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 "WORDS IN SEASON 
 
 RABBI ABRAHAM J. FELDMAN 
 
 ADDRESSES AT INSTALLATION 
 
 AMERICANIZATION TRUE AND FALSE 
 
 WHAT IS WRONG WITH RELIGION? 
 
 RELIGION SOCIALIZED 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 OSCAR KLONOWER 
 
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 SERIES XXXI11. No. 15. 
 
 hg Sabbt Sou. SCrauakopf, JL 
 
 AT THE INSTALLATION OF ABRAHAM J. FELDMAN AS ASSIST- 
 ANT RABBI OF REFORM CONGREGATION KENESETH ISRAEL. 
 
 Philadelphia, February 8, 1920. 
 
 We are gathered in holy convocation, you in your 
 pews, and we on this platform, to participate in the con- 
 secration of a union between a Rabbi and a Congregation. 
 Next to a solemnization of a marital tie, I know of few 
 unions that carry with them a responsibility equal in serious- 
 ness to that upon which you and your new Assistant Rabbi 
 are about to enter. Like unto a young woman who, in an- 
 swer to the call of love, and in response to the choice which 
 a young man has made of her to be his wife and helpmate, 
 his counsellor and light, the sharer of his every joy, the com- 
 forter in his every sorrow, his stay and prop in all the 
 changes and chances of life; like unto a young woman who, 
 in answer to the call of love, leaves her home where plenty 
 abounded, where peace reigned supreme, where loving 
 hearts watched tenderly and lovingly over her, so as he, 
 whom you have called to be one of your spiritual leaders, 
 left a field of activity that was congenial to him, a field in 
 which he labored faithfully and successfully, left a congre- 
 gation where many friends deeply regret his departure. All 
 this has he left behind him, to do in your midst what he 
 pledged himself to do on the day of his ordination, to teach 
 and to preach, to exhort and to admonish, to uplift and to 
 inspire, to labor, and to arouse others to labor, where work 
 is needed and where hands are slack, where ignorance is 
 rampant and error abounds, where hearts ache, and souls 
 droop and wither. 
 
 But, as the marital union, if it is to be lastingly happy, 
 imposes sacred duties upon the man as well as upon the 
 woman, exacts faithfulness and devotion from the husband 
 as well as from the wife, so does a union between a minister
 
 126 
 
 and his congregation involve serious and responsible duties 
 on the part of both, if it is to prove fruitful to each of them 
 as well as to the community at large. Not one who has 
 studied the conditions that make for success or failure in 
 marital life, but knows that where there is no husband's 
 love there cannot be a wife's lasting affection, that love is 
 the necessary element of a woman's life, that to live she 
 must love, and to love she must be loved in return, that with 
 a husband's love there is no sacrifice within a wife's power 
 of which she is not capable, no duty, no matter how trying, 
 which she is not ready to perform, that without a husband's 
 love and cheer and encouragement their home is built on 
 quicksand, that with them it is built on rocks which neither 
 time nor circumstance can move. 
 
 Of a like nature is the relationship between the minis- 
 ter and his congregation. Unless there is a congregation's 
 support, there cannot be a minister's success. What wind 
 is to the sail, or steam to the propeller, if the ship is to 
 reach its port, that a congregation's support is to the Rabbi, 
 if his ministry is to attain the end for which it exists. Be 
 he never so able, never so eloquent, if his congregation does 
 not stand solidly, loyally, behind him, does not work and 
 strive and battle with him, in vain will all his efforts be, in 
 vain will be all his hopes. If a congregation is not willing 
 to pledge itself to such support to the Rabbi of its call, it 
 has no right to extend the call ; it has no right to ask him 
 to continue in its midst. If, after a young man has spent 
 eight or nine of the most precious years of life to a study of 
 the Rabbinical profession, and one and one-half more years 
 to the acquisition of practical experience in the ministry, he 
 answers a congregation's call to come and minister to it, 
 and it refuses to be ministered to by him, it is false to its 
 pledge, to its Rabbi, to itself, to its cause. On the other 
 side, be the Rabbi who he may, be his talents what they 
 may, if he be unable to lead and to hold a congregation, 
 the congregation is duty-bound to set him aside for one who 
 is able. The cause is greater than the man. There must be 
 no sentimentality where the religious needs of a congrega- 
 tion are at stake. A certain general, about to lead his men
 
 127 
 
 against a mighty foe, addressed them thus: "If I advance, 
 follow me. If I flinch, kill me. If I am incapable of leader- 
 ship, promptly and fearlessly choose a capable leader in my 
 place, for the battle must be won." As that general spoke 
 and counselled, so will every conscientious Rabbi speak and 
 counsel, and the Rabbi who speaks and counsels thus is gen- 
 erally one who leads bravely forward, who is generally 
 seen in the thickest of the fight, who never flinches, and 
 seldom fails. 
 
 But, as little as the battle will be won by even the 
 bravest of generals, if his men do not follow him bravely 
 and fight with him and under him, and fight with all their 
 hearts and souls and might, so little will a Rabbi's ministry 
 be victory-crowned be the quality of his leadership never so 
 efficient, and his spirit never so valiant, if he has not the 
 following of a congregation equally as resolute to fight for 
 the good cause, equally as determined to win its victories. 
 
 And let it be well understood that following the lea- 
 dership of a Rabbi does not mean professing oneself a Jew 
 or Jewess, and paying one's dues to the Synagogue. It 
 does not mean this at all, if by it be meant all of one's con- 
 nection with the Synagogue. To be a follower of the Re- 
 ligion of Israel means above all things battling with all one's 
 power against the evils that are arrayed against civilized 
 society, battling against sin and error, against greed and 
 corruption, against injustice and lawlessness, against hatred 
 and prejudice, which darken our horizon at the present 
 time, and which, if unstopped, menace to engulf our future. 
 It means living outside of the Synagogue the truths taught 
 inside of it. It means giving daily demonstration by means 
 of personal conduct of the noble principles taught by the 
 Religion professed. It means readiness to march shoulder 
 to shoulder, and to fight side by side, with followers of any 
 or all creeds, whithersoever led in the cause of righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 That knowledge and skill cannot be acquired by non- 
 attendane upon Divine Service. The Synagogue does not 
 profess to be able to do its work by "absent treatment." It 
 requires the presence of its followers not once or twice a
 
 128 
 
 year, but at every service, the layman as well as the leader, 
 not for any benefit accruing thereby to God or to the Rabbi, 
 but to the individual worshipper in particular, and to soci- 
 ety in general. One of the ancient Rabbis taught, and taught 
 wisely, that "an uneducated man cannot be pious." Neither 
 can one be truly pious without becoming educated. To be 
 righteous, to know how to shun evil, to resist temptation, 
 to suppress lusts and greeds and base appetites, to overcome 
 hatreds and prejudices, requires as much education as is 
 required to master a science or a profession, or to learn a 
 trade. To be able to call forth from the heart and soul and 
 mind of man what is highest and best and noblest within 
 them requires as much training as is required to call forth 
 a sublime melody from a musical instrument, or a magnifi- 
 cent statue from a block of marble. As we must retreat, 
 from time to time, from noise and excitements, if we would 
 enjoy rest and quiet and sleep; as we must withdraw, from 
 time to time, from crowds, and be with ourselves so as to 
 become acquainted with ourselves, so must we, at regular 
 intervals, retreat from the toil and moil, from the excite- 
 ments and dissipations of our daily routine, and retire to 
 our Sanctuary to inquire into the purpose of our daily toil 
 and moil, to ask whither our pursuits and pleasures, our 
 gains and fames are leading us to ask ourselves, or to be 
 asked: "How long yet?" "And then?" "And Why?" 
 "And Whither?" 
 
 And no one can ask himself such questions as these, 
 or have them put to him, in the House of God, in the pres- 
 ence of God, amidst the sacred and impressive environ- 
 ments that there abound, and not leave the Sanctuary the 
 wiser for having come, and not resume the week's work 
 the better for the instruction given, for the admonition re- 
 ceived, the readier to follow the leadership of him who has 
 consecrated his life and all for the good of every member 
 of the congregation, of every member of the community. 
 
 Such is the meaning and purpose of Divine Service. 
 Such is the reason of this Installation Service. Such is the 
 mission in your community of him whom you have called 
 for leadership of you. May you follow him as faithfully
 
 as he is resolved faithfully to lead you. May you labor 
 and strive with him as he is sacredly resolved to strive in 
 your midst, with all the power with which God has en- 
 dowed him, for your good, for the good of Israel, for the 
 good of mankind. His success will mean your success, and 
 will depend on you as well as on him. If both of you will 
 give each the best that is within you, all will be well. May 
 this be your solemn resolve in this solemn hour, in this 
 solemn place, and may God crown it with blessed fulfill- 
 ment. Amen. 
 
 INSTALLATION ADDRESS OF RABBI ABRAHAM 
 J. FELDMAN. 
 
 There are great moments in the life of every man. 
 They are the hours of decision, when one struggles with 
 himself in an effort to decide worthily, to decide truly, to 
 decide wisely as to the path of duty. They are the mo- 
 ments when one would fain lift the curtain that veils the 
 future that he may gain the help needed for a wise de- 
 cision. They are the moments when a man assumes graver 
 responsibilities and greater obligations. It is at such times 
 that one yearns for insight and foresight, that one prays 
 for wisdom and understanding, that one asks and petitions 
 for courage and strength. For, life's great moments are 
 difficult moments, difficult because of the consciousness that 
 they are surcharged with responsibilities less to one's own 
 self than to others, and because they are or ought to be in- 
 variably regnant with hope and with prayerful humility. 
 
 It is through such a period that I have passed since 
 your call to this pulpit first reached me and this moment 
 is its culmination. It is a difficult moment. To be sure 
 there is happiness. To be sure there is reverent pride, there 
 is joy. But these are after all only the lighter aspects of 
 a grave hour. It is a great moment in my life, to be now 
 installed as I just have been installed, with promises of 
 co-operation so generous as one of the teachers in the 
 pulpit of this Congregation, a pulpit that stands high in the 
 esteem of the thoughtful and the informed of our people,
 
 130 
 
 a pulpit that is forever hallowed and consecrated by the 
 prophetic zeal and yearning of David Einhorn, by the pro- 
 found learning and erudition of Samuel Hirsch, as well 
 as by the thirty-odd years of the faithful and fruitful serv- 
 ice of him whom it is your privilege to know as your leader, 
 teacher and friend. It is a distinction of which I am 
 pardonably, I hope proud to stand where Einhorn and 
 Hirsch stood and to serve with Joseph Krauskopf a priest 
 of God, whose lips keep knowledge, from whom thousands 
 upon thousands have sought the law of God, and whose 
 work has been bountifully and richly blessed and rewarded 
 in the lives of those whom he has taught, whom he has 
 inspired and guided. I deem it a privilege to serve with 
 him, to learn from him, to assist him in the great work 
 and in the sacred cause. 
 
 But I beg of you who are my people now, to remember 
 that thirty-seven years in the pulpit give a man the maturity 
 which one after a year and a half in the pulpit cannot pos- 
 sibly have. I ask you to remember that at the beginning of 
 his career one has not the experience, the wisdom and 'the 
 learning of one who has battled valiantly and lived in- 
 tensely through a lifetime. I ask you to judge your 
 Junior Rabbi not by the high standard of the Senior. In 
 a word, I plead for fairness, as I assure you that in zeal, 
 in earnestness, in sincerity, in devotion to my God and to 
 the people to whose service my life is dedicated I yield 
 to none. And though I speak the word of Jeremiah when 
 called to the difficult and arduous task of teaching and 
 preaching to the house of Israel: "Ah, Lord God! behold I 
 cannot speak for I am but a lad" yet do I hear the ir- 
 resistible charge: "To whomsoever I shall send thee thou 
 shalt go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt 
 speak." I come here to serve. I come here to learn. I 
 come here to teach. I offer myself willingly and joyously 
 to service, and as such, as one of the "mithnadbhim ba'am," 
 as one of those who have offered themselves readily and 
 willingly to the people, I believe that I am justified in ask- 
 ing for your hearts, in asking for your co-operation, for 
 your encouragement and for your forbearance as I pray
 
 with the Psalmist: "7 am Thy servant, Lord, give me 
 understanding" 
 
 But it is not I alone who am at this time being con- 
 secrated anew. It is you, too, who are this day renewing 
 the covenant of the fathers ; it is you, too, who are this day 
 repeating the pledge of the fathers "na'aseh ve'nishma" 
 of which this week's Scriptural portion speaks, the pledge 
 to do, to live, to serve, and to hear, to learn, and to under- 
 stand that covenant of loyalty, that spiritual bond which 
 has given Israel the fortitude and the strength to face 
 bravely through the centuries the furies of human hatred 
 and the prejudices of darkened minds to emerge victorious 
 despite all ! 
 
 When we stop to consider the history of our people; 
 when we stop to review the picturesque diversity of our 
 past; the rise of the people of Israel out of tribal inde- 
 pendence into a united nation, out of Bedouin obscurity and 
 the Arabian desert into the priesthood of the Universal God 
 and into the prophetic missionaries to the world; when we 
 reflect upon the remarkable spiritual evolution of Israel 
 when he reached out of the conception of family and clan 
 deities unto the heights of ethical monotheism, and think 
 of the courage of conviction, of the obstinacy in perse- 
 verance, of the pride in persistence, yes, of the audacity of 
 faith displayed by our people through all centuries, we, the 
 most recent representatives of the ancient people, are prone 
 to marvel in pride and in admiration. Whence that 
 strength? Whence that power? What the secret of the 
 resistance? What the secret of the continuity of this small 
 and numerically insignificant group in the face of so tre- 
 mendous an opposition, so severe a persecution, and so much 
 adversity ? 
 
 Consider it carefully, and you will find that it was 
 the force of an ideal that stimulated us; that, throughout 
 all, it was the power born of faith and confidence, nourished 
 by an inborn optimism and trust, come to fruition in the 
 sterilizing, purifying fires of adversity, and steeled and 
 hardened by untold suffering that made us proof to all 
 the shafts of intolerance and narrow, one-eyed zealotry.
 
 132 
 
 It was an ideal, sublime, exalted, noble. It was the 
 ideal presented to the Jew and by the Jew in the Torah and 
 in the literature that is complementary to it. It was the 
 ideal of the Torah which he tried to live when he was 
 permitted, and to preserve for a time when he would be 
 when he was not permitted. It was the Torah's unsur- 
 passed teachings, its towering morality, its sublime mes- 
 sage that have together formed the life-giving, life-pre- 
 serving principle of the Jew. It was a veritable tree of 
 life to him, because he clung to it; verily, it made him 
 happy in the darkest hours and moments because he kept it. 
 
 Oh, that all men should take the trouble to read those 
 sacred pages again and again ! Oh, that all men might re- 
 pair to that Book, inspired because inspiring, sacred be- 
 cause sanctifying, and live the morality it preaches, realize 
 the brotherhood it proclaims. Ah, what a different aspect 
 Jewish history would have ! How much less of the red of 
 martyr-blood would be found upon its pages, how much 
 more of the whiteness of tolerance, of the purity of 
 brotherly love, of the essential goodness of men could the 
 eternal people have witnessed on its march through the 
 ages! 
 
 Our march through the ages! What a march, what 
 a spectacle, what a tale it relates ! 
 
 Our thoughts revert to the time when the glory of 
 God's revelation first appeared at the gates of consciousness 
 of Abraham, our father. Warmed by the resplendent glow 
 of the Shechinah he forsook country, birthplace, family and 
 friends, and set out to be the apostle of the One God, his 
 children and progeny the heralds proclaiming the Eternal 
 God's eternal Truths. Into the desert they, went to com- 
 mune with their God, there to be inspired and ordained, to 
 free their souls even as they had freed their bodies, to cast 
 off and away the shackles of idolatry and the fetters of 
 superstition even as they did the more material bonds of 
 the centuries of their bondage and slavery. To the land 
 of promise they directed their steps. There they set them- 
 selves to the task of preaching by example. Time and again 
 did the peoples of the earth attempt to destroy this people
 
 133 
 
 but in vain! Again and again did Egypt and Babylonia, 
 Assyria and Syria endeavor to crush out of existence the 
 small nationality on the banks of the Mediterranean but 
 in vain, thank God! Their land they could conquer, them 
 they could exile, but their souls, the souls set aflame by 
 the divine fire of God's Truth never! Propelled by this 
 power our people went on, a "forward moving force," 
 witnesses to the God of creation, the Father of mankind. 
 Not the conquered, but the conquerors; not the vanquished 
 but the victors! 
 
 On the sea of human or shall I say, inhuman hatred 
 which extends across the centuries, from the crest of one 
 furious wave of enmity unto that of another, Israel has 
 been repeatedly cast since the Roman conquest. Driven 
 from post to pillar and back again, homeless and friendless, 
 Israel the prophet of the ages, whose overhead shelter is 
 destroyed before it is yet fully grown, comes down to us 
 from the gray and hoary past, a mysterious, misunderstood 
 phenomenon. Like his prototype Jeremiah, Israel had 
 been cast into the miry cistern of the persecution, the re- 
 viling and the abuse of a world risen against him, and is as 
 yet unable to come out, as did the prophet, to see the people 
 realize the truth of his teaching, to see the beneficent sun 
 of love and justice, of fraternity and fellowship, of hu- 
 manity and Godliness shine down upon an earth which for 
 the present, is still enveloped in darkness, a world whose 
 brightest color is still the red of shed brother's blood and 
 not as yet the white of purity and love. 
 
 From the blood-stained streets of Jerusalem in the year 
 70, through the centuries of wandering and persecution; 
 from under the iron heel of brutal Rome into the hellish 
 fire of the auto da fe lit by the Spanish Inquisition, through 
 the countless false accusations of the Middle Ages, through 
 the physical persecutions in Roumania and Austria, and the 
 spiritual anti-Semitism of modern Germany, to the mas- 
 sacres of barbaric Russia, the Dreyfus case of civilized 
 France, the Beilis case of vodka-sodden Tsardom, the Frank 
 case of Law-and-Order-pttrsuing America, and the boycott 
 and massacres of freedom-loving and liberated Poland
 
 134 
 
 Israel, crucified a thousand times, comes amarching down 
 the centuries. Stript of his land, stript of all that was 
 dear to him and that makes life attractive, through gallows 
 and sword, through fire and water, behold the ancient, the 
 eternal Jew appear to us through the mists of the past, still 
 hugging to his aching, wounded, bleeding breast the Divine 
 Word entrusted to his care. 
 
 The force of an ideal, indeed! A tree of life, be- 
 cause he clung to it : it made him happy, yes, cheerful and 
 hopeful no matter what his foes thought or did. 
 
 Oh, that Israel's congregations would realize this ! Oh, 
 that we, you and I, and our brethren everywhere might 
 realize the full import of Moses' admonition : "This is not a 
 vain thing unto you ; it is your very life and by it will you 
 prolong your life upon the land." Oh, that on this day 
 of renewal of consecration, at this covenant-hour, in this 
 consecrated house, we resolve highly and firmly that the 
 sacrifices of the past shall not have been made in vain, that 
 the loyalty of the fathers find renewed expression in the 
 hearts and lives of their descendants, that the zeal of the 
 past be the inspiring influence in our lives in the present 
 and in the lives of our children who are of the future. 
 
 Oh, for the sincerity and the earnestness that would 
 impel us to approach our Father with the petition that He 
 give us the strength, the courage, the soul-lifting inspira- 
 tion to hold firmly to the Truth, to cling to it with all the 
 fervor of the martyrs of our race. Oh, that the merciful 
 Father imbue us as He did our fathers, with that spirit 
 of persistence and loyalty with which we shall face the 
 future, always bearing aloft our Torah, the emblem of His 
 Truth, marching on with it as our standard, marching for- 
 ward with it as our banner, marching onward and forward 
 to the melody which all of nature sings, to the music of the 
 song which every tree and stone and babbling brook, every 
 star and planet and constellation entones clearly, audibly, 
 distinctly "Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai 
 Echad!" Hear O Israel, hear O Universe, hear all man- 
 kind, the Eternal our God He is One! Amen.
 
 SERIES XXXIII. No. 18. 
 
 A DISCOURSE AT TEMPLE KENESETH ISRAEL. 
 
 By RABBI ABRAHAM J. FELDMAN. 
 
 Philadelphia, February 29, 1920. 
 
 "Therefore the prudent doth keep silence in such a 
 time; for it is an evil time." Thus spoke the first of the 
 great literary prophets of Israel, stating a fact, and not 
 giving advice. The age in which he lived was an age not 
 unlike our own, a period that resembled our contemporary 
 period to a very remarkable degree. Jeroboam II, King of 
 Israel, had just returned from a successful military expedi- 
 tion. All visible enemies of his kingdom had seemingly 
 been vanquished. Peace, a lasting and durable peace 
 seemed to have been assured. Prosperity, the like of which 
 had not been surpassed in any previous or subsequent period 
 of Israelitish history, prevailed. The nation felt strong, it 
 felt secure in its strength, it was enormously wealthy. Com- 
 merce was developed to a maximum, wealth abounded, lux- 
 ury was rampant. The people were proud of their achieve- 
 ments, proud of their history and complacency, a smug 
 complacency ruled over the hearts and consciences, over the 
 morals and religion of the "representative" class, the "bet- 
 ter" class of the society of that day. 
 
 Prosperity had then as it has now an obverse and 
 a reverse. Only certain classes benefited by it. The ruling 
 classes, then, amassed great wealth, even as they who amass 
 great wealth nowadays become the ruling classes. The 
 more they had, the more did they crave. Greed became a 
 passion. Greed led to violence. Violence was aided and
 
 abetted by injustice and fraud. Universal piracy devel- 
 oped. Slavery was common. The rich grew richer. With 
 riches came arrogance, followed or accompanied by a com- 
 plete disregard of the rights and needs of the poor. And 
 the poor were growing poorer. The poorer they became, 
 the more were they exploited. In fine, the country was in the 
 mazes of a corruption that extended through the social and 
 religious aspects of the community's life. "It is an evil 
 time," said the prophet; a time when prudence, regard 
 for one's safety, regard for one's own welfare should be 
 the rule of conduct, to the man who perceives the rottenness 
 surrounding him. He was stating but a fact, he was telling 
 what many men who saw and knew undoubtedly did, but 
 he was not giving advice, for he proceeded in very dramatic 
 fashion to tell the people of the" error of their ways, to stir 
 and awaken them to the realization of the lot awaiting them 
 in the wake of the smugness and the delusive self-satisfac- 
 tion in which they were steeped. 
 
 There are times when prudence is the better part of 
 valor. There are times when a genuine love of country com- 
 mands and demands prudence of speech. There be times 
 when silence is, indeed, golden. There be movements and 
 conditions that can best be nipped and remedied by and 
 through silence. There are times, however, when all that is 
 best in a man cries out against prudence, when honesty for- 
 bids it, when sincerity inhibits it. There are times when one 
 must speak, when love of country demands it, when one's 
 most cherished ideals, when a man's most profound convic- 
 tions, when a high regard for the welfare of the human 
 family cry out in protest, in ardent, vehement protest 
 against silence on the score of prudence! What if "They 
 hate him that reproveth in the gate"? What if "They abhor 
 him that speaketh uprightly" ? The voice within commands : 
 "Speak!" and he is indeed unworthy who permits prudence 
 or policy to negate the demand of his conscience. 
 
 To speak of true and false Americanization, would ap- 
 pear at first to have as much meaning as speaking of "golden
 
 gold" and "silver gold." The one is tautological, the 
 other is inconceivable. And yet there is much in the situ- 
 ation that is flagrantly false. There is much in the Amer- 
 icanization vogue of the day, that reminds one of the 
 numerous household economists of the fair sex propound- 
 ing economic theories and showering advice upon poor 
 housewives as to saving in the kitchen, who themselves 
 know little, precious little or nothing of kitchen economies 
 and who themselves live in non-housekeeping apartments. 
 Americanization has become a fad, and being a fad it 
 is carried to undreamt of extremes. For us to attempt the 
 Americanization of others, presupposes our possession of 
 a precious measure of the true and lofty spirit 
 of America's fathers. To Americanize others would imply 
 that the living agent of Americanization be himself 
 an apostle, inspired and convinced, intelligent and know- 
 ing, possessed of that spirit which moved and animated a 
 Washington and a Jefferson, a Hamilton and a Franklin, 
 a Lincoln and a Wilson, a John Hay and a Roosevelt. You 
 cannot suddenly set out to Americanize any more than you 
 can compose a symphony, knowing nothing of music-tech- 
 nique. One has to live, one has to think, one has to serve 
 in the spirit of America, if one would convey some of the 
 meaning of Americanism to others. Americanism is not a 
 fashion it is a life, it is a social philosophy, it is an inspira- 
 tion. Americanism is nothing tangible, nothing that can 
 be put under a glass and placed upon a mantelpiece. 
 Americanism is a state of mind, it is an attitude towards life, 
 towards men. Americanism must be felt before it is 
 preached, it must be experienced before it is proclaimed. 
 
 To transmit this to others, to bestow of this sacred 
 flame unto others is to Americanize. Americanization thus 
 becomes not the process of forcing something upon such 
 as have not been born on these shores, but the holding out 
 of a hope, a great human hope to every man and woman 
 and child.
 
 Actually, however, what has Americanization come to 
 mean? To understand this WQ must realize that this me- 
 chanical Americanization which is so fashionable now is 
 but the Prussian ization of a plan proposed sometime in 
 1914. It was noticed that between the years 1900-1914 the 
 number of immigrants coming into the United States was 
 about thirteen and a half millions. It was further noticed 
 that nine-tenths of these came from Southern and Eastern 
 Europe and Western Asia all non-English-speaking stock, 
 and that more than three millions of those who 
 were above the age of fourteen were illiterate. How 
 to assimilate this vast number, how to help them adapt 
 themselves to their new environment, how to impart 
 unto them a knowledge of our life and manners and cus- 
 toms, and how to imbue them with those ideals which are 
 fundamental to a true conception of the hope and faith 
 that is America these formed the problem, and to solve 
 this problem the Division of Immigrant Education was 
 formed in 1914 by the Bureau of Education of the Depart- 
 ment of the Interior. And the work undertaken by that Di- 
 vision came to be known as "Americanization." It was an 
 attempt to teach these newer Americans the language, the 
 customs, the ideals of America. Its objects were to give 
 the immigrant the opportunities and facilities to learn of 
 and to understand his duties to America, to unite all racial 
 groups and all factions in service for America, to bring 
 natives and foreign-born together in more friendly rela- 
 tions, to promote mutual understanding. The purpose of 
 Americanization was to unify the different groups of the 
 American Commonwealth on a platform of common service 
 in the interests of that freedom which prompted the found- 
 ers of the Republic, and in the cause of that manhood \vhich 
 America at her truest and best posits and develops. It 
 was a program that called for fair play, that was based 
 on the principle of the square deal, that was as different 
 from exploitation as noon is from midnight. It was based 
 on the principle enunciated by Commissioner Claxton, that
 
 "A man may be a good and patriotic citizen even though 
 he knows no English," and that "his heart may long have 
 learned to throb American pulsations, though his lips may 
 still be refractory in nationalizing themselves." 
 
 Americanization, true Americanization, has nothing in 
 common with the melting-pot theory of our rabid patriots. 
 The melting-pot theory is ethically negative, and humanly 
 obnoxious. We ask no one to surrender distinctiveness 
 when we preach Americanization. We want no self-denun- 
 ciation, we w r ant none to yield a jot or tittle of the heritage 
 of the ages. We but help them by providing them with 
 the means to restate the best that they have of their previ- 
 ous experience in terms of America, and to translate that 
 into the language and ideology of American democracy and 
 democratic ideals. In a word true Americanization is 
 not coercive, has none of the elements of force, of brute 
 force and intimidation. It is a process of education ; it is a 
 process of inspiration ; it is a problem in human sympathy 
 and brotherly understanding, in broadmindedness and in a 
 liberal and iunderstanding attitude. It is a problem in 
 health, in housing conditions that are good and conducive 
 to decency and morality, in decent wages, in justice and 
 fairness. It is less a theory than an example. It is more a 
 challenge to the native than emphasis upon the shortcom- 
 ings of the foreign-born. 
 
 This is what Americanization was to be when the 
 program was outlined in 1914 and what it still is in the 
 minds and hopes of true Americans. During the war, 
 however, i. e., since our entry into the war in 1917, the 
 hysteria of patriotism that swept Americans off their feet 
 caught the subject of Americanization into its whirl, and 
 since then the practical aspect of the solution to this very 
 important problem changed. Americanism and American- 
 ization and Patriotism became the slogans of political 
 groups and would-be political leaders. It has been pulled 
 down from the position of a sensible and dignified program 
 for the solution of a vital problem to be bandied . around
 
 by men who are mere' tyros in American respectability, 
 and has become the stock and trade of political orators who 
 have nothing else to arrest attention with. 
 
 We hear the plea for Americanization from platform 
 and forum; we read it in columns after columns of our 
 newspapers, magazines and journals; presidential candi- 
 dates parade with it; church leaders pronounce it part of 
 their church doctrine and dogma and policy. And yet, 
 throughout the land the spirit that America might cor- 
 porealize stalks about homeless and wellnigh friendless. 
 They who turn justice to wormwood, and cast righteousness 
 to the ground, they who know not to do fight, who store 
 up violence and robbery, they who oppress the poor and 
 crush the needy, who multiply transgressions, who afflict the 
 just and turn aside the needy in the gate the profiteers 
 and -corrupt politicians, they be the ones who shout "Amer- 
 icanization" the loudest, who prate the most of "Patri- 
 otism," who call insistently for "Loyalty" and are using 
 every means at their command to prevent them who love 
 America with a love that is transcendant, and honor Amer- 
 ica as only a loving son honors his mother, whose devotion 
 and attachment is .selfless to whom, in the words of Secre- 
 tary Lane, America is an inspiration, to whom America is 
 a spirit, to whom it is a constant and continuous searching 
 of the human heart for the thing that is better prevent- 
 ing such through misapplied and illegal police power, 
 through coercion and intimidation from awakening the 
 nation to a realization of the danger in which it finds itself 
 from making the American people realize that in the name 
 of their organic law and Constitution they are being de- 
 prived of those very rights and sacred rights they are 
 which the Constitution was framed to safeguard and protect ! 
 There has been an inhibition of speech through the raising 
 of the misleading cry of Bolshevism and Bolsheviki against 
 anyone who dares exercise the right of petition and address, 
 the right of thought and expression of thought, the right 
 to vote as his own conscience dictates, as against the con-
 
 scienceless and unprincipled dictation of political bosses. It 
 is exactly as it was in Amos' day when the ruling and 
 wealthy classes with their high priest, Amaziah, at their head, 
 protested against the conscience-awakening cry of Amos 
 on the ground that "The land is not able to hear his words." 
 Then the attempt was made to "Israelitize" if I may coin 
 the term and they, then, understood by it very nearly what 
 our self-styled "patriots" understand by "Americanization" 
 now keeping the people within the by-them-prescribed 
 bounds, the preservation of the established order of things 
 without allowing even .for normal and essential growth. 
 They, then, even as our own self-proclaimed preservers oi 
 American integrity and purity now, assumed the cloak of 
 patriotism, the cloak of love of country in their unworthy 
 and damnable efforts to prevent justice, obscure the right, 
 rob the people, and impose upon the stranger and foreign- 
 born. One often wonders whom Dr. Johnson had in mind 
 when according to Boswell he defined patriotism to be the 
 last refuge of a scoundrel. 
 
 And of one more effort at Americanization would 
 I speak ere I close, viz., of Christian Americanization. It 
 is difficult to understand what is meant by Christian Amer- 
 icanization. The question came up last September, then 
 again in October, and again a fortnight ago in this city. 
 That there is a contradiction in terms is self-evident. How 
 can anything that is truly and finely American be at the same 
 time exclusively Christian, or Jewish, or Buddhist? The 
 American nation is a religious nation but only because the 
 vast majority of its constituent individuals are religious men 
 and women. But to say that this nation is religious is one 
 thing, and to proclaim and declare it Christian is quite an- 
 other. The cry for Christian Americanization is but an 
 additional evidence that some and not a few of our pul- 
 piteers need lessons in Americanization quite as much as 
 do some of our foreign-born. Were these Christian gentle- 
 men acquainted with the history of our Constitution, were 
 they in sympathy with the spirit of America, were they
 
 men of vision and foresight, were they the possessors of a 
 spirit of fairness instead of blinding narrow bigotry they 
 would speak of Americanization unadjectived and unadul- 
 terated, then would they lead their flocks to the heights 
 where God sits enthroned upon the praises of all men, His 
 children, then would they realize that the guarantee of re- 
 ligious liberty was the crowning glory of American achieve- 
 ment, and that the separation of Church and State was one 
 of the greatest forward steps in the history of civilization. 
 Had they given any thought to the lesson of history they 
 would have learned that the earliest and most primitive 
 form of government combined civil and religious au- 
 thority in one. As students of Christianity they might 
 have known that earliest Christianity was opposed to the 
 union of Church and State "render unto Caesar that 
 which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's." 
 They might have known that no sooner was Christianity 
 Romanized then it became "enthralled by an unholy con- 
 nection with the unholy state" and that this unholy alli- 
 ance continued in one or another form through the ages, 
 until America set the example and led the world in liberal- 
 ism by liberating the conscience of the world from the 
 slavery which was the offspring of the continued and un- 
 hallowed union of Church and State. 
 
 Asking for an amendment to the federal constitution 
 "that shall suitably recognize the authority and law of 
 Jesus Christ, the ruler of nations," they fail to count with 
 the sense of fairness of the average American and betray a 
 narrowness of soul and a form of sectarianism which in 
 view of the tradition of American life and history is most 
 unenviable and pitiful. 
 
 In view of the first amendment to our Constitution, 
 which reads : 
 
 "Congress shall make no law respecting an estab- 
 lishment of religion,"
 
 a restriction, which, according to George Ticknor Cur- 
 tis, "is as important today as it was when it was created ; 
 for the more numerous and the more powerful any church 
 or any body of religionists becomes, the more necessary is 
 it for the people that it can under no circumstances short 
 of revolution attain to any preference in the action of gov- 
 ernment" what can they mean by Christian Americaniza- 
 tion since Americanization it is not but a type of Chris- 
 tianization, a form of continued missionary effort, which 
 it would be the part of Christian honesty it seems to 
 confess and to call a spade "a spade," instead of attempt- 
 ing to camouflage it with an Americanism that is as un- 
 American as it is un-Christian. 
 
 Americanization is a mission, a sacred and blessed 
 mission. None but the pure of heart and the clean of hand 
 and the honest of purpose may have aught to do with it! 
 Americanization is a ministry to which none but the unde- 
 filed and the unpolluted may be called ! Americanization is 
 a privilege which none. but the great of heart, the sound of 
 mind, the noble of soul may have! Americanization is an 
 education and its method is that of teaching by example. 
 Who would join the ranks of them who serve the cause 
 of humanity by intelligent service to America must remem- 
 ber that 'These are the things that ye shall do: Speak ye 
 every man the truth with his neighbor; execute the judg- 
 ment of truth and peace in your gates, and let none of you 
 devise evil in your hearts against his neighbor." (Zech, 
 8:16, 17.) 
 
 My dear people I plead for a true and worthy effort 
 at Americanization as against the false and dishonest ones 
 that are now current. I ask for a renewal of the spirit of 
 true and worthy patriotism as against the vociferous kind 
 that loves self more than all else in the world. I charge you, 
 men and women, to serve each the cause of America Amer- 
 ica noble and glorified, America spiritually great and 
 truly democratic, America consecrated through our lives
 
 IO 
 
 yours and mine to the service of God through the high- 
 est and most unselfish service of man and mankind. 
 
 Grant unto us, O God, the courage and the strength 
 so to serve. Unto us may the wisdom be given that we 
 may serve wisely and worthily. May the spirit which 
 rented upon the founders of our great Republic rest also 
 upon us, to inspire and guide us. May honesty of purpose 
 and sincerity of intention characterize every endeavor on 
 behalf of country and people. Grant it in Thy goodness 
 and loving-kindness, Father of Mercies, Thou Who teitest 
 and knowest the innermost thoughts of men. Amen.
 
 SERIES XXXIII. No. 22. 
 
 Hljat is Prong rottlj Seltgion? 
 
 A DISCOURSE AT TEMPLE KENESETH ISRAEL. 
 
 By RABBI ABRAHAM J. FELDMAN. 
 
 Philadelphia, March 28, 1920. 
 
 On the morrow, March the twenty-ninth, occurs the 
 loist birthday and the 2Oth anniversary of the interment 
 of the mortal remains of the great builder and moulder, of 
 what goes under the name of American Israel or American 
 Judaism. The end of the first year in the second century 
 since the birth of the great reformer is a welcome occasion 
 to dwell briefly on the task which he made his own and to 
 the completion of which he dedicated his ripe scholarship 
 and his energetic and courageous soul. Upon his arrival in 
 this country in the middle of the last century, he found 
 transplanted in America part of the Jewry of Ghettoized 
 Europe, who brought with them that religious organization 
 which may have thrived in the secluded European Ghettoes, 
 but which was being stifled by the breath of freedom which 
 it found in America, even as the candle is blown out by 
 the air currents when removed from the closet to the great 
 outdoors. It was a different life that was encountered here, 
 different from the European life. As the life of America 
 was different, as it was new, as it presented new prob- 
 lems and new situations so, Judaism or at least its for- 
 mal and external aspects had either to adapt itself to its 
 changed environment, or cease to be. It meant either life, 
 continued, developing, blossoming life or a slow, painful
 
 12 
 
 agonized death. Orthodoxy, then as ever, everywhere, 
 chose to remain- orthodox, to remain unyielding, to bury its 
 head in the sand and proclaim, "There is no danger!" Isaac 
 Mayer Wise thought otherwise. He meant to save Judaism 
 in and for America. To do it he realized that changes 
 would have to be made, that antiquated customs will have 
 to be dropped, that European and Oriental conceptions in 
 so far as they were extraneous matter, in so far as they 
 did not affect the principles of Judaism would have to be 
 adapted to the conceptions of the new age and clime or, to 
 save the ship, would have to go by the board. Such was 
 the underlying thought of Wise's work and aim and to 
 the attainment of this goal he dedicated himself with that 
 zeal, with that earnestness which characterized his life 
 work. "Failure" was a word unknown to him. The task 
 was there it had to be performed and to this he lent 
 his indomitable will and his compelling personality. The 
 struggle was hard, to be sure. The path was not strewn 
 with roses. There were thorns, there were difficulties, there 
 were obstacles in the way. 
 
 "The idealists," he writes in his Reminiscences, 
 "see light and hope, victory and triumph, where cold 
 reason perceives no noticeable change. We dip our 
 brush in golden colors, paint our own imaginary pic- 
 tures, and embrace them as though they were real cre- 
 ations. The beloved smiles, and in this smile the 
 enamored idealist imagines that he reads a declara- 
 tion of love. Judaism, progress American Judaism 
 free, progressive, enlightened, united, and respected 
 this was my ideal ; and hence in every smile of the be- 
 loved I saw a victory of my love. I have often been 
 woefully deceived. Still more often and more woe- 
 fully have I deceived myself, and that is worst of all." 
 
 But at last he succeeded, and there stand as monuments 
 to his memory, to his vision and zeal, his creative works : 
 The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the He- 
 brew Union College, the Central Conference of American 
 Rabbis, and the continuous growth of Judaism in America
 
 13 
 
 along the path which he indicated and to which he gave the 
 initial directing stimulus. 
 
 For the anniversay of his birth I feel that there is no 
 theme more fitting than the one I have taken for this day's 
 consideration. It presents a most vital problem than 
 which there are few more vital. It means a consideration 
 in the light of a new day of the task which faces religion 
 and its organization, and it implies, furthermore, the ques- 
 tion as to the part the religious organization shall play and 
 must play in the reconstruction of our life and in the recon- 
 structed life to which the thoughtful, the earnest and the 
 faithful of humanity have pledged their lives and thoughts 
 and efforts and honor. Were Isaac Mayer Wise alive today, 
 he of the fearless temperament, he of the clear vision, he of 
 the progressive mold of mind and nature, he might be 
 found in the foreranks of this spiritual nobility of the day, 
 and it behooves us his spiritual heirs to exert no lesser effort 
 than might have been his in the great cause. 
 
 What is wrong with Religion? I realize that to give 
 adequate answer to this question a series of discourses 
 would be required. In the brief time I can give it this 
 morning, I will be able to touch the merest fringe of the 
 problem. I will be able to sketch in broad outline only 
 the contour of the problem hoping at some other 
 time and at greater length to fill in the blanks left, of 
 necessity, today, and to be much more specific than time 
 and the magnitude of the theme permit of, now, What is 
 wrong with Religion? If by Religion we understand the 
 longing for and the faith in the ultimate realization of the 
 ideal, of the noblest aspirations of human hearts; if by Re- 
 ligion we understand the progressive revelation of the di- 
 vine in the developing conscience and consciousness of pro- 
 gressive humanity; if by Religion we understand the per- 
 meating Ideal of all of life, life's inspiration, life's torch 
 and guide, life's suffusing brilliance; if by Religion we un- 
 derstand that conception which represents life's ruling 
 principles as being Justice and Mercy, Righteousness and
 
 14 
 
 worthy Humility then, the answer to the query "What is 
 wrong with Religion ?" must be that there is nothing wrong 
 with it, for the Ideal is still present, it is still our high pro- 
 fession, it is still the only lodestar which may lead man 
 to heights as yet unreached, to the goal as yet unattained. 
 The wrong, the error, rests not with Religion which is the 
 Ideal but with the instrument which man has created in 
 the hope of realizing the Ideal with its aid, the fault and 
 trouble lie with the organized expression of Religion, with 
 the organization that assumed the task, that was called into 
 being for the avowed purpose of proclaiming and teaching 
 Religion's message, the institution created by man by which 
 he may be led in the path that leads Godward, the fault 
 and wrong and error are with the church. That the charge 
 of failure is made against Religion is due to an error of 
 judgment and to a confusion of Ideal with symbol, of the 
 end with the means. Religion and church have come to be 
 identified as one, the two became erroneously merged into 
 each other in the minds of people. And where the church 
 due to the changing needs and requirements, due to the 
 expanding sway of and need for the Ideal, due to the new 
 days and times, by reason of its adherence to ancient be- 
 liefs and to ancient methods, by reason of its self-sufficiency 
 and smug complacency failed to grow along with the times 
 and to adapt itself to changed conceptions and interpreta- 
 tions of the Ideal which is Religion Religion confused 
 with church came to be decried as needless and outworn 
 and lifeless. Because the church became the symbol of hide- 
 bound conservatism, because it stood in the way of progress 
 and the progressive development oi mankind, because it be- 
 came the instrument of reaction and of the dark and blind- 
 ing forces of reaction men thoughtlessly came to think of 
 Religion in whose name the church functioned and still 
 attempts to function, as being in fact what the church in- 
 terpreted it to be, and not what it truly was and is. 
 
 Our query then should be not "What is wrong with 
 Religion?" but, "What is wrong with the Church?" Why
 
 15 
 
 is it that though it be the official representative of Religion 
 it is losing its hold, it is not holding the love and fealty 
 of Religion's seekers? Why is it that seminaries and theo- 
 logical institutions languish for want of students, for want 
 of young men of ability, of zeal, of earnestness, young men 
 of vision and sublime hope, young men with the will to 
 serve, with the consuming fire to teach and preach ? Why is 
 it that- such young men and there are hosts of them turn 
 elsewhere for the outlet of their religious enthusiasm, and 
 not to the church which needs them and should claim them 
 as her very own ? Why is it that men resort to the moving 
 picture and the theatre, worship every image that is set up 
 on the highway, follow every fad that is introduced, fill 
 the highways and the byways in search of satisfaction of 
 that inner longing which drives them on and on but ever 
 away from the door of the church? Why is it that men 
 are easily interested in other things in politics, in sports, 
 in mercantile endeavors, in trades unions but have to be 
 lured and enticed into the church as the child is coaxed 
 into doing what its mother wants it to do by candy or a 
 piece of cake? 
 
 I am inclined to believe that the fault is not en- 
 tirely with the irreligiosity of our age, that the defection 
 from the organized expression of Religion is at- 
 tributable not to the much decried materialism of our gen- 
 eration. Ours is an age of transition. Ours is an age that 
 is revolutionary in the highest degree; revolutionary not so 
 much in the destructive sense, as in its constructive, regen- 
 erative aspects. In the crucible of hell-fire men's souls have 
 been tried as they have never been tried before. Men ex- 
 perience the agony and anguish of shattering idols, ideals, 
 ideas. The world has gone a-house-cleaning, as it were, 
 and all the accumulated rubbish of the ages, all that was 
 and is non-essential for the strength of society, all that does 
 not tend to improve upon the past, all that is not actively, 
 purposefully, aimfully active and creative is going as it 
 should go, the way of all rubbish. - W r e have gotten away
 
 i6 
 
 from the time-worn conception that the individual exists in 
 and by himself and for himself. We have awakened to the 
 realization that man is never merely an individual, that from 
 the very moment of his birth he is part of a group of three, 
 and that his interests and theirs are inseparable. He is born 
 into a society, he becomes willy-nilly, a part of a greater 
 whole, he becomes a member of a great social organism, 
 he is born a member of a community, a community which 
 has obligations to him as he has obligations to it. We 
 have come to realize, too, that the old method of individual 
 salvation is not efficient nor effective in the salvation of 
 the group, that the conception that in this association of 
 humans called Society the individual is of supreme im- 
 portance and that if we could but influence a sufficient num- 
 ber of individuals, mold them as individuals, better them as 
 individuals, all the problems of human betterment and de- 
 velopment will thus be solved is antiquated and untrue. 
 In a word, the new age has stopped thinking in terms 
 of individualism and is learning to think socially, to live 
 socially, to act socially. But while men have thus been 
 changing the church in characteristic fashion clung, and 
 to a large extent still clings to the ancient shibboleth of in- 
 dividualism. It is still striving to save the individual soul. 
 The Catholic Church still emphasizes salvation through 
 identification with the church through sacraments and mo- 
 nasticism. The Protestant Church still teaches salvation of 
 the individual through Faith and Conversion of the indi- 
 vidual. Unitarians emphasize salvation of the individual 
 through education and learning. And modern Judaism in 
 imitation of its offspring Christianity has forgotten the 
 Kenescth Yisrael, the social unit, in its efforts to save indi- 
 vidual souls through the combination of Faith and Works 
 plus a defective Jewish education. And so engulfed have 
 all these been in their individualism that they failed to real- 
 ize that the world was marching on and that the marching 
 hosts went past the doors of church and synagogue seek- 
 ing the message which Religion has a message which
 
 17 
 
 manking still needs so sorely seeking it elsewhere than 
 where they were taught to look for it, where they should 
 look for it not in vain, but where it is no longer found. 
 
 The great problems of our age are not interpretations 
 of doubtful Biblical texts, are not the hair-splitting differ- 
 ences between denominations, are not the questions of what 
 the nature of the reward or punishment in the hereafter may 
 be the burning questions of the day are social and not indi- 
 vidual they are the problem of capital and labor, the prob- 
 lem of poverty and misery, the problem of social health and 
 social education problems concerning not any one man or 
 woman, but the community, the social aggregate. People are 
 interested less in the life after death than they are concerned 
 with the living death of millions of their fellow-beings. 
 People are not concerned so much with just rewards in the 
 hereafter as they are concerned, vitally, seriously concerned 
 with social justice on earth. They are not interested in the 
 world after death, they are greatly concerned about the 
 world in which they have to live, they and their children 
 after them. They are not concerned so much with the maze 
 of meaningless precepts with which the church confronts 
 them, as with the legislative enactments which are to pro- 
 tect them and their dear ones. 
 
 You see, men are in search of those very attributes for 
 which Religion at its best and purest ever stood. But 
 they refuse to be given substitutes which do not replace 
 and which neither help them nor save them. They want 
 to drink deep of the living waters of the Ideal but refuse 
 to be drugged with opiates. They are religious not in a 
 sacramental and ecclesiastical and mediaeval sense, but in 
 a social and in a prophetic sense. They want religion to 
 be applied to life, to be applied in life. They are weary 
 of other-worldliness, they want and need the application of 
 religious principles in the store and in the shop, in the bank 
 and on the stock-exchange, in the legislature and in the 
 court of justice, in the factory and mill and mine, on the 
 street and in the home. They feel that the church must
 
 i8 
 
 adapt itself to the new age, to the urgent demands of a 
 new age. It is felt, and rightly so, that God needs not re- 
 ligion, but that Religion is the expression of the divinity 
 in man. Consequently every human problem must be a re- 
 ligious problem. Poverty is a religious problem. Disease 
 is a religious problem. Prostitution is a religious problem. 
 Not because it is God's will to curse men with poverty 
 and disease and prostitution, but because it is man's injustice 
 that is responsible for those, because these represent man's 
 inhumanity in his relations to fellow men. Every occur- 
 rence in the community whether political, commercial, in- 
 dustrial or educational must be the concern of the church, 
 for nothing that concerns man, his well-being and life is 
 outside the sphere of religion. Everything that man does 
 has a moral significance. And if the task and duty of the 
 church be as it is, to help men to be moral, then must it 
 emerge from its seclusion and cast off its seeming indiffer- 
 ence to public morality and enter the fray with a will 
 and that a will to win, proclaiming anew the ancient doc- 
 trine, but giving it renewed emphasis, that God may be 
 served only through human service, and that lie is not com- 
 pletely moralized who is not most thoroughly socialized. 
 Then must the church cease being a mere prayer-mill where 
 prayers are ground out, a mere phrase-mint where elegant 
 phrases are coined, a "refuge from the evils of the world" ; 
 then must the church become the leader in human affairs 
 and hold the position which it lost that of being in the 
 vanguard of the onward-marching, vigorous life of its 
 generation, and cease being a straggler and a follower. 
 
 Thus saith the Lord, "Behold, I create new heavens 
 and a new earth." God is working today as yesterday 
 through man His highest and noblest creation. A new earth 
 is being created yea it has been created, it is here, and is ro- 
 tating even now through space. Man has l>een the agent in this 
 recreative act even as he is creating now the new heavens. 
 The church will either awaken to its great opportunity, 
 to its great duty and obligation of leading in this task or
 
 19 
 
 will die of anemia and grief. Upon its ruins there will 
 then be reared the religious organization of man socialized 
 and moralized, an organization whose priest will be every 
 one who serves God through worthy human service, whose 
 ministers shall be every man who by the sweat of his brow 
 produces for humanity and serves mankind, every business 
 man, every professional man, every politician, all serving 
 and worshiping at the altar of the church of the future 
 which as in the vision of the late Henry Demarest Lloyd 
 shall be 
 
 "a church of the deed as well as of the creed . . . 
 a church where science, the revelation of what has 
 been, will never be at at war with religion, the revela- 
 tion of what ought to be a church which will make 
 its worshipers share this world as well as the 
 next world . . . a church which will declare that 
 the difference in the death rate between the classes and 
 i the masses is evidence of murder done for money a 
 church which will look upon idleness by the side of in- 
 dustry, wealth by the side of poverty, luxury by the 
 side of want, health by the side of disease, as impious 
 and profane in the highest degree . . . a church 
 which will stop the manufacture of poorhouses because 
 it will stop the manufacture of poverty a church 
 which will not let any man offer charity to those to 
 whom he refuses justice . . . a church that will 
 offer not even the lowliest member of the communion 
 of mankind crumbs from the table but a seat at the 
 table and a full meal three times a day every day . . . 
 a church which says that those who are to be broth- 
 ers hereafter must be brothers here a church that will 
 know what its members believe by what they do a 
 church which recognizes nothing as love which does 
 not bear justice as the fruit . . . a church which 
 will prevent the anarchy from below by punishing the 
 anarchy from above a church which will deny the 
 right of infanticide to the employer, now denied by 
 society only to the parents . . . a church which 
 will restore reverence to men by giving them leaders 
 in church, state and business worthy of reverence a 
 church which will make every social wrong a moral 
 wrong, and every moral wrong a legal wrong . . .
 
 20 
 
 a church which will abolish the merchant prince and 
 the factory corporation sooner than let them abolish 
 the childhood of children . . . a church in which 
 God will be natural and men supernatural a church 
 which will abolish charity and philanthropy, for these 
 cannot be between brothers, and need not be where 
 justice is a church in which no man will have a right 
 to do with his own what he will, but only a right to do 
 what is right a church which will take the weak and 
 despised out of the earthy Inferno of dirt, and want, 
 and ignorance, to which they have been condemned by 
 the oppressor a church which will keep a hell not in 
 this world to punish the oppressors here for every blow 
 they strike at God through his image, man a church 
 which will tell the sinner that repentance fit for heaven 
 only begins by restitution and reparation on earth a 
 church which will teach that brothers must share both 
 the mess of pottage and the birthright a church which 
 will worship God through all his sons made in His 
 image, . . . a church which will realize the vision 
 of Carlvle of a Human Catholic Church."
 
 SERIES XXXIII. No. 
 
 A DISCOURSE AT TEMPLE KENESETH ISRAEL. 
 
 By RABBI ABRAHAM J. FELDMAN. 
 Philadelphia, April 18, 1920. 
 
 "The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: 
 Stand in the gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim there this word, 
 and say: Hear the word of the Lord, all ye of Judah, that enter in 
 at these gates to worship the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: 
 
 Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to 
 dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying : 'The tem- 
 ple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are 
 these.' Nay, but if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your 
 doings; if ye thoroughly execute justice between a man and his 
 neighbor; if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the 
 widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk 
 after other gods to your hurt; then will I cause you to dwell in 
 this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and 
 ever. Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye 
 steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and offer 
 unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye have not known, 
 and come and stand before Me in this house, whereupon My name 
 is called, and say: 'We are delivered/ that ye may do all these 
 abominations? Is this house, whereupon My name is called, be- 
 come a den of robbers in your eyes ? Behold, I, even I, have seen 
 it, saith the Lord." Jeremiah vii:i-n. 
 
 "For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel : 
 Seek ye Me and live ; 
 But seek not Beth-el, 
 Nor enter into Gilgal, 
 And pass not to Beer-sheba; 
 
 Seek the Lord, and live." Amos v :4-6.
 
 22 
 
 At the conclusion of my recent address on "What Is 
 Wrong with Religion"? a friend in the congregation sug- 
 gested that I had a considerable task before me, a task 
 
 i 
 that would require a lifetime to accomplish, were I to set 
 
 myself to the carrying out of the program I barely out- 
 lined then. I replied that it was not my task alone that 
 it was my friend's task as well, and that the task is begin- 
 ning to be fulfilled. To be sure, it will require many voices 
 and many protests, many hearts and man}' days ere the 
 dream be realized. But the fact is that there are, even 
 now, signs of awakening within the church, and that some 
 religious leaders are in the van of the growing numbers of 
 truly religious men and women who are seeking to place the 
 church again and through it Religion in the position of 
 moral leadership in world affairs. Slow, very slow, indeed, 
 is the progress. But that is not surprising. For, consider 
 what the requisites of Religion Socialized are. It 
 means a change in the psychology of peoples. It means a 
 change in the habits of thought, habits that have been in the 
 process of formation through countless generations. It means 
 a recasting of traditional ideas about God, a recasting of our 
 most fundamental beliefs and doctrines. It means the realiza- 
 tion that a distinction should be made between myth and 
 truth and Religion, and the honest statement on the part of 
 church officials and leaders that there is much that is mere 
 chaff in the doctrines and teachings which are ascribed to 
 Religion. It means that there will have to come to the people 
 a realization of the difference between superstition and 
 truth, between what is merely external and what partakes 
 of the nature of reality. It will mean that people will cease 
 fearing God, lest He avenge Himself for an offense or
 
 23 
 
 offenses against His law, but that people will so love the 
 Lord as to forget fear, that people will so serve Him as to 
 remember only His loving-kindness and goodness, that 
 people will so worship Him as to stand in need of neither 
 priest nor mediator. It may be a difficult task, but as 
 Professor Simon N. Patten of the University of Penn- 
 sylvania has said : "When an 'is' can be put in con- 
 trast with a 'might be/ the 'ought to be' looms up with suf- 
 ficient clearness to make the change. To localize 
 evils always generates enough will power to remove 
 them." And what is true in the economic world is true 
 also in the field of Religion for when we have localized 
 the evil, sufficient energy may be created to remove it, suffi- 
 cient force may then be generated for the people to go 
 through the agony for agony it is of breaking with the 
 traditions of their fathers, for people to evince that cour- 
 age of conviction and that honesty of belief that would 
 make of them, and "they" are you and I, that would 
 make of us veritable crusaders, battling against the Miper- 
 stitions and bigotries, against the antiquities and infidelities 
 w r hich have had possession of the Holy Land of our souls, 
 of the spiritual Jerusalem of mankind of Faith, of Re- 
 ligion. 
 
 No better case in point one that could better demon- 
 strate what unsocial religion is, no better example of the 
 kind of religion that is responsible for the moral weakness 
 of the church and for the consequent disregard in which 
 religion is held no more pronounced type of the sort of 
 church, the future church must not be is the instance of 
 the church in one of Philadelphia's suburbs whose pastor 
 caused to have a sign placed on the grounds of the church
 
 24 
 
 proclaiming that "Christ Jesus saves sinners without money 
 or good work, only by His precious blood." When another 
 Christian protested against the sign on the score of "ethical 
 offense" and because it represented, as he put it, "a false 
 and repellent philosophy," what was the pastor's answer? 
 I quote it because I consider it significant. "Whoever this 
 silly person is," referring to his fellow-Christian who op- 
 posed this Christian advertisement, "he is evidently against 
 both the Bible and God. ... I am responsible only to 
 the Lord Jesus Christ for what I teach, and I teach 
 only what is plainly set forth in His scriptures." It is not 
 my intention to interfere in what is after all a family affair, 
 nor, I assure you, is there any personal element involved in 
 what I am about to say. But in so far as the attitude of the 
 pastor in question is characteristic of the church that has 
 failed to realize that man is progressing despite its efforts 
 to the contrary, the church that has closed its eyes 10 the 
 growth and advance of the times and which persists in its 
 efforts to remain upon the lifeless platform of the long ago, 
 instead of being in the vanguard of civilization, I deem 
 it worthy of present consideration. What is this 
 charge of someone being "against both the Bible and 
 God" who protests in the name of Religion against the 
 doctrine of individual salvation "without money or good 
 works" what is it but a form of idolatry, of rank paganism 
 and heathenism ? What sort of religious (?) leadership is it 
 that presumes to speak in the name of Religion while it 
 fails to recognize the manifestation of divinity in man, 
 while it fails to recognize the continuous revelation of God 
 unto man, that would arrest reason and throttle uplifting, 
 soul-captivating faith? What sort of a theology is it and
 
 25 
 
 what is the ethical and religious measure of the theologians 
 who every time "a change is urged in the statement ot 
 dogma to suit the spirit and need of the age . . . are up 
 in arms, and wish to know whether the Bible can change" ? 
 "It is one thing," says Doctor Henry Dwight Chapin, "to 
 state that Scripture contains the substance of divine truth; 
 it is quite another to insist that the mediaeval interpretation 
 must stand for all time."* Think of it! To be "saved" one 
 need not right the wrong done, one need not retrace the path 
 of guilt, one need not make reparation, one need not atone 
 for atonement had been made nineteen hundred years ago 
 by one who died upon the Roman cross, for the crimes, for 
 the sins, for the iniquities of today! Believe this and you 
 are accounted Religious by a church; deny this and you 
 are execrated in the name of a Bible worship that is repulsive 
 in its extravagance, and in the name of that God faith in 
 whom implies and demands as evidence a love of one's 
 neighbor and the just deed, the merciful act, and the humble 
 atitude? Is it any wonder that men of the stamp of the late 
 Carleton H. Parker, men whose souls are ablaze with di- 
 vinity, whose lives are burning bushes of the divine reveal- 
 ing itself in man, that men of that calibre are estranged 
 from the religious organization? As Parker has well put 
 it in speaking of his own religiosity during his boyhood : 
 
 "I did things for a system of ethics, not because 
 of a fine rush of social brotherly intuition. My im- 
 agination was ever concerned with me and my pros- 
 pects, my salvation. [This type of religion] is a self- 
 captivating thing, it divorces man from the plain and 
 bitter realities of life, it brings an anti-social emanci- 
 
 *"Vital Questions," p. 174.
 
 26 
 
 pation to him. . . . We look on high in ecstasy, 
 and fail to be on flame because of the suffering of 
 those whose wounds are bare to our eyes on the 
 street. . . . I fear your God, because I think he 
 is a product of the unreal and unhelpful . . . that 
 He fills the vision and leaves no room for the simple 
 and patient deeds of brotherhood, a heavenly contem- 
 plation taking the place of earthly deeds." * 
 
 No, the Religion of the new day will have to reajize 
 that it cannot influence, neither can it lead and guide the 
 social entity of the twentieth century by means of a creed 
 reflecting the conceptions of Roman and mediaeval days, 
 with beliefs mirroring the social and ethical standards of 
 those days. No! The Religion of man socialized will have 
 to speak of God not in terms of a fierce tribal chief, nor in 
 terms of a stern ruler, neither in terms of Supreme Egotism 
 and Vanity, nor in obsolete and archaic language. The 
 God of Socialized Religion must lie what the ancient 
 apostles of Socialized Religion the Prophets of Israel 
 proclaimed Him of old to be the Lord who exercises 
 mercy, justice and righteousness in the earth. 
 
 Religion Socialized will have to cease troubling itself 
 with sundry attempts at the palliation of misery here an4 
 there, cease easing its conscience with the morsel of good it 
 may have done in a limited sphere. It will have to become 
 the inspiration of men urging them to remove not the fruit 
 of the evil which is above ^^ surface, but to strike at the 
 roots of evil, beneath the surface. Not charities shall be 
 the aim of the church, but an inculcation of that spirit of 
 
 *Parker, C. H. "An American Idyll," pp. 129-130.
 
 27 
 
 charity of which Abraham Lincoln spoke. It should become 
 the task of Religion to focus man's attention not upon 
 self, but upon those about him; to give man that sense of 
 responsibility for the happiness and moral purity and health 
 of his fellow man which will guide his own life in the path 
 of "personal regeneration." Religion Socialized will at- 
 tempt through the church and through its selected leaders to 
 imbue mankind with a precious sense of brotherhood which, 
 coming with the authority of Religion and consecrated by 
 the actual brotherliness of the exponents of the doctrine, 
 will grip and hold the conscience of the peoples of the earth. 
 
 Religion Socialized must be a "religion of amity" not 
 a "religion of enmity" it must emphasize less the blissful 
 state after death and urge ever more and more intelligently 
 the right life and the right to life of every being bearing 
 the stamp of the Creator ! 
 
 Religion Socialized will train men and women to com- 
 bine religion with life, the sacred with the secular, the holy 
 with what is non-holy. Religion must be one with Life, 
 and it must not introduce any distinction between sacred 
 and secular in life. It must maintain and prescribe the 
 unity in life of sacred and secular, and must ever insist that 
 the vision which religion holds of the brighter future must 
 color life in its entirety and lead men to its realization. 
 
 Religion Socialized will in brief give men, what it 
 now fails to give a social attitude, a social conscience, and 
 will imbue its adherents with a social sweep and a conscious- 
 ness of social obligation. 
 
 Our scriptural lesson of this morning is significant in 
 this connection. The prophet of old speaking to a genera- 
 tion not unlike our own, proclaims with all the rugged vigor
 
 28 
 
 of his nature : "Thus saith the Lord to the house of Israel, 
 Seek Me if you would live," as he emphasizes merci- 
 lessly that not by resorting to the sanctuaries can they 
 learn to seek God and learn to live, but by living in the 
 spirit of the Ideal, by living up to the highest teachings and 
 by striving to apply in their daily living, the teachings to 
 which they give lip-loyalty, by realizing their social responsi- 
 bility and by social faithfulness, will they learn to seek God 
 and live. "Let justice well up as waters, and righteousness 
 as a mighty stream." By establishing justice and by per- 
 petuating righteousness, in this wise alone could they seek 
 God and live. 
 
 This message applies with equal force to us, perhaps 
 with even greater force, to our times. We perhaps even 
 more than Amos's and Jeremiah's contemporaries have be- 
 come so accustomed to, and have been inured in, mere 
 phraseology, that we have made the vocabulary of 
 religion our own, and lost the spirit, and we, like those of 
 twenty-eight centuries ago, have lost the soul, the meaning, 
 the concept, of which words and language are but the sym- 
 bols. This is what our fathers meant when they spoke of 
 the "echad ba'peh ve'echad balev" individual, he whose heart 
 betrays his lips and as an example of contemptible hy- 
 pocrisy, I think, this form of duplicity stands alone among 
 human hypocrisies! 
 
 Dir'shu eth Adonai Seek God! Think ye that ye can 
 find God in the synagogue or in the church, if He be not 
 found in the homes? Think ye that ye can find God in the 
 four ells of a richly ornamented edifice when He be not 
 found in the business office or at the bar of justice? Seek 
 God in your hearts, in your souls, in your daily lives, in
 
 29 
 
 your fellowships ! Realize your God in your daily con- 
 tacts and then come to the church or synagogue! Then 
 will you demand of your synagogue or of your church to 
 be not a follower but a leader. Then will you make of the 
 church a powerful social agent, meaningful and vital. Then, 
 with you to back it, with you practicing, with you apply- 
 ing its teachings will the church cease being a stagnant pool 
 of unsocial and anti-social dogmas and concepts, but will 
 become a well of living, sparkling waters, a guide and an 
 inspiration. Then will the church assume its function of 
 teaching by example ; then will there come about the sacred 
 union of life with faith and of faith with life; then will the 
 church cease being merely a one-day-a-week institution but 
 a communal centre, not only a rostrum whence theory is 
 propounded, however eloquently, but also a great social lab- 
 oratory; then will it include in its program of work not 
 only Tor ah and Abhodah, not only instruction and wor- 
 ship, but also Gemilluth Chasodim also social service! 
 
 Herein, to my mind, lies the hope of the church to 
 become the real, vital centre of life. Along such lines 
 may the church be resuscitated. Else, it will disappear. 
 Otherwise it is a superstition, and should disappear. 
 
 Let the dry bones lying white and bare in the valley 
 be clothed with sinews, arteries and flesh. Then let the 
 quickening breath of consecrated life come upon them, thus 
 resurrecting them into vigorous life! Thus will the re- 
 ligious organization become deservedly and truly central in 
 our life. Thus, too, shall the voice of the teacher become 
 not the voice of one crying in the wilderness, but the voice 
 of a prophet proclaiming God's great truths to a living peo- 
 ple, in a true sanctuary of God and man ! Amen.
 
 UNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY F,