Cibrarp of Che 'theological ^eroinarp 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 John Stuart Conning, D.D. 
 
 DS 141 .E63 1921 
 Enelow, H. G. 1877-1934. 
 The Jew and the world 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 ASPECTS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 THE JEWISH LIFE 
 
 THE SYNAGOGUE IN MODERN LIFE 
 
 THE VARIED BEAUTY OF THE PSALMS 
 
 THE i 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 
 
The Jew 
 and the World 
 
 JPy 
 
 H. G. ENELOW 
 
 BLOCH PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 1921 
 

 
 
 ■ 
 
 . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 * 
 
 - 
 
 - • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .. 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
TO 
 
 Mr. LOUIS MARSHALL 
 
 FAITHFUL AND FEARLESS CHAMPION 
 OF THE JEW IN THE WORLD 
 
“Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among 
 thorns! ”— Jeremiah. 
 
 “Under the green foliage and blossoming fruit- 
 trees of Today, there lie forests of all other Years 
 and Days.”— Carlyle. 
 
 “Every true history is contemporary history.” 
 
 —Benedetto Croce. 
 
 “We cannot know how much we learn 
 From those who never will return, 
 
 Until a flash of unforeseen 
 Remembrance falls on what has been.” 
 
 —Edwin A. Robinson. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I Jacob, or the Question of Jewish 
 
 Characteristics. 13 
 
 II Moses, or the Jew's Service to the 
 
 World . 23 
 
 III Amalek, or the World's Hostility 
 
 toward the Jew. 33 
 
 IV Is Jesus the Light of the World?. 41 
 
 V The Universal Importance of Ibn 
 
 Gebirol . 51 
 
 VI The Jewish Interest of Dante. 63 
 
 VII The Pilgrims and the Jews. 75 
 
 VIII Napoleon, or the Place of the Jew 
 
 in the Modern World. 85 
 
 IX Adolph Jellinek, or the Ideal of a 
 
 Modern Rabbi . 97 
 
 X The Jew and the World. 107 
 

I 
 
 JACOB 
 
 . OR THE QUESTION 
 OF JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 “He said unto me: ‘Thou art My ser¬ 
 vant, Israel, in whom I will be glori¬ 
 fied/ ”—Isaiah 49, 3. 
 
 T HE stories of the Jewish Patri¬ 
 archs, which fill the first book of 
 the Bible, often have been said to 
 typify Jewish history and Jewish char¬ 
 acter. In fact, the ancient rabbis antici¬ 
 pated the modern critic. “The lives of 
 the fathers”, they maintained, “repeated 
 themselves in their offspring.” And this 
 is particularly true of the story of Jacob. 
 In it we see a foreshadowing, a summa¬ 
 tion, of Jewish history, a portrayal of 
 the Jewish character. 
 
 But is there such a thing as a distinct 
 Jewish character, and, if so, what are its 
 dominant traits? This is a question we 
 might well try to answer at present, see¬ 
 ing that the world is full of all kinds of 
 affirmations, both friendly and hostile, 
 concerning the characteristics of the 
 Jew. 
 
 13 
 
A careful observer will have to admit 
 that physically there are no universal 
 Jewish characteristics. 
 
 Of course, some men still believe that 
 all Jews belong to the same physical 
 type. But scientific students have aban¬ 
 doned long ago the notion of a uniform 
 Jewish type. Indeed, few (if any) an¬ 
 thropologists believe that there is such a 
 thing as a pure Jewish race. The word 
 race, as far as the Jews are concerned, 
 has chiefly an historical meaning: the 
 Jews are one race, because for thousands 
 of years they have had a common his¬ 
 tory, resulting in certain psychic peculi¬ 
 arities. Physically, however, the Jews 
 have not been secluded. From the very 
 beginning they have lost and gained by 
 contact with the world. Even in the 
 ghetto they could not escape their sur¬ 
 roundings. They are not a biologic curi¬ 
 osity. 
 
 Contrary to the common assumption, 
 all Jews do not look alike. They have been 
 influenced by climate and environment. 
 Some Jews have preserved the Semitic 
 type, others look Germanic, or Slavic, or 
 Italian, or American. Indeed, some years 
 
 14 
 
ago, in China, a community of Jews was 
 discovered who looked exactly like the 
 Chinese; their synagogue and its wor¬ 
 ship alone stamped them as Jews. Only 
 recently, the inscriptions on the walls of 
 their synagogue at Kai-fung-foo, as well 
 as two tablets discovered there, were 
 published in an English translation, 
 throwing light upon their history and 
 patriotism, as well as upon the high con¬ 
 ception of the spiritual and moral impli¬ 
 cates of their religion that prevailed 
 among them. 
 
 Nor are the mental characteristics of 
 the Jews uniform. 
 
 Careful students, time and again, 
 have expressed the difficulty of forming 
 a definite judgment on the character of 
 a nation or of a people; though the in¬ 
 cautious person is most ready to make 
 general pronouncements. “What people, 
 for example,” asks M. Finot, “has been 
 more studied than the ancient Greeks? 
 Yet in spite of all the sides of its life 
 thus opened to our gaze, we are unable 
 to furnish an exact definition of its 
 soul.” According to Renan, the Greeks 
 
 15 
 
were the least religious people in the 
 world. According to Fustel de Coulan- 
 ges, the Greek life incarnated the reli¬ 
 gious life par excellence. 
 
 The same certainly may be said of the 
 Jews. Hasty theorists are fond of gen¬ 
 eralizing about them. Whether their ut¬ 
 terances cohere does not seem to matter. 
 The Jews have been alternately styled 
 socialists and individualists, legalists 
 and anarchists, particularists and inter¬ 
 nationalists, radicals and ultra-conserva¬ 
 tives. The more one knows about the 
 Jews, however, the more one will hesi¬ 
 tate to attribute to all Jews the same 
 mental qualities. 
 
 For example, some people hold that all 
 Jews are materialists and shrewd money 
 makers. Yet, even a tyro in Jewish his¬ 
 tory could name many a Jew; who was 
 anything but that. Surely, Jeremiah 
 was not a materialist, nor a shrewd bus¬ 
 iness man; nor was Jesus; nor was Ab¬ 
 raham Ibn Ezra, the medieval poet and 
 philosopher, who was so poor and withal 
 so unlucky as to say of himself that if 
 
 16 
 
he dealt in candles the sun would cease 
 setting, and if he dealt in shrouds, 
 people would die no more; nor was Spi¬ 
 noza an unconscionable capitalist. Yet 
 they were all born and bred as Jews; 
 and Jewish history is full of men of 
 their type, though not of equal celebrity. 
 
 Even so careful a writer as Mr. Have¬ 
 lock Ellis, in the Introduction to his book 
 on The New Spirit, speaks of “that most 
 material Hebrew race.” Yet, he pro¬ 
 ceeds forthwith to clothe some of his 
 own exalted thoughts in language bor¬ 
 rowed from the Bible of that race. Ad¬ 
 vising us to set our shoulder joyously to 
 the world’s wheel, he assures us that we 
 shall spare ourselves some unhappiness, 
 if beforehand we slip the book of Ec¬ 
 clesiastes beneath our arm, and, in fine, 
 he depicts Heinrich Heine as the most 
 characteristic and melodious exponent 
 of the new spirit, to whom he feels him¬ 
 self drawn with cords of a peculiar per¬ 
 sonal tenderness, and whose ideal, Mr. 
 Ellis says, was the harmony of flesh and 
 spirit, meaning by flesh the Greek ele¬ 
 ment, and by spirit, the Hebrew element, 
 in life. If from the pages of so con- 
 
 17 
 
scientious a champion of the scientific 
 spirit such incongruities stare at us, 
 what, pray, shall we expect from those 
 less trained to logic? “Words,” says 
 Siegfried Sassoon, 
 
 “Words are fools 
 
 Who follow blindly, once they get a lead. 
 
 But thoughts are kingfishers that haunt the pools 
 
 Of quiet.” 
 
 The fact is that originally the Jew 
 was a farmer, and not a merchant. In 
 Palestine the Jews remained an agricul¬ 
 tural people to the end. Though their 
 country was on the main trade route of 
 the ancient world, they never became a 
 commercial people. The Prophets in¬ 
 veighed against the spread of commer¬ 
 cialism and against the worship of 
 wealth, denouncing them as foreign im¬ 
 portations. Conditions of life gradually 
 turned Jews into merchants, and even 
 then capacity for business neither be¬ 
 came their chief mental characteristic, 
 nor served to make them the only great 
 merchants of the world. In the Middle 
 Ages, though some imagine that the 
 Jews were nothing but a crowd of 
 money-lenders, they engaged in diverse 
 
 18 
 
trades and professions, according as 
 they were allowed so to do, while all the 
 world knows, or ought to know, that 
 during those dark centuries they pro¬ 
 duced an endless number of rabbis, 
 scientists, and philosophers, many of 
 whom rendered eminent service to so¬ 
 ciety as well as the sciences. And today, 
 too, neither are all Jews rich merchants, 
 nor are all the rich merchants Jews. 
 
 i * - ' . 
 
 I 
 
 Is there, then, any particular quality 
 that stamps the Jew as Jew—that forms 
 a universal and permanent characteris¬ 
 tic of the Jewish people? 
 
 Yes, there is. It is the spiritual ideal¬ 
 ism of the Jew. “The universal religion 
 of mankind,” exclaims Edouard Schure, 
 the French mystic, “was the true mis¬ 
 sion of Israel!” “Though few Jews seem 
 to know it,” he adds complainingly. But 
 how many non-Jews know it? 
 
 This is what set the Jew apart from 
 his neighbor at the very beginning of 
 his history. He separated from the rest 
 of the Semitic world because of his spir¬ 
 itual conceptions, of his religious pur¬ 
 pose. In this sense, as some one has said, 
 
 19 
 
 * 
 
he was the first anti-Semite, in that he 
 opposed the religious ideas and practices 
 of the other Semites. And nothing but 
 steadfast and intrepid adherence to his 
 spiritual idealism has preserved the 
 Jew in the world. Nor is there anything 
 but this to stamp the Jew as Jew. The 
 more loyal a Jew is to the spiritual pur¬ 
 poses of Israel, the more true a Jew he 
 is. When he abandons that spiritual 
 idealism, he ceases to be a Jew—or a 
 factor in the preservation of the Jewish 
 people. 
 
 This is the inward meaning of the life 
 of Jacob as portrayed in the early 
 stories of the Bible. He is not presented 
 as a perfect man—of course not. Not 
 one of the heroes of the Jewish Bible 
 is so presented. He is human. Before he 
 attains to spiritual grandeur and ethical 
 power, he has to pass through suffering 
 and struggle, through sin and servitude 
 and strife (as all other saints have had 
 to do). But from the very outset he is 
 the man of spiritual intuition and ethi¬ 
 cal capacity. Ya’aqob ish tarn yoshebh oha- 
 lim. Jacob, said the rabbis, was devoted 
 
 20 
 
to the tents of tradition and study, or, 
 as Don Isaac Abravanel construed it, to 
 mental and moral self-perfection. 
 
 Similarly, the Jew of history may not 
 be perfect—may have had to struggle 
 and to suffer as the price of his gran¬ 
 deur. But from the very start he has 
 stood out pre-eminent for his spiritual 
 capacity and ethical idealism, and inso¬ 
 far as he has imbued civilization with 
 his ethical and spiritual ideal, he has 
 been the benefactor of mankind. “Of all 
 ancient races,” says Professor Genung, 
 “the Hebrew race was pre-eminent for 
 the depth, the clearness, the intensity of 
 its spiritual intuitions”; “and this,” he 
 adds “was their undying gift to human¬ 
 ity.” 
 
 And this is our great task today. We 
 have still to suffer and to fight. Still we 
 encounter misunderstanding ana mis¬ 
 representation. But let us remain true 
 to our spiritual heritage, let us cham¬ 
 pion and cherish our historical ideals, 
 and, like Jacob of old, we shall prevail 
 with God and Man! 
 
 21 
 
II 
 
 MOSES, 
 
 OR THE 
 
 JEW’S SERVICE TO THE WORLD 
 
 “This people I formed for Myself that 
 they might set forth My praise.” 
 
 —Isaiah 43, 21. 
 
 I T is a question of perennial import 
 whether the Jew has really rendered 
 any substantial service to mankind, 
 and if so, what this service has been. An 
 answer is offered by the personality 
 which looms up before us at the threshold 
 of Jewish history—the personality of 
 Moses, who may well be regarded as the 
 symbol of the Jew’s work and as the 
 embodiment of the Jew’s mission in the 
 world. 
 
 In the last few years we have wit¬ 
 nessed a great change in men’s attitude 
 to Moses. 
 
 A generation ago it was fashionable 
 to disparage his work, and even to ques¬ 
 tion his existence. The so-called higher 
 critics found but little room for him in 
 their compositions. When Rabbi Isaac 
 
 23 
 
M. Wise was wont to extol Moses, he 
 was considered unlearned and old-fogey. 
 
 But we have lived to see a reaction 
 from those views. People are turning- 
 their attention anew to Moses—they are 
 studying the various manifestations of 
 his genius—they are writing new books 
 on his outstanding qualities as social or¬ 
 ganizer, as legislator, as strategist, and 
 as “the father of preventive medicine.” 
 They are finding out afresh that he was 
 as great a man and leader as the world 
 has known. 
 
 Yet, if we tried to sum up in one word 
 the achievement of Moses, we might say 
 that it lay in what he did for the 
 triumph of true Religion in the world. 
 
 The rabbis say that when the Holy 
 One created the world, He was eager to 
 have a dwelling on earth as well as in 
 heaven. But the errors and misdeeds of 
 human beings caused Him to move His 
 Presence farther and farther away from 
 them. When Abraham arose, he began 
 to draw the Divine Presence back tow¬ 
 ard mankind, until finally Moses brought 
 it down to the earth: “And the Lord 
 came down upon Mount Sinai.” 
 
 24 ' 
 
Thus the rabbis expressed what mod¬ 
 ern scholars again are learning to de¬ 
 scribe as the great merit of Moses. He 
 saved Religion for the world, Religion 
 which had indeed sprung up among the 
 ancestors of the Jewish people, but re¬ 
 quired new energy and direction, in or¬ 
 der not to perish from the earth. Moses, 
 says Edouard Schure, made Israel the 
 instrument of the universal religion he 
 sought to diffuse and perpetuate among 
 men. Thus, when Moses defeated Pha¬ 
 raoh and saved Israel, he became not 
 merely the leader of his own people buc 
 the benefactor of the human race. 
 
 Moreover, the religion of Moses pos¬ 
 sessed special characteristics, which he 
 accentuated and which, undoubtedly, 
 have had their effect upon the Jewish 
 character and upon the history of the 
 human race. 
 
 The religion of Moses was founded, 
 first of all, upon the doctrine of freedom. 
 Liberty, taught Moses, was not merely a 
 political or economic question: it was a 
 religious question—a Divine concern. 
 There is something thrilling and sublime 
 
 25 
 
about the story of Moses's mission, as 
 related in the book of Exodus. Moses 
 discovers the God of his ancestors and 
 the demand of freedom simultaneously. 
 God’s voice and liberty’s voice are one. 
 It is God that tells Moses of His own 
 sympathy with the enslaved people, and 
 sends Moses to free them. Hotse eth ammi 
 me-Mitsrayim. “Bring forth my people 
 from Egypt!”—this is the first com¬ 
 mand he receives. 
 
 Is there any other founder of a reli¬ 
 gion in which the motives of divinity 
 and liberty are so wholly blended to¬ 
 gether? And was this a mere accident? 
 By no means. The same note rings 
 through the entire structure of Moses’s 
 religion. Liberty—it is part of divinity, 
 part of Religion. Man is made free, and 
 free he must remain. One only is Mas¬ 
 ter—God: Him ye shall serve, but ye 
 shall not serve Pharaoh; ye shall not be 
 slaves! 
 
 The passion for freedom, as part of 
 the creation and the constitution of 
 man, which throbs through all moni¬ 
 tions of Moses, has become part of the 
 
 26 
 
influence exerted by Moses upon the Jew 
 and upon other races of mankind. In¬ 
 deed, his name has become a synonym for 
 liberty. 
 
 Yet the same lover and apostle of 
 freedom also spoke of the conditions 
 needful to its preservation. In the teach¬ 
 ing of Moses there was no confusion of 
 liberty and license. There must be law, 
 in order that liberty might live. 
 
 Oh, how many have not misjudged 
 and belittled Judaism on the ground that 
 it laid too much stress on law! Judaism 
 is legalism, they cry, and who wants 
 that kind of religion? But the deeper 
 the experience of mankind, the more it 
 realizes the need of law as a means of 
 preserving freedom—law for the indi¬ 
 vidual, law for nations, law for human¬ 
 ity. Throw off all laws, and you end by 
 losing freedom. 
 
 Is not this the lesson which the her¬ 
 oine of Miss Stern’s story “Debatable 
 Ground” is taught by her long and var¬ 
 ied experience? Many years she has 
 spent spurning tradition, law, restraint. 
 
 27 
 
She has sought to be “modern.” But her 
 own experience has opened her eyes to 
 the need of laws, guidance, standards of 
 conduct, for the sake of true freedom 
 and felicity. Her young daughter, she de¬ 
 clares, she means to bring up in the old 
 way, with a realization of right and 
 wrong, good and bad, with signposts 
 wherever she may stop and wonder. She 
 will not hesitate to lay down rules, to 
 ask questions, to forbid, and to be 
 shocked whenever there is cause for be¬ 
 ing shocked. She will not allow her 
 daughter to grow up stumbling for¬ 
 wards and backwards in a spiritual 
 twilight. 
 
 Moses was a great religious teacher, 
 because he saw this. Emancipator he 
 was; but also lawgiver; the two parts 
 went together. The one was for the sake 
 of the other, and both together for the 
 good and glory of mankind. Heruth 
 (freedom) and Haruth (engraved upon 
 the Tables of the Law), the rabbis re¬ 
 mind us, are spelt alike. The Hebrew 
 consonants are the same; only the 
 vowels differ. Law and Liberty are 
 rooted together. 
 
 28 
 
Nor will the true student of Moses’s 
 religion overlook another of its features, 
 though it has often been denied. The 
 religion of Moses was founded on love. 
 
 Of course, one often hears the con¬ 
 trary assertion. Time and again one 
 hears it affirmed that the religion of 
 Moses was a religion of fear—of intimi¬ 
 dation—of punishment, and that the 
 Jews never knew of love as a factor in 
 Religion until Jesus came. It horrifies 
 some of our modern apostles to speak of 
 Moses in this connection. 
 
 A foreign bishop, addressing a large 
 group of clergymen the other day, and 
 unaware, no doubt, of the presence of a 
 rabbi, dwelt on his observations of reli¬ 
 gious life in this country. One thing, he 
 said, amazed him, namely, that in Amer¬ 
 ica Christian ministers sometimes speak 
 of the religion of Moses and of other 
 religions in wellnigh the same terms of 
 respect as of the religion of Jesus. Such 
 conduct this bishop, who by his hosts 
 was hailed as a veritable prophet of 
 spirituality, regarded as most lament¬ 
 able and dangerous. 
 
 29 
 
Yet it is strange that Jesus himself 
 showed no such dread of the precepts of 
 Moses. When he was asked to define 
 Religion, he used verses from Moses. 
 And what was the leading word in those 
 verses? Love! “Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God!” “Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor!” These utterances of Moses, 
 Jesus told his disciple, are the essence of 
 Religion. 
 
 Indeed, Moses founded his Religion 
 on love. But it was not the love of a 
 sentimentalist who ignores the facts of 
 life and the laws that must govern con¬ 
 duct ; it was the love of a strong man, in 
 which mind and conscience have a part, 
 as well as emotion. 
 
 And this is the chief service of the 
 Jew to the world. He gave Religion to 
 mankind—founded on liberty, fortified 
 by law, and suffused with love. Moses 
 stands out as the everlasting symbol of 
 that service. 
 
 And the world still needs this kind of 
 Religion. We of today need such a Reli¬ 
 gion as Moses taught. Liberty—law— 
 love! How much the world needs them! 
 
 30 
 
Religion, rather than idolatry, true Reli¬ 
 gion—is there anything we need more 
 than this? At such a time let us hearken 
 afresh to the voice of Moses, and let us 
 make it heard among men! 
 
 31 
 
Ill 
 
 AMALEK, 
 
 OR THE WORLD’S 
 HOSTILITY TOWARD THE JEW 
 
 (For Purim ) 
 
 '‘But even in those days, saith the Lord, 
 
 I will not make a full end with you.” 
 
 —Jeremiah 5, 18. 
 
 T HE Sabbath preceding the feast of 
 Purim is called the Sabbath of Re¬ 
 membrance. From time immemorial 
 it has served as an occasion for recalling 
 the strange vicissitudes of Jewish his¬ 
 tory, and especially the many outbreaks 
 of hostility which, ever since the days of 
 Amalek, have been directed against the 
 Jew. Thus it formed a proper prelude 
 to Purim—in some ways the most typi¬ 
 cal of Jewish festivals. 
 
 But at present Purim takes on a new 
 meaning. It reminds us not merely of 
 old battles and woes, but also of what 
 is going on right now, round about us 
 and all over the world, of the new burst 
 of antipathy from which the Jew has 
 had to suffer—of the tens of thousands 
 who have been overwhelmed by the new 
 
 33 
 
wave of hatred. Under the circum¬ 
 stances, Purim does not only derive sig¬ 
 nificance from the past; it has a new 
 meaning. 
 
 But the Sabbath of Remembrance, 
 also, has a new meaning. It bids us re¬ 
 member, even more than the assaults of 
 the Amaleks of all the ages, the qualities 
 we need in order to face the present sit¬ 
 uation manfully, in a way worthy of 
 those who have fallen heir to the glori¬ 
 ous exemplars of the Jewish past. 
 
 It would be even harder to understand 
 the present-day persecution of the Jews 
 if we did not consider the general con¬ 
 dition of mankind. 
 
 The fact is that the whole world is 
 sick—suffering materially and spiritual¬ 
 ly. Since the Armistice, there has been 
 not only political and economic collapse; 
 there has been a frightful spiritual con¬ 
 fusion. Mankind has come down from 
 the heights of idealism. There is misery 
 all over the world, and, as always has 
 happened in such cases, the Jew is suf¬ 
 fering most. This is one thing History 
 
 34 
 
(to which in these days of perplexity so 
 many are turning for counsel) bids us 
 remember: the Jew has always suffered 
 most—in times of calamity, of misfor¬ 
 tune, he has had to bear the heaviest 
 burdens. Always he has been the Suffer¬ 
 ing Servant, as Isaiah called him. And 
 true to his history, in spite of our expec¬ 
 tations during the war, the Jew is suf¬ 
 fering most now. 
 
 So much the more do we need to re¬ 
 member the lessons of Purim. For Pu- 
 rim tells us, first of all, to remain true 
 and loyal—to cling to our convictions. 
 
 What is behind this long and check¬ 
 ered history of the Jew? Why has he 
 been persecuted and why has he per¬ 
 severed? Behind it all there is only one 
 cause—his faith, his religious beliefs 
 and ideals, whatever the world may say 
 to the contrary. It is related by the rab¬ 
 bis that when the Midianites made war 
 on Israel at the very dawn of his history, 
 Moses exclaimed: “0 Lord, if we were 
 heathens or deniers of Deity, they would 
 not hate us; it is because of the Religion 
 Thou gavest us!” And it has been thus 
 ever since. 
 
 35 
 
But the Jew has nothing to be asham¬ 
 ed of—whether in regard to his Religion 
 or his record among the nations. As for 
 his religion, it is well-known that it has 
 formed the fountain of the spiritual life 
 of mankind and the ethical foundation 
 of civilization. And as for his record, 
 the Jew need not fear any competent 
 and honest inquiry, nor need he blush at 
 the results. Let traducers rage and ac¬ 
 cuse the Jew of what crimes their fancy 
 might breed; none the less it remains 
 true that in every country the Jew has 
 been equal to the best in every task of 
 patriotism, sacrifice, and service, and 
 such he has been because of the dictates 
 of his religious convictions. To these 
 convictions Purim bids us remain true. 
 
 And it bids us remain true to them in 
 a spirit of confidence. It bids us hope 
 for ultimate triumph and vindication. 
 Hope, the rabbis have said, is the sole 
 weapon of the Jew, and it is hope, never 
 ending hope, that fits him for redemp¬ 
 tion. En bey ad YIsrael ela ha-kiwuy. Nay, 
 it is the distinctive mark of the Jew, for, 
 as a sixteenth century rabbi puts it, even 
 
 36 
 
in time of trouble he keeps on trusting 
 in the Divine Mercy with all his heart. 
 
 Oh, I know it is hard to speak of a 
 happy future when the present is so 
 clouded. It is hard to speak comfort 
 when the dead lie around us. 
 
 *‘For all can feel the God that smites, 
 
 But oh, how few the God that loves.” 
 
 Still it is one of the advantages of hav¬ 
 ing so glorious a history that it enables 
 us to discern the gleam of a triumphant 
 sun even in a sky heavy with clouds. 
 
 The one lesson of Jewish history is 
 confidence. Time and again, it tells us, 
 the Jew has had to face foes and feuds 
 —from the very days of Egypt and Am- 
 alek: yet he has survived; the others 
 have perished, but he has lived on. The 
 Jew is indestructible. Even God, as the 
 rabbis put it, could not destroy the Jews 
 (as once in the time of Moses He meant 
 to do). This is, add the rabbis, what 
 made Haman’s enterprise so ludicrous. 
 “You remind me,” said the Lord to Ha- 
 man, “of a little bird that got angry at 
 the ocean for washing away its nest and 
 
 37 
 
decided to dry it up with bits of sand! 
 You cannot destroy Israel! Even I could 
 not destroy it!” It is with confidence 
 that we must look to the future, and our 
 history justifies such confidence. 
 
 And to courage and confidence, Purim 
 bids us add another quality—that of 
 conciliation. 
 
 We Jews should contribute what we 
 can toward the conciliation and reconcil¬ 
 iation of the world. There is too much 
 misunderstanding among men today— 
 too much hate—too much panic and 
 fear! There is too much of the spirit of 
 Amalek. The world can never recover 
 health and peace as long as this condi¬ 
 tion lasts. Everybody will suffer, and 
 the Jew along with the rest! As long as 
 the seed of Amalek—the spirit of hate 
 and strife—exists in the world, said an 
 ancient rabbi, neither the Divine Name, 
 nor the Divine Throne, is perfect. Yad al 
 kes Yah: a hostile hand rests on God’s 
 throne; Milhamah YAdonay: there is war 
 upon the Lord. God’s Kingdom cannot 
 be established. 
 
 
 i 
 
 38 
 
 
Men must begin to think of coming 
 together—they must hang together, or 
 they will hang apart! It is for us to de¬ 
 fend ourselves and to defend our faith; 
 but at the same time to seek to bring 
 people together in a spirit of humanity 
 and amity, which is both the heart of 
 Judaism and the only hope of the world. 
 
 Oh that Purim might bring us the 
 spirit of courage, of confidence, and of 
 conciliation! Then shall it continue to 
 fill our lives with “light and gladness, 
 joy and honor.” 
 
 39 
 
. . 
 
IV 
 
 IS JESUS THE LIGHT OF THE 
 
 WORLD? 
 
 (For Christmas Day) 
 
 “Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, 
 the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord 
 thy God, who teacheth thee for thy profit, 
 who leadeth thee by the way that thou 
 shouldest go .”—Isaiah 48, 17-18. 
 
 O N the day which the world round 
 about us observes as the birthday 
 of Jesus, our thoughts naturally 
 turn to that important theme. On such 
 a day Jesus is praised and worshipped 
 all over the globe; millions of men make 
 holiday in his honor, magnifying his 
 name, and proclaiming him as the Light 
 of the World. And the question inevit¬ 
 ably arises in our minds, Has Jesus really 
 been the light of the world for these 
 wellnigh two thousand years, and, what 
 is more, is he actually today the light of 
 the world? 
 
 Some people, no doubt, will say, why 
 should we Jews ask any such question, 
 and what concern is it of ours? But, for 
 
 41 
 
more than one reason, it certainly is of 
 great import to us Jews. 
 
 First, because Jesus himself was a 
 Jew, and no intelligent Jew can be indif¬ 
 ferent to the story of Jesus and his part 
 in the direction and development of 
 mankind. Also, as Jews we are vitally 
 concerned in the religious and ethical 
 growth of the world, and Jesus has come 
 to occupy a central place in that process. 
 And last, but not least, we are interest¬ 
 ed in Jesus because those calling them¬ 
 selves his followers have had much to do 
 with shaping the fortunes (one might 
 say the misfortunes) of the Jewish 
 people. 
 
 If on such a day, when in every church 
 the praise of Jesus is sung and the air 
 is full of chimes telling of his birth, I 
 pause to think and wonder about Jesus, 
 it is not something artificial or academic. 
 On the contrary, it is the most natural 
 thing in the world. 
 
 What a pity, then, that upon consider¬ 
 ation of the question, we cannot honest¬ 
 ly affirm that Jesus actually has become 
 
 42 
 
the light of the world—not in any such 
 manner as would have transformed the 
 world and made it something like the 
 sort of place he would fain have seen it 
 become. 
 
 Of course, the student of history 
 knows that in every period since the 
 time of Jesus there have been certain 
 men and women who were greatly in¬ 
 fluenced and improved and enlightened 
 by his teaching, by his life, by his ex¬ 
 ample. Some of those men and women 
 are among the noblest heroes and saints 
 humanity has known. One need but read 
 the Confessions of St. Augustine, or the 
 writings and the story of St. Francis, or 
 the works and the life of Leo Tolstoy, to 
 realize what an ennobling influence Je¬ 
 sus has exercised upon certain choice 
 spirits in different periods and parts. 
 
 But, unfortunately, such men and 
 women are exceptional. What happened 
 to them is not typical of what has hap¬ 
 pened to the world at large, through the 
 impact of Jesus’s teaching and exper¬ 
 ience. The world at large—I mean, that 
 
 43 
 
part of it which proclaimed Jesus as the 
 founder of its faith and the pattern of 
 its conduct—has manifested no such 
 change, no such transformation, no such 
 thorough-going improvement of practice 
 and ideals as we have every reason, 
 every right, to believe Jesus sought to 
 bring about. 
 
 Nor is this merely the contention of 
 such as do not regard Jesus as the foun¬ 
 der of a new faith. On the contrary, 
 some of the most devout followers of 
 Jesus affirm it. The more they love Je¬ 
 sus, the more eager and outspoken are 
 they in pointing out the disparity be¬ 
 tween the recorded teachings of Jesus 
 and the conduct of those who have called 
 him, Lord, Lord! 
 
 For example, who could be a more au¬ 
 thentic disciple of Jesus than Dean Inge 
 of St. Paul's? Yet, this is the burden of 
 his brilliant argument in one of his 
 “Outspoken Essays, 1 ” which recently 
 have attracted so much attention. The 
 indictment of the official followers of 
 Jesus, he pleads, is no reflection on the 
 doctrine or the purpose of Jesus; it is an 
 
 44 
 
indictment of those who have called 
 themselves his disciples and deputies. 
 
 And why? Because we know what 
 Jesus sought to teach. We know, as 
 Dean Inge points out, that he tried to 
 teach anew the doctrine of the Jewish 
 Prophets, that everything he said and 
 did was in the spirit of those Prophets. 
 “There is no evidence,” Dean Inge main¬ 
 tains, “that the historical Christ ever in¬ 
 tended to found a new institutional Reli¬ 
 gion. He neither attempted to make a 
 schism in the Jewish church nor to sub¬ 
 stitute a new Religion for it. He placed 
 himself deliberately in the prophetic line. 
 The whole manner of his life and teach¬ 
 ing was prophetic.” Similarly, Mr. H. G. 
 Wells, in his Outline of History, asserts 
 that “what is clearly apparent is that 
 the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth was a 
 prophetic teaching of the new type that 
 began with the Hebrew Prophets.” 
 
 And who does not know what the 
 Jewish Prophets were, what they 
 taught? They were teachers of the 
 Right, champions of Justice and Mercy, 
 paracletes of the poor and the oppressed 
 —they sought to rid the world of the 
 
 45 
 
curse of lust and greed and cruelty, and 
 to bring about a reign of mercy and 
 good-will. And such was also the mis¬ 
 sion of Jesus—such his perpetual pre¬ 
 cept and purpose. He was the friend of 
 the poor. He was the lover of mankind. 
 He was the gentle teacher of the humble, 
 just as he was the stern censor of the 
 cruel and false—all this, because the 
 Ideals of the Prophets animated him and 
 he sought to forward and to fulfil their 
 divine doctrine. 
 
 Yet we know this doctrine was not ac¬ 
 cepted as the actual light of the world 
 after the death of Jesus any more than 
 after the death of Isaiah. And by none 
 less so than the very kingdoms and prin¬ 
 cipalities that called themselves the pro¬ 
 fessors of the Christian faith and its 
 protectors in the world. 
 
 Indeed, what could be more unlike the 
 teaching of Jesus than the history of 
 Europe throughout the dark ages and 
 the middle ages, with their unceasing 
 wars and factions and persecutions? 
 “The history of Europe from the fifth 
 century onward to the fifteenth,” says 
 
 46 
 
Mr. Wells in his History, “is very largely 
 the history of the failure of this great 
 idea of a divine world government to 
 realize itself in practice.” 
 
 Nor could anything be less in tune 
 with the gentle doctrine of Jesus than 
 the treatment which was meted out to 
 the Jews by the very emperors of Rome 
 who first adopted Christianity and made 
 it the official religion of their state. The 
 barbarous legislation of Constantine and 
 Constance and Theodosius and Justinian 
 —the Christian emperors of Rome from 
 the fourth to the sixth century—not 
 only caused measureless misery to the 
 Jews of those remote ages, but to this 
 very day its evil effects have continued. 
 Modern persecutions of the Jews are but 
 a continuation, a consequence, of their 
 cruel policy, and present-day slander of 
 the Jew an echo of the malice which first 
 found expression under those imperial 
 converts to Christianity. 
 
 No one can read those chapters of his¬ 
 tory and still believe that they reflect the 
 least ray of the light which Jesus sought 
 to bring into the world. 
 
 But is it any better at the present mo- 
 
 47 
 
ment? We need only pick up our daily 
 newspaper and we shall admit that, un¬ 
 fortunately, things today are not better 
 than aforetime. 
 
 Indeed, is it possible to believe that 
 ever they were worse? It is true that 
 here and there we witness things for 
 which we are grateful and which fill us 
 with hope. There are many charitable 
 men and women in the world. Here and 
 there we find idealists and apostles of 
 peace and good-will. The League of Na¬ 
 tions has just met for the first time at 
 Geneva. Yet, on the other hand, there is 
 so much suffering and strife in the 
 world, so much enmity and selfishness, 
 and such a recrudescence (even in our 
 country) of racial and religious bigotry 
 and hatred, that even the most reckless 
 of optimists could hardly maintain that 
 the prophetic teaching of old Judea fin¬ 
 ally had become the light of the world. 
 
 But what does it prove? Does it prove 
 that Jesus was wrong, and that the doc¬ 
 trine of the Jewish Prophets was 
 wrong? Not if we take the state of the 
 world today as a test. The world is un¬ 
 happy today. It is full of fear and la- 
 
 48 
 
mentation. No one knows what the 
 morrow will bring forth. The old civili¬ 
 zation has led to no satisfactory results 
 —to no haven of happiness and peace. 
 
 Has not the time come for a new ex¬ 
 periment? Might we not hark back to 
 the old Jewish Prophets and their teach¬ 
 ings? Justice—they said—mercy, ser¬ 
 vice: these are the conditions of human 
 happiness and security. Surely, the time 
 has come for mankind to try this method 
 of attaining happiness, for the world to 
 turn in good earnest to the so-long 
 neglected'light of this teaching. 
 
 “But vain the sword and vain the bow, 
 
 They never can work war’s overthrow. 
 
 The hermit’s prayer and the widow’s tear 
 Alone can free the world from fear.” 
 
 As Jews we may well be proud of the 
 homage the world pays to Jesus. But so 
 much the more is it our duty to bear in 
 mind the eternal moral and spiritual 
 ideals of Israel which he sought to voice 
 and to vitalize. Let us make sure that 
 we remain true to those ideals and, each 
 in his own sphere and according to his 
 own strength, let us try to make them 
 the beacon-light of the world! 
 
 49 
 
V 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 IBN GEBIROL 
 
 “Behold, thou shalt call a nation that 
 thou knowest not, and a nation that knew 
 not thee shall run unto thee.” 
 
 —Isaiah 55,5. 
 
 T HIS year is remarkable for the ob¬ 
 servance of the anniversaries of 
 great men. Dante, Keats,* Luther, 
 and other famous men are being com¬ 
 memorated. We might well pause, there¬ 
 fore, to celebrate the memory of one of 
 the foremost poets and philosophers the 
 Jews have given to the world—Solomon 
 Ibn Gebirol—who was born nine hun¬ 
 dred years ago. His name is not as well 
 known as those of the other worthies; 
 nevertheless, he is one of the greatest of 
 them all, and his influence extended not 
 only throughout the house of Israel, but 
 far beyond into the Christian and Mo- 
 hametan world. 
 
 There is at present a revival of in¬ 
 terest in the Middle Ages. It is one of 
 the most remarkable spiritual and intel¬ 
 lectual phenomena of the age. Not so 
 
 51 
 
very long ago no cultivated or advanced 
 person was supposed to have any respect 
 for the culture of the Middle Ages. The 
 word medieval was a byword, suggest¬ 
 ing everything that was benighted, back¬ 
 ward, and brutal. And, no doubt, the 
 Middle Ages merited some of the oppro¬ 
 brium they provoked. None the less, we 
 seem of late to have realized that after 
 all wisdom was not born with the new 
 age, nor virtue, and that the Middle Ages 
 created things and possessed qualities 
 which still deserve admiration and 
 perhaps emulation. A goodly number 
 of writers and artists are, like Mr. 
 Henry Adams and Mr. Cram, working 
 toward a renewal of interest in the 
 life and thought of the Middle Ages, 
 and one cannot help wondering wheth¬ 
 er the next fifty years may not wit¬ 
 ness a considerable return to medieval 
 thought and ideals. 
 
 At such a time, I think, it behoves 
 us to renew acquaintance with such a 
 man as Ibn Gebirol, who has been- 
 called (I believe rightly) the greatest 
 Jewish religious poet of the Middle 
 Ages, who is regarded by experts as 
 
 - i. . i 
 
 52 
 
one of the most original philosophers 
 the Jews have ever produced, and who 
 was, moreover, the first Arabic-Span- 
 ish philosopher to be known and 
 studied by the Christian world. 
 
 It is true that few are familiar with 
 his name. More’s the pity! Even when 
 we sing his songs—and we often do 
 in our temples, as the popular hymn 
 “Early will I seek Thee,” is a version 
 of one of his poems—even then, I say, 
 we do not think of him. 
 
 But this has happened before. It is 
 one of the most astonishing facts in 
 the entire history of philosophy that 
 for many centuries Ibn Gebirol was 
 studied and quoted by the most emi¬ 
 nent scholars of Europe, under the 
 name of Avicebron, without it being 
 known that Avicebron was a corrup¬ 
 tion of Ibn Gebirol’s Arabic name. 
 Only about the middle of the nine¬ 
 teenth century Solomon Munk, the 
 French Jewish scholar, detected the 
 corruption and restored the author’s 
 true name. 
 
 Yet, Ibn Gebirol deserves to be 
 known better. 
 
 53 
 
His very life is full of human in¬ 
 terest. It reads very much like the life 
 of some of the great English poets— 
 like that of John Keats, of Chatterton, 
 and of Francis Thompson—who suffered 
 and struggled and died young, yet pro¬ 
 duced immortal works. 
 
 For, Ibn Gebirol, who was bom in Ma¬ 
 laga and lived in Saragossa, was left an 
 orphan at an early age, and poor besides. 
 He depended on the help of others. 
 Nevertheless, he managed to get a fine 
 education in both sacred and secular 
 subjects. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, 
 he already wrote poems which showed 
 poetic passion, as well as other admir¬ 
 able qualities. He was conscious of his 
 poetic gift, and of the excellence and 
 compensations of poetry. Throughout 
 his life he suffered from those ills and 
 hardships which so often have haunted 
 poets. Like Dante, he experienced the 
 sorrow of inconstant friends, and like 
 Dante, also, he was forced to leave his 
 city and wander about from place to 
 place. From a poem of his, recently dis¬ 
 covered (and published by Brody in the 
 
 54 
 
Hebrew magazine Ha-Shiloah) we learn 
 that for years he was afflicted with a 
 painful malady, perhaps tuberculosis, 
 which probably was partly responsible 
 for the note of melancholy in his poetry, 
 and caused his death. There is a pa¬ 
 thetic legend connected with his death, 
 which Heine has woven into a beautiful 
 poem. And he was scarcely thirty years 
 old when, in Valencia, he died. 
 
 Yet in this brief span of time, despite 
 poverty and distress, he contrived to 
 produce works which gave him influence 
 and immortality not only among his own 
 people, but also in the world at large. 
 
 Indeed, in one respect Ibn Gebirol be¬ 
 came better known among non-Jews 
 than among Jews, namely, as a philos¬ 
 opher. 
 
 In recent years, Jewish students have 
 paid some attention to his philosophic 
 work, “The Fount of Life.” Professor 
 Neumark, in the Hebrew version of his 
 massive History of Jewish Philosophy, 
 promises a new appraisal of its origi¬ 
 nality and influence. But for centuries 
 it was ignored by Jewish students; 
 
 55 
 
it was seldom mentioned in the medie¬ 
 val literature of the Jews. On the 
 other hand, it was cited and discussed 
 by the greatest Christian writers, who 
 knew it in its Latin translation from tne 
 Arabic original. Albertus Magnus and 
 Thomas Aquinas—the foremost Chris¬ 
 tian theologians of the Middle Ages— 
 quoted from it, and so did Duns Scotus 
 and Giordano Bruno. Some agreed with 
 him and others opposed his teaching; 
 but all reckoned with him. Indeed, he 
 was so often discussed in Christian liter¬ 
 ature that some took him for a Chris¬ 
 tian, just as others took him for an Arab. 
 
 Perhaps Ibn Gebirol was forgotten by 
 the Jews, as a philosopher, because early 
 readers of his work criticized his doc¬ 
 trine as unorthodox. 
 
 He was suspected of pantheism. All 
 created beings, he taught, whether spir¬ 
 itual or corporeal, are composed of mat¬ 
 ter and form. The various species of 
 matter are but varieties of universal 
 matter, and all forms are contained in 
 one universal form. Even the intellect 
 combines form and matter, though they 
 are united by the Divine Will, which is 
 
 56 
 
the bond between the primal One and 
 the intellect and which alone is above 
 the distinction of matter and form. Such 
 was the fundamental thesis of Ibn Ge- 
 birol’s philosophy. To this day he is re¬ 
 jected as a pantheist by such a philos¬ 
 opher as Hermann Cohen. 
 
 But another reason for his neglect 
 may have been that in his philosophic 
 work Ibn Gebirol makes no specific ref¬ 
 erence to Jewish doctrine and tradition. 
 He writes from a purely logical and uni¬ 
 versal point of view. He addresses him¬ 
 self to universal reason rather than to 
 Jewish tradition. In a word, he writes 
 as a philosopher and not as a Jew 
 (though, no doubt, feeling all the time 
 that what he teaches, just because uni¬ 
 versal, is good Jewish teaching). Per¬ 
 haps, this was why his book made no 
 special appeal to Jewish readers. But, 
 as a modern non-Jewish philosopher has 
 pointed out, it was this very universal 
 quality of Ibn GebiroPs work that gave 
 it such importance—that made it the first 
 link between the thought of the Arabic 
 Orient and Western Europe. 
 
 57 
 
In a similar universal vein, Ibn Gebi- 
 rol wrote his ethical work. 
 
 All Jewish philosophers, from Philo 
 down, have been interested in ethics. 
 Ethics is the core of Jewish thought. It 
 was natural for Ibn Gebirol to write on 
 ethics as well as on philosophy. The 
 chief end of man, he taught, was to at¬ 
 tain union with the Deity—the source of 
 all existence. And the two means of such 
 union are, first, knowledge, and, second, 
 moral conduct. To aid men in the attain¬ 
 ment of knowledge, he wrote his philos¬ 
 ophic work; to help them to right con¬ 
 duct, he composed his ethical works— 
 first, “The Choice of Pearls,” a compila¬ 
 tion of ethical maxims, and then, “The 
 Improvement of the Qualities of the 
 Soul,” an original composition. 
 
 And in this latter work, again, while 
 he quoted the Bible, he wrote from a 
 universal human standpoint, rather than 
 from a particular Jewish point of view. 
 He presented ethics as a subject of uni¬ 
 versal human concern. Man was his 
 theme—man the greatest work of God, 
 the equal of the angels, the creation of 
 divinity, endowed with a soul ever 
 
 58 
 
yearning for Divine union. It was the 
 duty of man, taught Ibn Gebirol, to cul¬ 
 tivate the divine parts of his soul, and 
 thus help it grow, just as the farmer, by 
 plowing and watering the field, helps the 
 seed to unfold. Ibn Gebirol points out 
 the qualities which are helpful to the 
 growth of the soul, and in seeking to 
 bring home his doctrine, he quotes freely 
 from non-Jewish sources, as well as 
 from the Bible. In an eleventh century 
 writer, this shows a remarkable univer¬ 
 sal quality. 
 
 But we must not think that for all 
 this Ibn Gebirol was the less devout or 
 loyal a Jew. He did not fancy, as some 
 do today, that there is an inherent con¬ 
 flict between the universal and the Jew¬ 
 ish elements of thought, and that for the 
 sake of a universal outlook one must 
 forswear Jewish loyalty as something 
 “sectarian.” On the contrary, a more 
 devoted and convinced Jew never lived, 
 and this is proved by what is doubtless 
 his noblest and most enduring work— 
 his poetry. I have already said that he 
 is regarded by some as the greatest me- 
 
 59 
 
dieval Jewish poet; and whoever reads 
 his poetry will probably agree. 
 
 It is in his poetry, after all, that we 
 see the man—his soul. His other writ¬ 
 ings are objective, scientific. His poetry 
 is lyrical; in it his soul speaks. And 
 there—in his many compositions—we 
 have evidence over and over again of 
 how deeply religious he was, of how pas¬ 
 sionate was his faith, his love for God, 
 his love for Israel—of how tender, con¬ 
 stant, sympathetic, humble a soul was 
 his. And, indeed, while his philosophic 
 work was forgotten, his poetic composi¬ 
 tions, like that marvelous mystic poem 
 of his, The Royal Crown, found their 
 way to the heart of the Jewish people 
 and became part of the Jewish prayer- 
 book in all parts of the world. 
 
 It is certain that when his poetry is 
 made accessible to the English-speaking 
 world, as soon it will be in a masterly 
 translation by Mr. Israel Zangwill, he 
 will be acknowledged by non-Jews as 
 well as Jews as one of the finest religi¬ 
 ous poets the world has known. 
 
 60 
 
We complain sometimes that the Jew 
 is not appreciated sufficiently. But this 
 is because he is not known. Yet, how 
 can we expect the world to know him, if 
 we do not know him ourselves? For this 
 reason, if for no other, let us cherish 
 the memory of Ibn Gebirol—the man, 
 the thinker, the poet—and let us emu¬ 
 late his ideals of knowledge, of faith, 
 and of life! 
 
■ 
 
VI 
 
 THE JEWISH INTEREST OF DANTE* 
 
 “Behold, I will make My words in thy 
 mouth fire !”—Jeremiah 5, 14. 
 
 T HE six hundredth anniversary of 
 Dante’s death, occurring this year, 
 has led men of various countries to af¬ 
 firm anew Dante’s title to perennial 
 homage. For Dante was not only the 
 chief champion and master-poet of Italy 
 but one of the sublimest singers and 
 strongest personalities in human history. 
 Carlyle calls him “the voice of ten cen¬ 
 turies”; James Russell Lowell regards 
 him, with Homer, Shakespeare, Cervan¬ 
 tes, and Goethe, as one of the five indis¬ 
 pensable poets, and to Mr. Santayana 
 he is “the type of a consummate poet.” 
 
 Many who hitherto knew Dante by 
 name, only—or merely as the author 
 of The Divine Comedy—are now aug¬ 
 menting their knowledge by further 
 study. Thus the world is reviewing once 
 
 ♦An expanded treatment of this theme is found in 
 The Menorah Journal for October, 1921. 
 
 63 
 
more the distinction of Dante—as a 
 poet, and also as a personality and 
 prophet. But for the Jewish reader 
 there is special interest in Dante, which 
 this centenary celebration may well 
 serve to emphasize. 
 
 At first blush, one might think that 
 the Jewish interest of Dante lies solely 
 in the friendship which is said to have 
 existed between him and Immanuel of 
 Rome. 
 
 Immanuel was a Jewish poet—con¬ 
 temporary with Dante—who wrote both 
 in Hebrew and in Italian, and whose 
 talent and wit made him one of the best 
 known medieval Jewish poets. His 
 Mehaberoth , or Collections , is treasured by 
 every lover of Jewish medieval litera¬ 
 ture. Though interspersed with jests 
 and clever frivolities, it contains religious 
 poems of the first order, as well as some 
 fine love poems, ethical aphorisms, and 
 many a sidelight on the life of the time. 
 Its final chapter contains a composition 
 called “Hell and Paradise,” undoubtedly 
 suggested by Dante’s masterpiece. Im¬ 
 manuel was also probably the author of 
 
 64 
 
“Yigdal,” one of our finest liturgical 
 poems, still sung in our synagogues. 
 
 Immanuel and Dante are said to have 
 been personal friends, having met either 
 in Rome, at gatherings of a group of 
 political idealists known as “Young 
 Italy,” or in Verona, at the court of Can 
 Grande della Scala, or perhaps in Gub- 
 bio, at the house of their common friend, 
 Bosone. What is certain is that Imman¬ 
 uel was an admirer of Dante, that he 
 wrote a composition suggested by Dan¬ 
 te’s work, and that after Dante’s death, 
 in the very years that Immanuel’s wife 
 died, he exchanged Italian sonnets with 
 Bosone, in which Bosone condoled with 
 Immanuel at the double loss of wife and 
 friend and in which he, in turn, uttered 
 his grief. 
 
 Dante’s interest to the Jew, however, 
 lies much deeper than his relation to Im¬ 
 manuel. It touches the very source of 
 those spiritual and ethical influences 
 that made Dante’s personality and fash¬ 
 ioned his poetic genius. 
 
 No one familiar with the prose or 
 poetry of Dante would claim that he was 
 
 65 
 
affected solely by Jewish thought. He 
 drew inspiration from everywhere—from 
 Roman history, from the Greek classics, 
 from medieval thought, both Christian 
 and Mohametan. But one work formed 
 unmisakably his chief source of inspir¬ 
 ation—the Bible. We find traces of it 
 on wellnigh every page of The Divine 
 Comedy—traces of its style, its imagery, 
 its teachings, its characters. Indeed, I 
 doubt whether one can properly under¬ 
 stand The Divine Comedy, or the rest of 
 Dante’s writings, without some appreci¬ 
 ation of his numerous Biblical allusions 
 and citations. Examples face us wher¬ 
 ever we turn—in his Letters, in the Con- 
 vivio, in The Divine Comedy. 
 
 The Divine Comedy is a religious epic. 
 It tells the story of the human soul, its 
 fall and rise—its fall to the depths of 
 misery and suffering through the pur¬ 
 suit of evil, and its rise to the heights of 
 purity and gladness by the aid of moral 
 effort and faith. In this sense, The Di¬ 
 vine Comedy is not merely a medieval 
 Catholic poem; it is universal. 
 
 In depicting his theme, however, Dante 
 frequently employs Biblical imagery. We 
 
 66 
 
find it in the very opening canto. Three 
 sins are the cause of the ethical downfall 
 of man and lead to the gates of hell: 
 pleasure, pride, and avarice. They lie in 
 wait for man, turning the world which 
 the Creator has filled with the stars of 
 love and joy, into a dark and dreadful 
 forest. For Dante this fact is summed 
 up in the sixth verse of the fifth chapter 
 of the Prophet Jeremiah. “Wherefore,” 
 it runs, “a lion out of the forest shall 
 slay them, and a wolf of the evening 
 shall spoil them, and a panther shall 
 watch over their cities.” In the three 
 animals the poet sees the symbols of the 
 destructive vices of man: the panther, 
 symbol of pleasure; the wolf, avarice; 
 the lion, pride. This verse of Jeremiah 
 explains the picture in the dramatic 
 opening of Dante’s poem. 
 
 Similarly, purgatory is pictured as a 
 mountain which man must scale by 
 means of penitence, prayer, and toil, if 
 he would attain the divine dwelling place 
 of peace and joy. Here the imagery is 
 based on the fifteenth Psalm. “0 Lord, 
 who shall dwell in Thy tent, who shall 
 rest on Thy holy mountain?” The ascent 
 
 67 
 
is difficult. It demands exertion, concen¬ 
 tration, courage. But it grows easier 
 with the mounting, and on the summit 
 there is security and rest. It is the moun¬ 
 tain that healeth. 
 
 As for the vision of Paradise, it is 
 shot through from beginning to end with 
 beams and voices from the Bible, while 
 its imagery shows the influence of Eze¬ 
 kiel. 
 
 In his letter to Can Grande, dedicat¬ 
 ing the Paradise, when he seeks to ex¬ 
 plain the four methods of interpreting 
 The Divine Comedy, as well as any other 
 work of literature, Dante uses by way of 
 illustration the first two verses of Psalm 
 114: “When Israel went out of Egypt, 
 the house of Jacob from a people of 
 strange language; Judah was His sanc¬ 
 tuary, and Israel His dominion.” This 
 passage, says Dante, may be taken liter¬ 
 ally as referring to. an historic event; or 
 allegorically, as signifying the Christian 
 teaching of redemption; or in the moral 
 sense, signifying “the conversion of the 
 soul from the sorrow and misery of sin 
 to a state of grace”; or anagogically, sig¬ 
 nifying “the passing of the sanctified 
 
 68 
 
soul from the bondage of this world to 
 the liberty of everlasting glory.” 
 
 Even more significant than the effect 
 of Biblical diction is the influence of 
 Jewish thought on the spiritual and ethi¬ 
 cal outlook of Dante. The fundamental 
 ideas of Dante’s religion are those of the 
 Jewish Prophets. It is true that he was 
 a devotee of the Catholic Church, and 
 that he subscribed loyally to the precepts 
 of its theology. But certain parts he 
 found it difficult to understand, and he 
 utters his difficulties repeatedly in his 
 poem. The doctrine of Predestination, 
 for instance, perplexed him. He could 
 not understand why people should come 
 into the world, as this doctrine had it, 
 with their eternal destiny fixed in ad¬ 
 vance. Similarly, he is puzzled by the 
 doctrine that only those are saved who 
 believed in Christ, and that without such 
 belief even the best of men cannot enter 
 Heaven. Though he accepts this teach¬ 
 ing, and incorporates it in his poem, it 
 disturbs him. 
 
 Against the religious perplexities of 
 Dante, however, there stand out certain 
 
 69 
 
other convictions which he voices with 
 singular beauty and passion: his belief 
 in God’s unity, in the Prime Mover of all 
 created things; his belief in Man’s godly 
 origin and destiny and in human free¬ 
 dom of choice; his belief in the suprem¬ 
 acy of righteousness, in the para- 
 mountcy of penitence. These are the 
 fundamentals of Dante’s faith—of his 
 positive ethical and religious creed—and 
 he inherited them from the Jewish 
 Prophets whom he cherished and emu¬ 
 lated. It was from the Prophets, too, 
 that he obtained his Messianic belief— 
 his belief in the coming of a better time 
 through an ideal king—which comforted 
 him in exile and amid the evils of his 
 time. 
 
 Perhaps it was Dante’s conscious in¬ 
 debtedness to the Jewish spirit that was 
 responsible for another of his character¬ 
 istics—his kindly attitude to the Jews. 
 Considering the differences of dogma, 
 there is not in all of Dante’s work a line 
 which can give offense to an intelligent 
 Jew. 
 
 This is remarkable. It is often an- 
 noying in otherwise good books to en- 
 
 70 
 
counter stupid and opprobrious remarks 
 about the Jews. It has become a sort of 
 literary tradition. The word Jew has 
 become a byword, a “polarized” word. 
 We find it so used in Chaucer, in Shake¬ 
 speare, in modern writers. We rim 
 across it several times in Keats’s Let¬ 
 ters. “They that dally nicely with 
 words,” says Viola in Twelfth Night, “may 
 quickly make them wanton.” 
 
 No such trespass mars Dante’s great 
 poem, nor, as far as I know, any other 
 of. his works. And this is the more 
 remarkable as he wrote at a time when 
 persecution of the Jews was at its worst, 
 when all over Europe Jews were thrust 
 about, maligned, and murdered as never 
 before. Zunz, in his classic work on the 
 Synagogual Poetry of the Middle Ages, 
 devotes pages to the enumeration of the 
 horrible experiences of the Jews in the 
 fourteenth century, which even Chris¬ 
 tian writers have called the hardest thus 
 far known by the Jews. It is remarkable 
 that writing at such a time Dante did 
 not stumble into the pitfalls of prejudice. 
 
 Despite the idea that none could be 
 
 71 
 
saved who believed not in Christ, Dan¬ 
 te’s Paradise is peopled with heroes and 
 heroines of Jewish history, some of 
 whom he crowns with admiration. Dan¬ 
 iel “fed on pulse and wisdom gained.” 
 Joshua and the Maccabee were so mighty 
 in renown, “as every muse might 
 grace her triumph with them.” Morde- 
 cai he calls the just, the righteous, while 
 Haman’s face bespeaks malice and 
 rancor. 
 
 Moses he places in the highest heaven, 
 with the greatest saints of his own faith. 
 There, closest to the Divine Presence, 
 are also many heroines of Israel, to¬ 
 gether with Dante’s own most cherished 
 ladies: there are Sarah, Rebecca, Ruth, 
 Judith, and Rachel. Dante links Rachel 
 with Beatrice,—certainly the greatest 
 homage! ■ 
 
 Nor do we find Jewish names in Dan¬ 
 te’s catalogue of criminals. Even the 
 usurers of his poem are not Jews: they 
 are members of old Christian Italian 
 families, showing that then as now one 
 did not have to be a Jew, nor even a 
 friend of the Jew, in order to be shrewd 
 
 at the game of money-making or money- 
 
 72 
 
squeezing. On the other hand, Dante 
 refers to the Jews as a lesson to their 
 Christian fellow-citizens. When he calls 
 upon the latter to behave like men, and 
 not beasts, he warns them against the 
 mockery of the Jew living in their 
 streets. 
 
 “When by evil lust enticed, 
 
 Remember ye be men, not senseless beasts; 
 
 Nor let the Jew, who dwelleth in your streets, 
 
 Hold you in mockery.” 
 
 Nothing testifies to the greatness of 
 Dante more than this just treatment of 
 the Jew, at a time when all others, great 
 and small were arrayed against him. 
 
 That is why the Dante anniversary 
 means something to the Jew, in addition 
 to what it means to others. It reminds 
 us of Immanuel and his connection with 
 Dante. It reminds us of the part the 
 Bible—Israel’s masterpiece—had in the 
 formation and expression of Dante’s gen¬ 
 ius. It reminds us of the influence of 
 Jewish thought and idealism upon his 
 own prophetic personality. And it re¬ 
 minds us, finally, of his own attitude to 
 the people to whom he owed much and 
 whom he could not but revere. 
 
 73 
 
\ 
 
 May it inspire us to a closer study of 
 his kinship to Jewish thought, and aug¬ 
 ment among men that spirit of truth 
 and right which was the breath of his 
 life, and that love of high and noble 
 things which was the source and the 
 aim of his work! 
 
 “Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, 
 
 Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power; 
 
 Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow 
 Thro' either babbling world of high and low; 
 Whose life was work, whose language rife 
 With rugged maxims hewn from life.” 
 
 ♦ 
 
 74 
 
VII 
 
 THE PILGRIMS AND THE JEWS 
 
 “So shall they fear the name of the 
 Lord from the west, and His glory from * 
 the rising of the sun .”—Isaiah 59, 19. 
 
 T HE Thanksgiving season this year 
 (1920) has taken on special impor¬ 
 tance from the celebration of the ter¬ 
 centenary of the Pilgrims. This event 
 is being observed both in this country 
 and in England; and properly so, seeing 
 that the voyage of the Pilgrims has ex¬ 
 ercised a pervasive influence on the life 
 of the English-speaking peoples, and, in¬ 
 directly, upon all humanity. On such an 
 occasion it is appropriate to consider 
 the relation of the Pilgrims to the Jews 
 —their reciprocal influence and indebted¬ 
 ness. 
 
 It is not superfluous, first of all, to re¬ 
 call that the Pilgrims owed to the Jews 
 the great work which formed their chief 
 inspiration and companion, as well as the 
 basis of the several commonwealths they 
 established on this continent. One can¬ 
 not think of the Pilgrims and the other 
 Puritans without recalling what the 
 
 75 
 
Bible meant to them, and, namely, the 
 Jewish Bible. 
 
 Today certain Christian scholars, here 
 and abroad, are engaged in attacks upon 
 the Jewish Bible. Frederic Delitzsch has 
 run amuck in his effort to picture it as 
 “the great delusion.” And others share 
 his opinion. Some non-Jewish writers, 
 both clerical and general, have fallen into 
 the habit of assailing the God of the 
 Old Testament. According to them, the 
 greatest need today is to get rid of 
 “Jehovah”—whom they represent as not 
 good enough for their religious and ethi¬ 
 cal purposes. “Jehovah” may have suf¬ 
 ficed for Jesus; but He does not satisfy 
 these modern critics. “We are certainly 
 better than Jehovah,” asserts the hero of 
 Bojer’s sad, but specious, story, “The 
 Great Hunger.” 
 
 No wonder Professor Hermann 
 Strack, the veteran theologian and stu¬ 
 dent of rabbinic literature, is incensed. 
 “I strongly protest,” he says, “and 
 namely as a Christian theologian against 
 these blasphemous expressions concern¬ 
 ing God, the God of Creation and of 
 History, whose most holy Name in the 
 
 76 
 
Old Testament is JHVH, opposed as such 
 opinions are to the New Testament and 
 to the whole consciousness of original 
 Christianity. This God was invariably 
 acknowledged by Jesus as God, the God, 
 and also as his own God, and similarly 
 by the Apostles.” And upon this God 
 some so-called Christian scholars and 
 scribes of today do not hesitate to heap 
 scandalous epithets of scorn. 
 
 At such a time it is well to remem¬ 
 ber what the Pilgrims owed to the Bible 
 —what it meant to them—what a part 
 it played in their great enterprise. It 
 was the beginning and the end of their 
 life, both private and public. In religion, 
 the Bible was their sole authority. In 
 personal conduct, it was their chief 
 standard. And, politically, it formed the 
 groundwork of their institutions and 
 laws. “Their Bible,” says Frederic Har¬ 
 rison in his life of Oliver Cromwell, “was 
 literally food to their understanding and 
 a guide to their conduct. The Bible was 
 almost the sole poetry, the sole morality, 
 the sole religion.” 
 
 Macaulay’s description of the Puri¬ 
 tans, in his History of England, is well- 
 
 77 
 
known. He reminds us that the Puri¬ 
 tans paid respect to the Hebrew lan¬ 
 guage, rather than to the Greek of the 
 Gospels. They baptized their children 
 by names of Hebrew patriarchs and 
 warriors. They sought for principles of 
 jurisprudence in the Mosaic law, and for 
 precedents to guide their ordinary con¬ 
 duct in the books of Judges and Kings. 
 But to Macaulay, Puritanism repre¬ 
 sented cant and crudeness. Carlyle, 
 however, sees in it one of the noblest 
 human heroisms. “Here were heroes on 
 the earth once more,” he says, “who 
 knew in every fibre, and with heroic 
 daring laid to heart, that an Almighty 
 Justice does verily rule this world; that 
 it is good to fight on God’s side and bad 
 to fight on the devil’s side. The essence 
 of all heroisms and veracities that have 
 been, or that will be!” 
 
 The Pilgrims, however, owed to the 
 Jews more than the Bible. They took 
 from the Jews the very ideal which in¬ 
 spired their heroic course. 
 
 The Pilgrims originally were known 
 as Separatists. This name they got be¬ 
 cause in England they separated from 
 
 78 
 
their neighbors on account of their par¬ 
 ticular religious beliefs, ethical convic¬ 
 tions, and political purpose. 
 
 The world, as a rule, does not love the 
 separatist. He is supposed to be selfish, 
 snobbish, unsociable, and unlikable. But 
 are there not two kinds of separatists? 
 There is the separatist who isolates him¬ 
 self from his fellowmen, because he is 
 self-centred and indifferent to the gen¬ 
 eral weal. And there is the other kind 
 of separatist who keeps apart in order 
 to preserve his ideals and beliefs, and 
 thus so much the better to serve his fel¬ 
 lowmen. Such a separatist was Abra¬ 
 ham. The Maccabees were such sepa¬ 
 ratists. Dante and Lincoln were such 
 separatists. The Pharisees were such 
 separatists—indeed, this is what their 
 name meant originally, though it became 
 a byword with certain people, like that 
 of the Puritans. Many of the foremost 
 benefactors of mankind (perhaps all) 
 were such separatists. 
 
 As a people, the Jews are the greatest 
 instance of benignant separatism in his¬ 
 tory. “A people which dwells alone,” 
 the heathen prophet calls them in the 
 
 79 
 
Bible; and truly so. The Jews have had 
 to pay dearly for their apartness; all 
 manner of abuse and suspicion has been 
 heaped upon them because of their iso¬ 
 lation. Yet, the unbiased student knows 
 that only thus the Jews have kept intact 
 their spiritual ideals and preserved their 
 religious heritage, and that only thus 
 they were enabled to become a blessing 
 to the world. 
 
 Christian scholars, though still few 
 and far-between, are beginning to pro¬ 
 claim this truth, which by and by all 
 candid people will accept. One need but 
 read Mr. Travers Herford’s book on 
 Pharisaism or his Lecture on “What the 
 World Owes to the Pharisees.” Looking 
 at the matter in relation to the world 
 at large, and not merely from the point 
 of view of its bearing on Christianity— 
 says Mr. Herford—can it be doubted 
 that it has been and is a substantial 
 benefit to the human race that there 
 should be amongst its members this non- 
 comformist people “to represent liberty 
 of thought, freedom of conscience, inde¬ 
 pendence of judgment, the right of the 
 human mind to settle for itself its rela- 
 
 80 
 
tion with God?” “They who were 
 branded by the Roman writer as enemies 
 of the human race,” Mr. Herford adds, 
 “have wrought for it through the cen¬ 
 turies a priceless benefit.” 
 
 And it is from the Jews that the Puri¬ 
 tans, and particularly the Pilgrims, fight¬ 
 ing for religious freedom and ethical 
 purity, learned to become Separatists 
 for the sake of their faith and their pur¬ 
 pose, and to endure the hardships such 
 a course involved. 
 
 If, however, the Pilgrims owed a great 
 deal to the Jews, the Jews owe no less 
 to the Pilgrims. 
 
 It is not extravagant to affirm that 
 nothing has been so largely responsible 
 for the modern development and prog¬ 
 ress of the Jew as the influence of 
 America. America has given full free¬ 
 dom to the Jew and a field for toil and 
 growth unequalled in any modern coun¬ 
 try and unsurpassed by any period of 
 his long history. Whatever freedom and 
 opportunity have come to the modern 
 Jew in other parts of the world—except 
 Holland, which even in the seventeenth 
 century sheltered the Jew as well as the 
 
 81 
 
Pilgrim—has been due to the example 
 of America. 
 
 But America owes its paramount 
 ideals and institutions to the Pilgrims. 
 What they sought and wrought was not 
 only for themselves, but for posterity. 
 And, whatever their errors and faults, 
 it was out of their struggle that finally 
 freedom was born, just as by their labors 
 the permanent foundations of this coun¬ 
 try were shaped. 
 
 “Those stern, sad men in peaked hats,” 
 says George William Curtis, “who 
 prayed in camp and despised love-locks, 
 and at whom fribbles in politics laugh 
 and sneer today, were the indomitable 
 vanguard of moral and political free¬ 
 dom, If they snuffled in prayer, they 
 smote in fight; if they sang through 
 their noses, the hymn they chanted was 
 liberty: if they aimed at divine mon¬ 
 archy, they have founded the freest, the 
 most enlightened, the most prosperous, 
 the most powerful republic in history.” 
 
 Therefore, when the Jew gives thanks 
 for America, he must give thanks for the 
 Pilgrims; and when he speaks of the 
 debt the Pilgrims owed to him, he must 
 
 82 
 
never forget the debt he owes to the 
 Pilgrims. 
 
 And how can we pay this debt? There 
 is only one way. It is by remaining true 
 to the high ideal of the Pilgrims—-the 
 ideal for the sake of which they were 
 willing to labor, to suffer, to go into 
 exile, to endure hardships—the ideal of 
 religious loyalty and ethical conduct 
 which they expressed in their Covenant 
 and sought to embody in their common¬ 
 wealth. Godliness as the foundation of 
 life, concord among citizens, obedience 
 to the laws, and, finally, a life of work 
 and usefulness for the common good on 
 the part of the individual—this was the 
 program to which the Pilgrims pledged 
 themselves in the compact they signed 
 in the cabin of the Mayflower. And 
 though many changes have taken place 
 since their day, we need their ideal still 
 for the progress and prosperity of 
 America. 
 
 Let others sneer at the Puritans as 
 narrow and fanatical. Let us think only 
 of the high purpose that animated them, 
 and endeavor to carry on their work! 
 
 83 
 
VIII 
 
 NAPOLEON, 
 
 OR THE PLACE OF 
 THE JEW IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 “And the nations shall see thy right¬ 
 eousness and all kings thy glory.” 
 
 —Isaiah 62, 2. 
 
 A MONG recent anniversary celebra¬ 
 tions none has attracted more at¬ 
 tention than that of Napoleon, who 
 died a hundred years ago. We have read 
 new comments on every phase of his 
 character and activity, and diverse writ¬ 
 ers have tried again to appraise his place 
 in the modern world. It is a fact, how¬ 
 ever, that hardly an outstanding figure 
 in the history of Europe but has had 
 some relation with the Jew. This is par¬ 
 ticularly true of Naploeon. It would, 
 therefore, seem appropriate that we re¬ 
 fresh our memory concerning the rela¬ 
 tion of Napoleon to the Jewish people, 
 and the effect of that relation upon the 
 subsequent development of Jewish life. 
 
 Historians have differed widely in 
 their estimates of Napoleon. To some he 
 
 85 
 
has been a veritable god, to others the 
 devil incarnate. Mr. Wells, for example, 
 in his Outline of History, treats him as 
 wellnigh the worst man and most per¬ 
 nicious influence that Europe has known. 
 Nor is the English writer the only one 
 to paint Napoleon in such colors. A simi¬ 
 lar picture we find in Taine’s account of 
 the Origins of Contemporary France, in 
 which Napoleon, with all tribute to his 
 intellectual powers, is described as the 
 supreme type of unsocial egoism and 
 despotism. 
 
 No wonder, there is a diversity of 
 opinion, also, in regard to Napoleon’s 
 connection with the Jews. Some depict 
 him as a friend, and others as a foe of 
 the Jews. Our task, however, is not to 
 speculate on Napoleon’s general attitude 
 —whether he was a lover or hater of the 
 Jew, any more than to analyze the vari¬ 
 ous Jewish anecdotes he has inspired. 
 Legends are but blossoms on the tree 
 of every great man’s life. They spring 
 from the stem of history. What seed 
 of veracity indwells the legends concern¬ 
 ing Napoleon and the Jews, is a matter 
 of small moment. Similarly, what is the 
 
 86 
 
good of speculating on Napoleon’s gen¬ 
 eral attitude to the Jews? Such specula¬ 
 tion is futile, after all. 
 
 The chances are that Napoleon neither 
 loved nor hated the Jews, any more than 
 he loved or hated anybody else. All 
 writers seem to agree that he was a man 
 who gave little play to the emotions: he 
 was a man of projects, not of sentiments. 
 Human beings, whether individuals or 
 nations, to him were facts, with which 
 he dealt only as they affected his plans. 
 This is the testimony of Madame de 
 Stael, who wrote from personal knowl¬ 
 edge. “I always felt somehow,” she 
 says, “that he was a man upon whom the 
 emotions of the heart had no effect. He 
 hated no more than he loved. A human 
 being to him was not his own kind, but 
 a thing or a fact. II n’y a que lui pour lui. 
 Nobody counted with him but himself; 
 all other creatures were ciphers. Every¬ 
 thing was either a means or an end with 
 him.” In a word, he treated human 
 beings as mere facts to be used in the 
 pursuit of his plans. 
 
 As for the Jews, the fact was that 
 there was a considerable number of 
 
 87 
 
them in France at the time that Napo¬ 
 leon was busy building up his empire. 
 The further fact was that these Jews 
 had been emancipated in 1791, and that 
 nevertheless considerable friction still 
 existed between them and their Christ¬ 
 ian neighbors, particularly in Alsace and 
 Lorraine. 
 
 Napoleon by nature was against such 
 disturbances. If he stood for anything, 
 it was order, unity, and peace wherever 
 he ruled. He, therefore, wanted to 
 know whether the causes of that friction 
 might not be eliminated. Also, he want¬ 
 ed to know what the real attitude of the 
 Jews, now that they were free, was 
 toward France and their Christian 
 neighbors. And it was by his effort to 
 get an answer to these questions, that 
 he brought about a clear definition of 
 the place of the Jew in the modern 
 world. 
 
 Every student of history knows how 
 this happened. In the year 1806, in the 
 month of May, Napoleon convoked at 
 Paris an Assembly of Jewish Notables. 
 
 What was the immediate cause? It 
 was the conflict between Christians and 
 
 88 
 
Jews in Alsace and Lorraine. The Chris¬ 
 tians complained of Jews practicing 
 usury. This led to disturbances and in¬ 
 criminations. Napoleon wanted to get to 
 the bottom of the trouble. There was no 
 denying that usury was practiced by 
 some Jews; nor that the moral condition 
 of some Jews was not of the highest na¬ 
 ture. 
 
 Napoleon issued a decree against us¬ 
 urers. But it redounds to his credit that 
 he did not jump to the conclusion that all 
 Jews were usurers and all were de¬ 
 graded, and that he realized that such 
 faults as existed among them were due 
 to unfavorable conditions which called 
 for amelioration. He did not intend to 
 allow such conditions to continue in his 
 domain, he declared. 
 
 This is why he convoked the Assembly 
 of Jewish Notables, and put before them 
 certain questions designed to throw light 
 upon the character and the position of 
 the modern Jew. 
 
 The chief questions bore on these sub¬ 
 jects: first, the attitude of Jews to the 
 laws of marriage and divorce; second, 
 
 89 
 
their attitude to France; and, third, 
 their attitude to non-Jews in regard to 
 usury. Napoleon wanted answers to 
 these questions in order to determine 
 whether the Jews were, or could be 
 made, an integral part of the country 
 which had given them the rights of cit¬ 
 izenship, or whether they were governed 
 by laws at variance with those of the 
 rest of the population. Incidentally, 
 these questions illustrated the chief con¬ 
 cerns of Napoleon’s domestic policy—the 
 unity of France, the family as basis of 
 French life, and a system of clear and 
 coherent laws. 
 
 Upon the outcome of this inquiry a 
 great deal more depended than Napo¬ 
 leon’s personal view of the Jews. The 
 whole position of the Jew in the modern 
 world depended on it. Were the Jews, in 
 countries which emancipated them, to 
 be regarded as citizens, as complete 
 members of the community, or were 
 they fo be treated as sojourners, as 
 aliens with laws of their own? Was 
 their integration in the life of the coun¬ 
 try, if not perfect, possible? Citizens or 
 sojourners—this was the question, and 
 
 90 
 
it was put by a man who, whatever his 
 faults (and they were many), had as 
 clear and comprehensive an intellect as 
 humanity has known. 
 
 Fortunately, the Asembly of Notables 
 gave clear answers. 
 
 In all questions of civil life, they af¬ 
 firmed, the law of the country was su¬ 
 preme. They pointed out that the Bible 
 contains two kinds of laws: on the one 
 hand, civil laws, and, on the other, laws 
 of a purely religious and ethical charac¬ 
 ter. The civil laws of the Bible, they 
 maintained, applied to ancient Palestine, 
 not to modern life, while the religious 
 and ethical laws of the Bible are binding 
 everlastingly. As for usury, they in¬ 
 sisted, the Jewish law makes no distinc¬ 
 tion between Jew and non-Jew; it for¬ 
 bids it. unconditionally. And as for 
 loyalty to country, there was not the 
 least doubt but that it was part of the 
 Jew’s religion, that he was in duty 
 bound to love and defend his country 
 even unto death. 
 
 In a word, the Assemly of Jewish Not¬ 
 ables took the position that the Jews 
 
 91 
 
of France were a religious community, 
 and that by their very religion they 
 were bound to love and defend their 
 country and to obey its laws. 
 
 It was to give religious sanction to 
 these declarations of the Notables that 
 Napoleon later on created the Paris San¬ 
 hedrin, which, he thought, might become 
 a centre of authority for the Jews of the 
 world. 
 
 That in this, as in other things, Na¬ 
 poleon was carried away by megalo¬ 
 mania is probably true. It is certainly 
 true that, within two years after the 
 Assembly, he allowed restrictive meas¬ 
 ures to be enacted against the Jews. 
 Nevertheless, the fact remains that the 
 work of Napoleon’s Assembly and San¬ 
 hedrin served to define and expound the 
 views of the modern Jew on certain 
 questions of great import and also to lay 
 the foundation for the position of the 
 Jew in the modern world. It was 
 through Napoleon’s interest and initia¬ 
 tive that the world was informed how 
 the Jew stood on these fundamental sub¬ 
 jects, involving the merits and integrity 
 
 92 
 
of his citizenship. And throughout the 
 nineteenth century this remained the 
 position of the Jew in all civilized coun¬ 
 tries. 
 
 The significant thing is that today 
 these questions have again become all- 
 important. For within the last few years 
 the old question has been re-opened. Are 
 the Jews citizens or sojourners? Are 
 they here for good? Or are they here 
 only temporarily, and is their real coun¬ 
 try, their “homeland,” elsewhere? And 
 from these questions the other question 
 has sprung: In their relationship with 
 non-Jews, are the Jews governed by 
 special laws? Such queries have arisen 
 anew, and an answer is demanded this 
 time not • by an emperor, but by the 
 world. And, alas! the answers vary. 
 But many of us feel that we can, and 
 must, repeat categorically the answers 
 given by Napoleon’s Assembly, and that 
 such answers alone spell safety and hap¬ 
 piness for the Jew. 
 
 None can tell what the twentieth cen¬ 
 tury will bring forth. But as we look 
 back at the century that has elapsed 
 
 93 
 
since the death of Napoleon, we must 
 reach one conclusion. Take it all in all, 
 it was one of the noblest periods in Jew¬ 
 ish history. 
 
 . In some quarters, aspersions have 
 been cast in recent years upon the Jew’s 
 record in the nineteenth century. Myopic 
 carpers have called it a period of deter¬ 
 ioration, of surrender, of spiritual slav¬ 
 ery; and what not. But the actual rec¬ 
 ord tells a different story. 
 
 The nineteenth century will stand out 
 as one of the most fertile and glorious 
 periods of Jewish history. It was a 
 period of critical transition and of ad¬ 
 justment. The political and civil eman¬ 
 cipation created momentous problems 
 and tasks. Not since the ages of Ezekiel 
 and of Ben Zakkai were the Jews re¬ 
 quired to effect so radical a revaluation 
 of their creed. And what has happened? 
 The Jewish people have risen morally; 
 they have carried on an active intellec¬ 
 tual and spiritual life, and they have 
 shown themselves eager and able to em¬ 
 brace every kind of occupation thrown 
 open to them. No longer can even their 
 worst enemy speak of them as a people 
 
 94 
 
of usurers (though the phrase was a 
 slander always). In almost every trade, 
 every sphere of toil, they are found in 
 large numbers, as well as in intellectual 
 vocations. This the nineteenth century 
 has done—one of the fairest and most 
 fruitful eras in Jewish history. 
 
 We of today might well follow its 
 example. Let us aim to remain loyal to 
 our faith, let us seek to discharge our 
 full duty as citizens, and let us, in our 
 contact with the world, prove the lofti¬ 
 ness and impartiality of our moral laws. 
 Thus we shall help to safeguard and im¬ 
 prove the place of the Jew in the modern 
 world. 
 
 95 
 
IX 
 
 ADOLF JELLINEK, 
 
 OR 
 
 THE IDEAL OF A MODERN RABBI 
 
 “There shall be no more any vain vision 
 nor flattering divination within the house 
 of Israel .”—Ezekiel 12, 24. 
 
 O F late we have witnessed the ob¬ 
 servance of several important cen¬ 
 tenaries. Such names as Keats, 
 Marvel, Dostoievski, Dante, Luther, Na¬ 
 poleon, have been revived anent some 
 anniversary occurring this year. It is 
 certainly proper that we pause to cele¬ 
 brate the name of a Jewish worthy, who 
 was born a hundred years ago and who 
 not only was one of the illustrious men 
 of his time, but still lives as a spiritual 
 influence wherever his name is known or 
 his books are read. I refer to Adolf Jel- 
 linek, the great rabbi and preacher, the 
 centenary of whose birth occurs this 
 year, and of whom one cannot think 
 without advantage. 
 
 The chief advantage derived from a 
 study of Jellinek’s life and work is a 
 
 97 
 
better understanding, a clearer grasp, of 
 the noblest ideal of a modern rabbi. In 
 this regard, Jellinek is especially instruc¬ 
 tive, and in this side of him we of today 
 might have a particular interest. 
 
 Jellinek’s personal life, also, is not 
 lacking in appeal. Born in a small town 
 in Moravia, he received his early educa¬ 
 tion in some Jewish schools, under the 
 guidance of his grandmother, who was 
 the daughter of a famous rabbi, his 
 mother having died young. Later he 
 studied at the universities of Prague and 
 Leipsic, where he received a manifold 
 equipment for his future work. It was 
 at Leipsic that he held his first rabbinic 
 position and became famous as a preach¬ 
 er, going from there to Vienna, where 
 he died in 1893, after having gained a 
 worldwide reputation among both Jews 
 and non-Jews as one of the most elo¬ 
 quent preachers of his age. 
 
 The biography of such a man is itself 
 not without interest. But what concerns 
 us most is the ideal that inspired Jelli¬ 
 nek, that lay behind all his work, that 
 guided and goaded him in his diverse 
 rabbinical activities. For, an apprecia- 
 
 98 
 
tion of Jellinek’s ideal might well help us 
 to answer a question which is often 
 asked today, namely, What should be the 
 ideal of a modern rabbi? And it might 
 help congregations to determine what 
 kind of rabbi they ought to have. 
 
 No reader of Jellinek’s writings can 
 doubt for a moment as to what came 
 first in his ideal. It was the eager desire 
 to give new expression to the truths, the 
 beauties, the purpose of Judaism. 
 
 Wherever we turn in his works, we 
 find this object uppermost. Jellinek felt 
 that Judaism contained truths of ever¬ 
 lasting value, that its institutions and 
 the life of its adherents were meant to 
 be beautiful, that its teachings were de¬ 
 signed to produce the noblest ethical and 
 spiritual results. But he knew, also, 
 that in order that this end might be 
 won, Judaism in the new age required 
 an expression appropriate to the times 
 and different from that of the ages 
 which had preceded and during which 
 conditions of Jewish life were entirely 
 different. 
 
 To this theme Jellinek returns re¬ 
 peatedly. And he returns to it because it 
 
is vital. The people of his age had 
 emerged from the ghetto. They loved 
 beauty. They sought culture. They 
 needed ethical and spiritual sustenance. 
 Could they find these things in the old 
 religion, which many of them associated, 
 though wrongly, with ugliness, narrow¬ 
 ness, and rigid legalism? Jellinek con¬ 
 sidered it as his first duty to demon¬ 
 strate that Judaism did contain these 
 things, and that to find them it was nec¬ 
 essary only to go down to the heart of 
 Judaism, where its treasures were 
 hidden. 
 
 And this brings us to the other part 
 of Jellinek’s ideal—his love of Jewish 
 learning and his desire to diffuse this 
 learning among men. 
 
 Learning has always formed part of 
 the rabbi’s ideal. Whoever knows any¬ 
 thing of the history of the rabbi in Israel 
 knows this much. The very word “rab¬ 
 bi”, which means “my teacher,” indi¬ 
 cates it. Those who keep on deprecating 
 scholarship as of but secondary import¬ 
 ance in rabbis, certainly are at variance 
 with the traditional ideal of the Jew. 
 
 100 
 
We are told now and then that we want 
 “spiritual” rabbis, rather than “scholar¬ 
 ly” ones, as if our chief trouble were 
 that our rabbis are suffering from ex¬ 
 cess of learning! Just as a short time 
 ago we were told that we wanted so¬ 
 ciologists as rabbis. But what is this 
 spirituality demanded by the new mode? 
 The replies are as vague as that given 
 by the old Greek sage to the inquiring 
 people in Goethe’s poem. “What is the 
 so-called spirit?” ask the people. And 
 Cleobulus answers: “What is usually 
 known as spirit; this be your answer, but 
 do not ask.” 
 
 “Was ist der sogenannte Geist?” 
 
 “Was man so Geist gewohnlich heisst, 
 
 Antwortet, aber fragt nicht.” 
 
 The spirituality that is divorced from 
 the scholarly ideal would, upon scrutiny, 
 prove itself a vapid figment, an empty 
 phrase. 
 
 If we consult such a classic as “The 
 Chapters of the Fathers”, from which 
 scores of generations of Jews have 
 drawn their ideas of ethics and religion, 
 we shall find described those conditions 
 
 101 
 
which, according to Jewish teaching, 
 make for true spirituality. There we 
 find the teaching of Rabbi Meir, one of 
 the foremost talmudic rabbis. “Whoever 
 occupies himself with the Torah,” he 
 tells us, “with religious study, for its 
 own sake, and not for the sake of self¬ 
 advancement or self-advertising, gains 
 many things. Nay, he is worthy of the 
 whole world. What is more, it clothes 
 him with humility and godliness, and 
 qualifies him to become righteous, saint¬ 
 ly, upright, and faithful.” This was 
 Rabbi Meir’s idea of the connection be¬ 
 tween the scholarly disposition and prac¬ 
 tice with spirituality. And his view is 
 supported by the teaching of another 
 illustrious rabbi. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi 
 said: “Every day a divine Voice re¬ 
 sounds from the heights of Horeb, pro¬ 
 claiming: Woe to human beings for the 
 neglect of the Torah! For, whosoever 
 neglects the Torah, is called nazuph, 
 gross, despised, swine-like!” 
 
 Love of learning, thus, has always 
 been inherent to Israel’s rabbis. But 
 with Jellinek it had more than academic 
 value. He realized that knowledge was 
 
 102 
 
necessary to the self-respect of the Jew, 
 to his spiritual and ethical well-being, 
 and to his proper appreciation of his 
 own religious heritage. For this reason, 
 as well as because of his own love of 
 study, Jellinek devoted himself assidu¬ 
 ously to the spread of Jewish knowledge. 
 He edited old Jewish manuscripts. He 
 gave expositions continuously of Jewish 
 subjects. He founded in Vienna a col¬ 
 lege for Jewish study, the Bet Ham- 
 midrash, in which some of the most 
 learned men of the day taught and lec¬ 
 tured, such as Isaac Hirsch Weiss and 
 Meir Friedmann, from both of whom 
 works of rare erudition came forth in 
 the course of time, from the former the 
 brilliant “History of Jewish Tradition”, 
 a study of. which Dr. Schechter, the au¬ 
 thor’s beloved disciple, gave in the first 
 series of his “Studies in Judaism.” He 
 gave particular attention to works on 
 Midrash and Kabbalah, the great spirit¬ 
 ual value of which had not then been 
 widely recognized. He devoted time and 
 thought to the religious education of the 
 young. The more knowledge of Juda¬ 
 ism, he felt, the better for the Jew. 
 
But there was still another side to the 
 ideal of Jellinek. It was to gain for Juda¬ 
 ism the proper understanding and ap¬ 
 preciation of the non-Jewish world. 
 
 As he looked about him, he found 
 among non-Jews many errors about the 
 religion and the life of the Jew. What 
 was the essence of Judaism? What were 
 the foundations of Jewish life? What 
 were the Jewish teachings in regard to 
 non-Jews? These were some of the ques¬ 
 tions concerning which the most confused 
 and false notions prevailed, and the re¬ 
 sult was twofold: Christian dislike of 
 Jews and the Jew’s loss of self-respect. 
 To the removal of such errors Jellinek 
 devoted himself, and he did so not only 
 for the sake of the Jews, but also of non- 
 Jews, as he believed that there never 
 could be any happiness or peace among 
 men until there was toleration and un¬ 
 derstanding among the devotees of dif¬ 
 ferent faiths, and especially among the 
 followers of Judaism and of the religion 
 that sprang from it. 
 
 He was one of the foremost preachers 
 of toleration and freedom, and he never 
 failed to bring forward the universal 
 
 104 
 
outlook of Judaism, the hope expressed 
 long ago by the prophet Zephaniah that 
 the day would come when all people shall 
 be turned to one pure language and 
 serve God with one consent. 
 
 These three elements formed the dom¬ 
 inant parts of Jellinek’s ideal. 
 
 Nor can one read his writings without 
 admiring, in addition to his eloquence 
 and learning, the zeal and persistency 
 with which he clung to his task. I have 
 said that Jellinek was regarded as the 
 most illustrious Jewish preacher of his 
 time. This is not to say that he had not 
 his critics, nor that he was perfect. The 
 chances are he had his faults; it is cer¬ 
 tain he was criticized. Some criticized 
 his attire, others, the way he wore his 
 beard, still others called him vain, though 
 those that knew him best have testi¬ 
 fied that he was the humblest of men. 
 But, despite criticism, he devoted him¬ 
 self restlessly to the pursuit of his ideal, 
 and there can be no doubt that his work 
 not only was a blessing to his contem¬ 
 poraries, but is destined to remain a 
 
 10S 
 
source of ennoblement and inspiration 
 for future ages. 
 
 And we need his influence today. To¬ 
 day, also, we need a new realization of 
 the adequacy of Judaism. Today, also, 
 we need more knowledge of Judaism. 
 Today, also, we need a better understand¬ 
 ing between Jew and non-Jew. Let us, 
 therefore, try to emulate the work and 
 perpetuate the ideal of Adolf Jellinek! 
 
X 
 
 THE JEW AND THE WORLD 
 
 (For Shabuoth) 
 
 “And the remnant of Jacob shall be in 
 the midst of many peoples as dew from 
 the Lord, as showers upon the grass.” 
 
 —Micah 5, 6. 
 
 T HE Bible relates that when the Law 
 was about to be given to Israel, the 
 people were told to prepare them¬ 
 selves by special observance for its re¬ 
 ception. For two days they were bidden 
 to sanctify themselves, so that on the 
 third day they might be fit for the great 
 event. No less today, on the eve of the 
 Feast of Shabuoth, it behoves us to con¬ 
 centrate upon the thoughts associated 
 with this festival. 
 
 Shabuoth, from of yore, has been ob¬ 
 served as the day of the giving of the 
 Law. An old rabbi called it the spiritual 
 birthday of the Jewish people. In mod¬ 
 ern times it has become the occasion for 
 Confirmation, when many young people 
 dedicate themselves to the continuance 
 of Israel’s history and purpose. Might 
 
 107 
 
we not pause to ask ourselves what the 
 Jew’s place has really been in the world, 
 what he has accomplished, or at least 
 sought to accomplish, since first he en¬ 
 tered upon his spiritual existence, and 
 whether his past really warrants the 
 dedication of his modern offspring to the 
 maintenance of his name and place 
 among men? 
 
 If ever there was reason for such in¬ 
 quiry, there certainly is at present. 
 
 For, within the last couple of years, 
 we have heard a good deal of discussion 
 regarding the Jew’s place in the world; 
 and much of it in hostile tone. This is 
 one of the evil effects of the war, which, 
 contrary to general expectation, has 
 brought about, in addition to an untold 
 amount of physical suffering, a good 
 deal of ethical upheaval. There has been 
 a renewal of the old assaults upon the 
 character and the history of the Jew, 
 and in various quarters efforts are made 
 to depict the Jew as detrimental to civi¬ 
 lization and his further existence as a 
 menace to mankind. 
 
 And the worst result of these asper¬ 
 sions is its effect upon a considerable 
 
 108 
 
number of Jews. It fills them with dis¬ 
 may. It puts into their hearts the seed 
 of doubt and self-distrust. It serves to 
 blind them to the glories of their own 
 past and post. While many Jews are 
 fortified in their loyalty by antagonism, 
 quite a few are frightened by the con¬ 
 stant reiteration of its charges. It is 
 fortunate, therefore, that every now and 
 then something occurs which, like Sha- 
 buoth, reminds us of the Jew’s true his¬ 
 tory and helps us to appraise correctly 
 his place and achievement in the world. 
 
 At such a time as this the chief merit 
 of Shabuoth is that it reminds us of the 
 Jew’s most important contribution to 
 the weal and the progress of mankind. 
 
 For, it commemorates the Jew’s con¬ 
 scious acceptance of the Divine Law, of 
 the Burden of the Torah. Of course, 
 there were Jews before the event of 
 Sinai. Also, there are those who doubt 
 the historicity of that event. But these 
 points are of relatively small import¬ 
 ance. That there came a time in the 
 course of Jewish development when the 
 people dedicated themselves to the Law, 
 to the cause of Righteousness, to Reli- 
 
 109 
 
gion, this is of supreme moment, and, 
 moreover, that thereby the Jew was 
 destined to give to mankind the greatest 
 help in the pursuit of happiness and the 
 mightiest incentive to ethical and spirit¬ 
 ual ennoblement. 
 
 These facts of Jewish history nothing 
 can obscure, nobody can efface or deny. 
 Suppose we are informed that latter-day 
 research has discovered among Assyri¬ 
 ans and Babylonians and Egyptians the 
 existence of laws and lore similar to 
 those found in the Bible. Suppose we 
 are apprised that here and there we find 
 ethical precepts and religious beliefs ap¬ 
 proximating or foreshadowing those of 
 the Jews! Does this alter the one out¬ 
 standing fact, namely, that as far as the 
 world is concerned, it got its sublimest 
 religious teachings and most compulsive 
 moral laws from the Jew? Not a whit! 
 The Bible mankind received from the 
 Jew, and with the Bible all those spirit¬ 
 ual and ethical ideals which form its 
 fabric. And while men as yet have not 
 realized the ideals of the Bible, those 
 ideals still constitute their most persist¬ 
 ent monition and pattern. 
 
 110 
 
Nor is the Jew’s contribution to the 
 riches of the world exhausted by what 
 he did in the beginning, by the creation 
 of the Bible. The Jew’s history reveals 
 the fact that he never ceased producing 
 men who sought to develop and incar¬ 
 nate the spirit of the Bible. 
 
 Recently Mr. H. G. Wells gave us a 
 stimulating new book on “The Salvaging 
 of Civilization”. Mr. Wells pleads for a 
 new Bible. The old Bible, he admits, 
 has had a wonderful influence over the 
 lives and minds of men. It has been the 
 book that has held together the fabric 
 of Western civilization. It has been the 
 handbook of life to countless millions of 
 men and women. The civilization we 
 possess could not have come into exist¬ 
 ence and could not have been sustained 
 without it. The Bible was the cement by 
 which our Western communities were 
 built and by which they were held to¬ 
 gether. All this Mr. Wells affirms. But 
 one reason why he pleads for a new 
 Bible of Civilization is that the old Bible 
 “breaks off”, as he puts it. 
 
 Ill 
 
But just here we discern the distinc¬ 
 tion of the Jew. His Bible never broke 
 off. He never regarded the written 
 Bible as all-sufficient. The Oral Law, he 
 affirmed, was given at the same time as 
 the Written Law, and to develop, ex¬ 
 pound, and incarnate the Written Law 
 by the aid of the Oral Law became the 
 chief task of his spiritual leaders 
 throughout the ages. Indeed, some rab¬ 
 bis held that the unfoldment of the Oral 
 Tradition was more important than that 
 of the Written Law, and that the pos¬ 
 session of the Unwritten Bible formed 
 the real distinction of Israel. Ekhtob lo 
 rube torothi kemo zor nehshabu : “Had I 
 written down for him the greater part 
 of My Torah, there. would have been 
 nothing to mark him off from the rest 
 of the world”—the Lord said, according 
 to the rabbis, in the words of the Proph¬ 
 et Hosea. It is of the Unwritten Bible, 
 as well as of the written Bible, that the 
 Jew was made custodian. 
 
 This is why Jewish history is full of 
 great personalities, some of whom are 
 among the foremost teachers of man- 
 
 112 
 
kind. Think of Philo, of Hillel, of Ibn 
 Gebirol, Maimonides, Spinoza, Mendels¬ 
 sohn.. Or think of Jesus! Whatever 
 Jews may think of him, or Christians, 
 he was a Jew, and it was the Jewish 
 Bible that he sought in his own way to 
 vivify and embody. 
 
 Nor is it merely in the world of reli¬ 
 gious teaching or philosophic thought 
 that we find outstanding Jewish person¬ 
 alities; we face them in every other 
 sphere of life, and especially among the 
 leaders of social reform. That passion 
 for social justice and mercy which in the 
 Bible found expression in Isaiah and 
 Amos, often flamed up anew in sons and 
 daughters of Israel, who, however mis¬ 
 judged, may yet come to be counted 
 among the benefactors of mankind. No 
 wonder Hermann Keyserling, the Ger¬ 
 man philosopher, in his “Journal of a 
 Philosopher's Travels", admits that if 
 any people has a right to regard itself 
 as a Chosen People, it is the Jews. For, 
 he says, “their belief is the basis of 
 Christianity and Islam and thus indi¬ 
 rectly rules the world, and they them¬ 
 selves, despite oppression and disdain, 
 
 113 
 
have never degenerated as a people, and 
 even today, most of the spiritual leaders 
 of Europe belong to them.” 
 
 And this leads us to another thought. 
 
 Not only by his distinguished per¬ 
 sonalities and his Bible has the Jew justi¬ 
 fied himself in the world. He has done 
 so as a people. The unique merit o± 
 Moses, it has been said, lay not so much 
 in that he created a religion for a people, 
 as in that he created a people for Re¬ 
 ligion. The Jewish people has been the 
 champion of Religion in the world. 
 Through its Prophets it became the 
 Prophet People. And what is the one 
 great lesson taught by the history of the 
 Jewish people? It is the lesson of the 
 supremacy of spiritual force over the 
 material forces. How great the marvel 
 of the Jew’s survival! He has been op¬ 
 pressed, maligned, outraged; and still he 
 lives. But the secret of his survival is 
 the spiritual ideal to which he is dedi¬ 
 cated. 
 
 When at Sinai the Israelites exclaimed, 
 All that the Lord hath said we shall do 
 and try to understand (says an ancient 
 
 114 
 
rabbi), the Lord summoned the Angel of 
 Death and said to him, Everything is in 
 thy power, except this people! Kol ha-olam 
 b’reshuthekha huts min ha-uma hazzoth. 
 
 The whole history of the Jew proves 
 the superior worth of spiritual ideals. 
 By them the Jew has survived. By them 
 he became immortal. “The law of Thy 
 mouth,” cried the Psalmist, “is better 
 for me than thousands of gold and sil¬ 
 ver!” “For the reason,” comment the 
 ancient rabbis, “that gold and silver, ma¬ 
 terial ambitions, drive man out of the 
 world, while the Torah, spiritual ideal¬ 
 ism, secures for him both this world and 
 the world to come.” 
 
 When we think of the history of the 
 Jew, we realize how false are the charges 
 leveled against him and what right we 
 have to be proud of the place of the Jew 
 in the world. 
 
 “And every stone becomes a gem 
 Reflected in the beams divine; 
 
 Blown back, they blind the mocking eye, 
 
 But still in Israel’s paths they shine.” 
 
 There was never a time when the 
 world needed more than today the lofty 
 
 115 
 
ideals which the Jew set before it, which 
 his great personalities sought to advance 
 and perpetuate, and which his people has 
 lived for. Renewal of the spirit of the 
 Bible,—this the world needs today rather 
 than a new Bible. It needs a new birth 
 of the spirit of Righteousness which shall 
 lead to true brotherhood and unification. 
 It needs men and women devoted to the 
 unfolding and accomplishing of the true 
 purpose of Religion. It needs the ex¬ 
 altation of spiritual ideals over material 
 ambitions. Let us hope, therefore, that 
 the young who now dedicate themselves 
 to Israel's ancient faith may be able to 
 promote these ideals and thus prove 
 themselves an honor to their people and 
 a blessing to mankind. 
 
 “And there shall be no more 
 a pricking brier unto the house 
 of Israel, nor a piercing thorn 
 of any that are round about 
 them, that did have them in 
 disdain; and they shall know 
 that I am the Lord God." 
 
 116