it fully. Even the 
 
 113 
 
sanctuary in Jerusalem, the Rabbis 
 remind us, was designed not merely for 
 the Jews, but also for other peoples, as, 
 indeed, is stated in Solomon’s Prayer of 
 Dedication. This is why the Rabbis say 
 that had the nations known how much 
 the Temple meant to them, they would 
 have built towers round about it in order 
 to protect it. 
 
 Contrary to what some people main- 
 tain, the Rabbis did not confine the privi- 
 leges and benefits of Judaism to their 
 own people. “Even a non-Jew,” they 
 affirmed, “who occupies himself with the 
 Torah is equal to a high priest,” for, 
 they pointed out, with reference to the 
 Divine commandments, it is written in 
 Leviticus (18, 5): “Which if a man do, he 
 shall live by them.” Does it say, if a 
 priest do them? Or a Levite? Or even 
 an Israelite? No! It says: If a man do 
 them. The Torah is called Torath Ha-adam: 
 “Man’s Torah.” (J/ Samuel 7,19). Any 
 man of no matter what origin may em- 
 brace the Torah and obtain its benefits. 
 Righteousness is open to all. It does not 
 
 114 
 
depend upon descent. A man could not 
 become a priest, say the Rabbis, unless 
 he belonged to the family of Aaron; nor 
 could be become a Levite, unless he be- 
 longed to that tribe. But if he wants to 
 become a God-fearing man—adopt the 
 Torah—it matters not whence he sprang. 
 Though he be a non-Jew, he may do so: 
 im mebagesh adam leheyoth tsaddiq aphilu goy 
 ' yakhol hu. This is why the Psalmist says 
 (Psalms 135, 19): “O house of Israel, bless 
 ye the Lord: O house of Aaron, bless ye 
 the Lord! O house of Levi, bless ye the 
 Lord!” But when he calls on those that 
 fear the Lord, he does not mention their 
 family, their house: “Ye that fear the 
 Lord, bless ye the Lord!” 
 
 God loves the stranger, according to 
 the Talmud. He is solicitous for their 
 welfare and they are as important as 
 Israel—ha-gerim igar hem ke-Yisrael. The 
 Jew should be especially considerate of 
 the stranger who adopts Judaism, the 
 Rabbis have taught, and treat him lov- 
 ingly. There was a king, they say, who 
 had a large flock of sheep. Presently a 
 
 115 
 
deer came and joined the sheep in their 
 pasture. When the king discovered it, 
 he instructed the shepherds to take 
 special care of the deer, which surprised 
 the shepherds very much. But the king 
 said, It is not customary for a deer to 
 leave its own wild haunts and to come 
 to live with sheep, as this deer has done. 
 Therefore, we must take special care of 
 it. Similarly, the Jew must be particu- 
 larly considerate of the non-Jew, who 
 has left his own kith and kin and his own 
 creed in order to embrace the Torah. 
 
 Judaism has influenced innumerable 
 teachers, dreamers, and idealists outside 
 Israel—all through the ages. And this 
 offers undeniable testimony to its uni- 
 versal quality. 
 
 There is today a widespread craving 
 for the universal element in Religion. 
 This we have in Judaism—in its teach- 
 ing, in its attitude to Truth, in its in- 
 fluence. All we need is to cherish its 
 doctrine and to live according to its 
 direction. Thus, we shall add to the 
 beauty and benefit of the world. 
 
 116 
 

 
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