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LIBERAL JUDAISM
AN ESSAY

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LIBERAL JUDAISM
AN ESSAY

BY
CLAUDE G. MONTEFIORE

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MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
l903
All rights reserved

PREFATORY NOTE
The scope and object of this essay are suffici
ently explained in the text. It does not re
present the views of any existing organisation
or party. Its composition was not suggested
to me from without, and no one but myself
is responsible for any of the statements and
opinions which it contains. For help in the
revision of proofs I am much indebted to
two friends, but their help was strictly
limited to enabling me to express my own
ideas with greater clearness and precision.
Pages 194 to 207 are taken, with slight
modifications, from an article published by
me in the Jewish Quarterly Review about
three years ago. C. G. M.
January 1903.

CHAPTER I
The object of this book is to offer a few
notes and suggestions about a particular phase
of a particular religion. The religion is
Judaism, and the phase is commonly known
as " liberal " or " reform " Judaism. But
even this description of my object is not
sufficiently limited. It is not liberal Judaism
as a separate organisation, or liberal Judaism
in its history and development, of which I wish
to speak, but that particular and individualised
form of liberal Judaism which I myself happen
to hold. The personal element is not
brought in because the writer attaches any
importance to himself, but in order that it
may not be supposed that he is speaking in
the name of liberal Judaism as a whole, and
still less in the name of Judaism generally.
No authority attaches to this book. Though
statements will be frequently found such
as " Judaism teaches " or " Judaism rejects "
such and such a particular doctrine, it will be
easily seen from the context whether the
B

2 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
doctrine is one which is taught or rejected by
practically all Jews at the present time, or
whether all that is meant is that the Judaism in
which the writer believes teaches or rejects it.
We have to remember that Judaism as a
living religion is not contained in any book
or expressed in any document, but that it is
the religion professed by Jews, just as Chris
tianity is the religion professed by Christians.
As there are many forms of Christianity, so
there are many forms of Judaism. A Roman
Catholic would, I suppose, say that the only
true and complete form of Christianity was
Roman Catholicism, and so, too, a form of
Judaism could be found which would say that
the only complete and true form of Judaism
was itself. Perhaps some other form of
Christianity could be found which would also
make the same exclusive claim, and perhaps
more than one form of Judaism could be
found to do likewise.
Again, there is at least one form of Chris
tianity which many Christians would deny to
be rightly so called. By this denial they imply
that there are certain doctrines which are so
essential to Christianity that any person who
rejects them cannot properly be called a
Christian. The number of these " essential doctrines "
has gradually diminished. Five hundred
years ago a person would have been regarded

i LIBERAL JUDAISM 3
by the vast mass of Christians as not justly or
properly calling himself a Christian if he did
not believe in many doctrines which he now
may reject or explain away, while still being
considered by the great majority of educated
Christians as rightly entitled to the name.
And those persons who, by their rejection
of a few " essential doctrines," are still held
by most Christians improperly to retain
the name of Christian, themselves stoutly
defend their position and their claim. They
call themselves Christians, and they feel
themselves Christians. Is, then, a man a
Christian who so calls and feels himself, be
his religious beliefs what they may? We
should at last seem to come to a palpable
absurdity. There must ultimately be some
limit where Christianity ceases. The rejection
of certain doctrines and the acceptance of
others must at last make it absurd for the
title of Christian to be any longer used. Its
use would ultimately be an abuse.
Precisely similar is the case with regard to
Judaism and the Jews. I am not alluding
here to the obvious fact that the word " Jew "
is also used to describe or denote a person who
belongs to a particular race. It is clear that
such a person may become a Christian or an
Atheist or a Mohammedan, and yet, from the
point of view of race he remains, and must
remain, a Jew. I throughout use the word

4 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
Jew to denote a person who holds certain
religious opinions, be his race what it may.
Such a person may be descended from non-
Jewish ancestors, or he may himself have
been born a Christian, but in my eyes he is
none the less a Jew.
Using the word, then, in this religious
sense, and in this sense only, the parallel
with Christianity holds. There are some
Jews who would say that if a man does
not hold certain doctrines and fulfil certain
rites he is no longer a Jew. (I add the
words " fulfil certain rites," because some
Jews lay far more stress on rites than on
beliefs.) Just as in the case of Christianity, so,
too, in the case of Judaism, the number of
these essential and qualifying beliefs and rites
has gradually become smaller. But there are
persons who call and feel themselves Jews,
who in the eyes of other Jews are not rightly
and properly to be considered Jews at all.
Again, as in Christianity, so in Judaism, there
must be a point at which the mere assertion
that a man is or feels himself to be a Jew is
not enough to substantiate his claim. Com
mon sense, for instance, might say that a man
who denies that such a person as Jesus Christ
ever existed cannot legitimately call himself a
Christian ; common sense might say that a
man who denies that God exists cannot
legitimately call himself a Jew.

i LIBERAL JUDAISM 5
Even so, however, the matter is not so
simple as it might seem. Some of the writers,
for example, in the Encyclopedia Biblica, hold
so much of the Gospel narrative to be unhis-
torical that they can hardly be said, in any
ordinary sense, to believe in Jesus as a his
torical figure. Yet they would indignantly
repudiate the charge that they are no Chris
tians. So, too, a man may adopt a Spinoz-
istic attitude towards the conception of God,
and yet claim to be a Jew. In fact, some
good Jews are in the habit of claiming Spinoza
for Judaism. In short, definitions become more
and more difficult as men's opinions become
more delicately shaded, and the colours run
inseparably one into the other. It may,
perhaps, be argued that a man's religion is
what he himself feels it to be, and that just as
dogmatic tests applied by authority may
produce hypocrisy, so tests of classification
applied by any other than the person classified
may produce absurdity and injustice. On
the other hand, a man may quite conceivably
make a wrong diagnosis of his own religious
beliefs. He may be a Jew, or have ceased
to be a Jew, without realising it. It seems,
therefore, safest to rely on neither test ex
clusively. When, however, a man's own
view of his religious position coincides with
the view formed by outside observers, then
the question of inclusion or exclusion may

6 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
be settled with reasonable, though not with
absolute certainty.
Yet it must be admitted that the doubt as
to the propriety of a man's calling himself
Christian or Jew tends at present in one direc
tion. The doubtful persons are those who
are often called " liberal," " latitudinarian,"
" heretical " ; the persons who would deny
them the right to use the title are often called,
or call themselves, " orthodox," " conserva
tive," "traditionalists." The liberals do not
deny that the conservatives may rightly be
called Jews or Christians as the case may be ;
it is the conservatives who doubt the right
of the extreme liberals to this denomina
tion. And we have seen that if the liberalis
ing process, that is, the denial of certain doc
trines and the assertion of others, — for there
is assertion of the new as well as rejec
tion of the old involved, — goes on beyond
a certain undefined and perhaps undefinable
limit, then the doubt of the conservatives be
comes justifiable. By "justifiable" I mean that
a jury of completely informed and completely
impartial outsiders would so regard it. But it
would be necessary to add the proviso that such
a jury must attach considerable weight to the
evidence of the suspected person as to his own
religious position. Outsiders in so internal
and subjective a matter as a man's religion
do not necessarily see the truth most clearly.

i LIBERAL JUDAISM 7
If, then, Judaism as a living religion is
the religion professed by Jews, there are as
many varieties of Judaism as there are
varieties of religious belief among the persons
who, within the limits indicated above, may
justifiably call themselves Jews. This may
seem a hard saying. It might seem as if
Judaism, or any other religion, ought to be
easily describabie on paper. Such and such
doctrines are Judaism ; such and such doc
trines are Christianity ; such and such creeds
and articles constitute Judaism ; such and
such creeds and articles constitute Christianity.
For instance, in the ordinary Jewish prayer-
books there is a document which is called the
" Thirteen Principles of the Faith," and in a
footnote these principles are called " Articles
of the Jewish Creed." Is not Judaism these
articles ? Certainly not. Judaism as a living
religion is not any series of articles, but a
state of the mind ; if there were no Jews,
there would be no Judaism. These articles
may be believed in by a number of Jews, but,
even then, the way in which they are believed,
the manner in which they are interpreted,
may include an enormous number of differ
ences and varieties. Moreover, not all Jews
believe all these articles. The present writer,
for instance, disbelieves in five or six of them.
Thus, here again, there is room for wide
variety.

8 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
A Jew may believe in a number of doc
trines which many other Jews call " super
stitions." It may be shown scientifically and
historically that these " superstitions " have
been picked up and borrowed from some
other religion, and then it will be argued that
they are non- Jewish or un- Jewish, and that if
the entire religious belief of every Jew is
to be called a phase of Judaism, a great
injustice to Judaism will be done. But such
reasoning is inaccurate. From the point of
view of the living and actual religion, the
date at which a particular belief or super
stition was adopted is of very minor im
portance ; all the observer can say is that
such and such beliefs are now held by persons
who justifiably call themselves Jews. The
Judaism of these persons includes those beliefs.
The beliefs may be inconsistent with other
beliefs which they also hold : they may be
accretions of recent date and of un- Jewish
origin : none the less the Judaism of these
persons is not accurately described if those
beliefs are omitted.
It may, indeed, be found that certain beliefs
are common to all, and that other beliefs are
common to the vast majority of Jews. Some
beliefs may be described as accretions of
foreign origin. Of these, some would seem
consistent with, or developments from, the
native or ancient stock of beliefs ; they have

i LIBERAL JUDAISM 9
been thoroughly assimilated, and they have
come to stay. Others seem inconsistent
with " essentials," and are therefore likely
to drop off and decay. But we cannot
argue that a doctrine held by a numerical
majority is therefore an "essential," and
likely to remain for all time a constituent
feature of the religion. For instance, the
belief that Moses wrote the Pentateuch is
held by a numerical majority ; yet it may
reasonably be argued that it is not only not
an " essential " doctrine, but that it will
gradually disappear altogether. For though
the Judaism of any particular Jew includes all
his religious beliefs, it may also be true to
say that some beliefs are essential to Judaism,
while others are not. The test of " essen
tiality " will naturally vary ; the " essential "
doctrines of one age will not be essential in
the belief of another. And, in any one age,
different doctrines will seem essential to
different persons, and some persons will
maintain a larger number to be " essential,"
and others a smaller. Yet a few doctrines
might be found, such as the Existence and
Unity of God, which all Jews now living
would regard as essential, and which have
been considered essential in every age.
Within the innumerable minor and indi
vidual varieties of Judaism, there are certain
broad types or phases. There is a broad type

io LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
of Judaism which may be called " orthodox " ;
there is a broad type of Judaism which may
be called " liberal " or " reform." The
Judaism of which I shall here mainly speak
is an individual variety of the liberal type.
It is often said by modern Christians that
Christianity is not a creed but a life. The
same thing is said by modern Jews about
Judaism. What is meant is, that both re
ligions lay great stress upon conduct and
feeling, and upon the spirit and temper in
which a life is lived. Beliefs may be held in
a nerveless and feeble manner without in
fluencing conduct, without giving colour and
tone to the whole of life. That is true, but
none the less is it true that at the back of the
life which such Jews and Christians declare
to be Judaism and Christianity respectively,
there are opinions and doctrines about re
ligion and morality which would admit of
being stated and described. If it be said that
Christianity is not a creed but a life, this very
assertion implies a particular doctrine : a be
lief that a certain kind of life may fitly be
called Christian, and that the state of mind
which issues in and directs that life is true
Christianity. The religion as it exists and is
realised in that mind and life is capable of
being described in words, although we must
always remember that such words are an
inadequate representation of the real thing.

i LIBERAL JUDAISM n
The actual, living religion is not the written
page, but the person — as he thinks, wills, and
feels. As human nature is extremely complex, it
is not easy for any one to set forth his own
religion fully and truthfully. It is still more
difficult to know the religion of another. A
man can give a historical account of the
religious opinions of others, so far as these
have been described in writing, or observed
in action, or heard in speech, but it is not
easy to penetrate far into the recesses of
another's soul. What is pregnant with mean
ing to one mind is meaningless to another.
A philosophical system of religion except to a
philosopher is mere words.
The present writer is no philosopher, and
his book is unphilosophic and unsystematic.
But for that very reason it may have greater
meaning to every-day folk. He writes as a
liberal Jew, but the Judaism he is about to
speak of is just his conception of Judaism, and
his only. He claims and feels himself to be a
Jew, and he calls his own religion Judaism,
but whether it can justly be called Judaism is
not for him, but for others to decide. Never
theless his own claim and feeling must be
reckoned with in arriving at a decision. I
again acknowledge that there must be a point
at which it becomes absurd to docket such
and such religious opinions with the label

12 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
"Judaism." Because a man is in a small
minority it does not follow that his chosen
label is inaccurate ; but, clearly, if ninety-nine
per cent of existing Jews deny that the label
can be given with propriety to those opinions,
the man who holds them must either be in
"advance of his age," or self-deluded on the
question of nomenclature.
Yet if the Judaism of which I shall here
speak is only my Judaism, I believe that it is
also something like the Judaism of many
other persons, and that it will be something
like the Judaism of very many more. I
trust, too, that it may, to some small extent,
interpret other people's states of mind to
themselves. There are many persons who do
not quite know what they believe or disbelieve.
They are uncertain whether, or how far, they
still are Jews. They are doubtful whether
there can still rightly be phases of Judaism an
swering to their religious needs and consistent
with their religious opinions, so far as these
latter are articulate or known to themselves.
They hesitate what to teach their children,
and often abandon the task to others or to
chance. If I had not the case of such persons
in mind, and if I did not hope that I might
help two or three of them, this book would
never have been written. My own religious
opinions and my own conceptions of Judaism
are of no importance whatever. They are

i LIBERAL JUDAISM 13
only important if they can be of use for others,
and thereby of use to Judaism. For if to the
State no single one of its citizens is of no
account, far less should a Religion consider
a single soul that professes it a negligible
quantity. Judaism must desire that every
one born within its pale should be saved for
itself.

CHAPTER II
Though a man's personal religion is not
what he has read about religion, but what he
himself believes, feels and experiences, it is
doubtful how far any one could rightly be
called a Jew who knew nothing of the past
history of Judaism. It is clear that he must
somehow be linked on to the past ; he cannot
start with an absolutely clean slate, devise his
own religion, and call it Judaism. He must
therefore possess a certain minimum of know
ledge. This minimum he may have obtained
either orally, from parents, teachers, and
environment, or through books. No man, in
sheer loneliness or independence, creates his
own religion. He is a link in a long and
very strange chain which stretches back to
vague beginnings. Hence, too, a writer on
Judaism or on Christianity, however much
he may profess and desire to speak un
officially and unhistorically, or to describe his
own personal religion and no more, must
nevertheless say something about the past.
For Judaism and Christianity are historical
14

chap, ii LIBERAL JUDAISM 15
religions ; and there are certain periods of
their history which are of special or even of
supreme importance. They are also literary
and documentary religions ; the story of their
foundation and early growth is recorded in a
particular book — the " Bible " ; and part of
the religion of every Jew or every Christian
to-day is the view he takes and the belief he
holds about this particular book. If a man
had never heard of the Bible and of the Bible
heroes, he could clearly not call himself, with
any reasonable justification, a Christian or a
Jew. Nevertheless it is only incidentally that
any questions of history can here be dealt
with. I cannot attempt any sketch of the
history of Judaism, or an account of the origin
and development of its various doctrines.
These doctrines must be discussed without
any adequate presentation of their history
and growth. Nor can I venture upon any
systematic treatment of fundamental ques
tions. What religion means, how it can best
be defined, is beyond the sphere of the present
book as it is beyond the power of the present
writer. Fundamental doctrines will be spoken
of unphilosophically. And I must start with
the most fundamental and difficult of all,
namely, with the conception of God and of
his relation to man.
I shall essay no "proof" of "God's"

1 6 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
existence, for I must assume that I am writ
ing for the benefit of persons who could
honestly say that they "believe in" God,
though of what they mean by " God " they
could give no coherent or consistent account.
They are not philosophers. To such persons,
for whose benefit I write, I also belong.
Yet we are not ashamed of our own in
capacity. We call God infinite Spirit, though
we have no wholly clear idea of what we
mean by spirit or by infinity. We are not
frightened by the double limitation of our
human nature and of our unphilosophical
training. We know what we mean when we
say we " believe in God " sufficiently well for
all religious and practical purposes. And,
therefore, sketchily and unphilosophically,
with no attempt at completeness or system, I
now proceed to speak of certain aspects of
the Divine Being, so far as my own personal
religion conceives them.
" God is Spirit." By this we primarily
mean that he is incorporeal. All Jews are
united on this point : it has been a dogma of
the Synagogue from the second Isaiah on
wards. It is a striking fact that whenever
we try to explain God's nature to ourselves,
we fall into saying what God is not. In
seeking to define the positive statement,
" God is Spirit," we almost inevitably tend to
say that it means " God is not a body."

ii LIBERAL JUDAISM 17
Maimonides long ago held that the only
attributes applicable to God are negative.
While (as will be maintained later on) we
feel that there is a generic likeness or even
kinship between God and man, we can some
times best explain our conception of God by
contrasting his nature with man's nature, and
by denying that God possesses certain qualities
which are possessed by man. So, too, when
we say that God is omnipresent, we mean that
he is not " locally " nearer one part of the
universe than another, but as infinite Spirit
is spiritually all-pervading ; he is " near " to
all spirits, and they can spiritually draw near
to him, their origin and creator.
"God is self-conscious Reason." Here,
too, all Jews are agreed, and they mean by
the words something like this. Man is self-
conscious and rational. Goodness and know
ledge in any of their higher forms are in
conceivable by him except as immanent in
or pertaining to a self-conscious and rational
mind. Who can conceive what the divine
reason may be like ? Who may venture to
conceive the divine self-consciousness ? Yet
if the words " reason " and " self-conscious "
are not strictly applicable to God, that
is only because God is more than they, not
because he is less. " He is a person, but
not like ourselves ; a mind, but not a human
mind ; a cause, but not a material cause, nor

1 8 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
yet a maker or artificer. The words which
we use are imperfect expressions of his true
nature ; but we do not therefore lose faith in
what is best and highest in ourselves and in
the world." 1
" God is eternal Reason." To conceive a
life without end is very hard ; to conceive a
life without beginning makes our human
faculties reel ; yet we believe God to be
eternal in both directions. And the backward
eternity of the Infinite Reason and Spirit is
important because it implies, as I fancy all
Jews would hold, that God is eternal not
only in the sense that there never was a time
when he was not, but also in the sense that
he is exempt from the limitations which to us
make past, present, and future exclusive each
of the others.
" God is spirit," " God is mind," " God is
reason." These words denote the same
thing. For if God, as all Jews hold, be one,
then the many aspects of his unity are
yet all essentially the same. His being is
infinitely rich, and yet absolutely one. That
is the marvel and the glory of it, the last and
the final explanation and consolation for all
the problems of evil.
" God is the Creator of the World." The
first article of the Thirteen Principles of the
Jewish Faith, which were drawn up by Moses
1 Jowett : Dialogues of Plato, vol. iv. p. 43 (third edition).

ii LIBERAL JUDAISM 19
Maimonides in the twelfth century, declares
that " God is the author and guide of every
thing that has been created, and that he
alone has made, does make, and will make
all things." In the sense of this article,
many of us no longer believe the dogma.
The old idea was that God " made " the
universe out of nothing : he created the
very material with which, workman-like, he
"made" the whole world of "things."
There are obvious objections to such a
theory, which even they who are not philo
sophers can easily understand. God is not
outside the world as the watchmaker is
outside the watch ; we rather regard him
as the Spirit of the world, immanent in it
as well as transcendent. Whether this be
lief also implies that God and the Universe
are both eternal I do not pretend to know.
All we are concerned to maintain is that
matter was never self-existent or independent
of mind ; in other words, that the "world"
was always guided by God.
As we believe in an immanent as well as
in a transcendent Deity, the laws of nature
are the laws of God. It would seem true
to say, that in these laws God reveals or
manifests himself. They are an aspect of
the divine nature. If God is reason, then
God himself is, as it were, a sort of eternal
guarantee that two and two will always be

20 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
four and never five. Just in the same way
is he a guarantee that any other piece of
ascertained truth will remain eternally true.
He is one ; truth abides. Therefore what are
commonly called " miracles," if these mean in
terferences with the laws of the universe, seem
inconsistent with the divine nature. It seems
a sort of contradiction in terms to suppose
that God suspends or changes a part of
his own self-manifestation, an aspect of his
own being. The Biblical miracles are great
stumbling - blocks on quite other grounds
than this, but, on purely religious and
theoretic grounds, many of us cannot fit
them in with the purest conception of God
to which we can attain. Liberal Judaism must
live without miracles, or it will not be able
to live at all. It is perhaps scarcely necessary
to add that liberal Judaism is keenly responsive
to that sense of awe and wonder which a
contemplation of the recurrent marvels of
nature must as constantly arouse.
Far more important for us than any other
aspect of the Divine Being is his relation to
man. Our view of this relation is best
prefaced by the conception of God upon the
ethical or moral side. It is very odd that
the Thirteen Principles take all this side so
much for granted, that, except incidentally,
they say nothing whatever about it.
" God is goodness," " God is righteous-

n LIBERAL JUDAISM 21
ness," "God is love." All these statements
seem to say the same thing. Christians lay
great stress upon the third : " God is love."
The words themselves come from the New
Testament, and are found in the First Epistle
of St. John iv. 8 . They express ethical per
fection in one particular light. The argument,
" Love one another, for God is ethical per
fection," would not be so clear and cogent as
the argument, " Love one another, for God is
love." But whatever be the terms and
words which we use to indicate the divine
goodness, the same remark will hold of them
as of the divine reason or self-consciousness.
God's goodness must immensely transcend
our own, but it transcends it as including it
and passing beyond it, not as denying it.
If we have the right to say anything more
of God than that he is, then his reason and
goodness must not be wholly alien to our
own. If his righteousness is wholly alien to
our righteousness, the statement that God is
righteous becomes unmeaning.
It seems to me an essential feature of
Judaism that God's righteousness, justice,
mercy, goodness, and love should be regarded
as identical. All these different words mean
the same thing looked at from different
points of view. For God's unity is absolute
and incomparable. With us men there may be
some conflict between justice and love, between

22 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
righteousness and compassion : in God such
conflict is impossible. The mere idea of it is
absurd. It is always the one God who, in all
his operations and relations, in all his judg
ments and dealings, is perfect, immutable,
the same. Upon this doctrine of Unity,
Self-sameness, and Immutability, it is reason
able to lay the greatest stress. The opposite
pole to it is conveniently illustrated by
Milton's Paradise Lost, where God the Son
pleads and argues with God the Father, and
the divine justice in the Father is traversed
and even conquered by the divine pity in
the Son. From such grotesque conceptions
of Deity, which possess religious and ethical
dangers as well as grotesquery, the Jewish
dogma of the Unity has kept the Jews almost
wholly free.
Between our conception of God as pure
reason, or perfect intelligence, and our con
ception of him as perfect goodness or love,
lies our conception of him as truth. For
truth has a double aspect, looking towards
knowledge and looking also towards good
ness. God is truth as much as he is love.
He is fidelity, changeless and undeceiving.
Therefore, since God is truth, the human
life which is spent in the service of truth
must be acceptable to him, an imitation of
the Divine. Hence, too, as a further outflow
from the conception of God's unity, there

n LIBERAL JUDAISM 23
can be no possible opposition or conflict
between Religion and Science. All truth is
a revelation of the God of truth, and all truths
must, in the last resort, be consistent with
each other.
Now if God is not a mere figment of
the brain, and if the statements that God is
reason, or spirit, or goodness, or love, have any
resemblance to reality, it follows that there
must be some sort of kinship between God
and man. Moreover, religion depends upon
communion, and there can be no communion
between two entirely disparate and utterly
heterogeneous beings. The greater might
understand the less, but the less could have
no knowledge of the greater. If man has any
knowledge of God, must he not in some way
or other be related or akin to the Divine ?
Whatever the original meaning may have
been of the Biblical statement that " man
was created in the image of God," it is
commonly interpreted by modern Jews of all
schools to signify that the human spirit has
some likeness to the divine spirit. Because
of this likeness, the divine goodness and
reason are not absolutely alien to our own.
God and man are distinct and separate, as
creator and creation ; God's goodness and
reason infinitely transcend, and will always
continue to transcend, the reason and good
ness of man. God could never become man,

24 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
and man can never become God, but never
theless, in spite of perpetual separation, there
is yet the possibility of constant and growing
communion. In some way which we can
never hope to understand, human goodness
and human reason contain a touch of the
Divine, and this touch gives us the possibility
of knowing and worshipping and coming in
contact with God. The argument is doubtless
circular, yet faith asserts that it is not vicious.
We know and commune with God because of
this relationship ; because we know and com
mune with God, this relationship must be.
The essence and validity of religion
depend upon the belief that there is a living
and active relationship between God and man.
This relationship can be conceived of in a
more outward or in a more inward manner. A
merely external manner is inadequate and un-
sufficing. Christian theologians often ascribe
this external way of conceiving the relation
ship to Judaism. It would need a separate
book to discuss how far the charge is accurate
and how far it is false. The external way is
the way of the child. It is not, therefore, in
itself as irreligious or as " distant " as, for
party purposes, it is often represented ; for
the child, in spite of his grotesque ideas of
God, by no means thinks of the Divine
Being as either unconcerned with him or as
unapproachable by him. But, nevertheless,

ii LIBERAL JUDAISM 25
what is suitable and productive of good results
for the child is not necessarily suitable and
productive of good results for the man.
The external way thinks of God as knowing
man's thoughts and as hearing man's prayers
in virtue of his divine attribute of perfect
omniscience. Through this divine omniscience
man can commune with God. And because
God is omnipotent, he can influence man
from afar. He can help him to be good ;
he can strengthen him in times of trial.
Thus even the merely external way of con
ceiving the relationship between God and
man establishes the worth and validity of
prayer and communion. The child and the
childlike man may be intensely religious even
upon these external lines. Some Christian
theologians do not realise this ; perhaps they
are not eager to realise by how many differ
ent pathways men can draw near to the one
God. Nevertheless the method is inadequate.
First of all, it depends upon a conception of
God that is anthropomorphic, suitable to
a child, but unsuitable to the majority of
thinking adults at the present time. God
is regarded as somewhere, e.g. in " heaven " ;
only he is so very powerful and wise and
good, that from "the place of his residence"
— far off though that be — he can also hear
and see and help all his human children at

26 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
one and the same time. This simple and
childlike conception of God is unsuitable
to grown men. They may not be able to
substitute for it any complete and coherent
system of the relationship between God and
man ; they may indeed shrewdly suspect that
even the philosophers' and theologians' systems
are an inaccurate representation of the actual
truth in all its depth and complexity, but,
nevertheless, they are bound to make up for
themselves a few working ideas which will
enable them to maintain the religion of the
child though they are compelled to abandon
its theology. For (and this is the second
objection to the merely "external way")
if they do not do this they are liable to lose
the religion as well as the theology ; in other
words, prayer and communion become more
difficult, less frequent, less real. They can no
longer regard God as " dwelling on high,"
but " looking down " with loving care and
knowledge upon his human children upon
earth, yet they have nothing to substitute for
the old conception. They still believe in
God, but God has become distant. Because
he is no longer in " heaven " he is no
longer " Our Father." He is a necessity of
thought, the condition of knowledge, the
Creator, the Sustainer, but he is mysterious,
unapproachable, so purely and wholly divine
that man cannot communicate or commune

n LIBERAL JUDAISM 27
with him. Nor is it realised how God can
communicate with man.
It is at this point that the more internal way
of conceiving the relationship steps in and saves
the situation. For the communion of man
with God, and the action and influence of God
upon man, are essential elements of true
religion. The " internal way " declares that
communion and influence are possible be
cause of the kinship and affinity — at however
great a distance — between man and God.
This conviction or doctrine is sometimes
expressed by saying that God is within man
as well as without him. The phrase goes
too far if any parity is meant between the
divine reflection within and the divine Reality
without.1 Man is not God. Yet, in some
mysterious but real sense, man is not wholly
devoid of God. The wiser, the better he is,
the more of God he contains. Upon that
element within him which is akin to the
Divine, the " God without " can operate. That
is the door- — all metaphors will serve — through
which the divine influence can pass, and
which man by his own effort can more closely
shut, or more widely open. If we had not
something divine in our very being God
could not help us. But this divine help
1 Another objection to the metaphor is that people almost
inevitably fancy that their souls are situated somewhere " within "
their bodies, and that " within " these semi-material souls there
resides a divine spark, particle, or germ.

28 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
is one of the most important doctrines of
religion. Directly we begin to speak of the divine
Spirit as operating in man we trench upon
the province of psychology. Thus one who
is not a psychologist and has not studied
psychology can only write on this subject in
a loose and tentative sort of way, and he is
liable to make dreadful blunders. We com
monly speak of man as made up of body and
soul, or of body and mind. We all realise
that his mental activities have their physical
concomitants or antecedents, and that the
interdependence of the material and the
spiritual is of the subtlest possible kind. We
speak of man's higher and his lower nature,
of the spirit warring against the flesh, of duty
at conflict with desire. I assume and believe
that all these rough phrases answer more or
less inaccurately to some highly complex
reality. What has actually happened when
man is conscious to himself of having done
right or wrong I will not pretend to say.
Nor do I know what faculties are active in
man when he is conscious of communion with
God, when he lifts up his soul in prayer, and
believes that this spiritual activity has given
him a new or "heaven-sent" strength.
The terminology we use is not of much
practical importance so long as, on the one
hand, we hold to the doctrine that there

n LIBERAL JUDAISM 29
is a real influence of God upon man,
which is conditioned and made possible by
the divine element "within" man, and so
long as, on the other hand, we reject the
doctrine that this divine element, which
is the " soul " or " spirit," is something dis
tinct and separable from the mind or reason.
For in that case there would be persons
who, by their very constitution, are capable
of rational life, but are wholly incapable of
spiritual life. Such a dualism, I am glad to
say, is uncharacteristic of Judaism in any of
its forms. There is one common human
nature, and all men alike possess mind and
spirit, reason and soul.
Reason, as I would use the word, is Spirit
looked at from another point of view. It
is a wider term than Intellect or Under
standing. And, as so used, I would say that
it is the same divine element which pro
duces, on the one hand, a learned man
of science, and, on the other, an unlettered
saint. Because, in the divine original, spirit
and reason are merely two aspects of the same
ineffable unity, therefore liberal Judaism con
tends that there is no class of men who,
possessed of reason, are not also, at least
germinally, possessed of spirit as well. The
words spirit and spiritual (like the words
reason and rational) may be used both in a
narrower and in a wider sense. In the

30 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
narrower sense spirit seems to mean divineness
or spirituality, and spiritual means a peculiar
sensibility and alertness to religious feelings
and ideas. In the wider sense spirit means
all that in man's make and nature render him
distinctively human. In this distinctiveness
lies our kinship with God, and we may call
it indifferently " spirit " or " reason."
Some religious teachers, if I understand
them aright, have taught that men are divided
into classes, and that some are spiritual— the
children of light, while others are merely
rational — the children of darkness. This doc
trine seems unsupported by facts, and leads to
conclusions hardly consistent with the good
ness of God. For while the sphere of reason
and spirit, in the narrower sense of the words,
are by no means identical (a very " intel
lectual" man maybe but scantily "spiritual"),
in the wider sense, reason and spirit in their
nature and origin are one and the same. This
seems to me very important. If we could
imagine a " reason" which was not "spiritual "
that reason might be wholly evil ; its super
natural source might be not God, but Devil.
Logically, therefore, do those teachers who
hold that some men possess reason, but not
spirit, regard such persons as children of dark
ness (i.e. of the Devil). But liberal Judaism
emphatically repudiates the doctrine of a
Devil, that is, of a personal, self-conscious

ii LIBERAL JUDAISM 31
principle of Evil. The reason of all rational
beings not only comes from God, but is akin
to the divine reason. In God reason and spirit
are one. There can, therefore, be no opposi
tion in kind between the two. Moreover, the
divine goodness implies as a necessary corollary
that all mankind are his children, and that
all carry within them, however obscured by
sin or ignorance, by vice of blood or taint of
nature, a spark of the divine fire. If one
man has a "soul," then we all have souls. If
one man is spiritual, then are we all.

CHAPTER III
The doctrines that man is not without
affinity to God, and that God in some
mysterious manner can and does "influence"
or " strengthen " man, are closely connected
with our conceptions of good and evil, of
righteousness and sin. It is the Divine in
man which makes him capable of goodness
and capable of sin. The consciousness of
the contrast between what he is and what he
ought to be is only possible because of that
element in him which links him with God,
and which the divine Spirit without can in
fluence and quicken. We may not wholly
identify this divine element with reason, but
we may say that it is not conceivably present
except in a rational being. For the con
sciousness of goodness and sin is inseparable
both from reason and from the divine element
alike : the two are only separable in thought.
The rich but single nature of God is split
up into minute and manifold reproductions
within man. The divine "spirit" and the
divine " reason " are two aspects of the same
32

chap, iii LIBERAL JUDAISM 33
unity. The consciousness of good and evil has
arisen to man because he possesses spirit and
reason, and because, in and through his spirit
and his reason, he shows his affinity with God.
In dealing with this affinity and its manifesta
tions it is therefore necessary to say a few
words about goodness and sin.
How and why a man does right and does
wrong is a matter for the psychologist and
the philosopher to explain to us. It is the
philosopher, moreover, who must tell us what
right and wrong ultimately mean, and what
is their history and genesis. In this place
it is desirable to pass at once beyond the
limits of morality into the domain of re
ligion. For when we look at good and
evil, or right and wrong, from the religious
point of view, they become transfigured.
Goodness becomes holiness, an imitation of
God, obedience to his perfect will, while
wrongdoing becomes sin. For God, who
is himself the supreme ideal of absolute
righteousness and love, has willed that man,
within his lower and human limits, should
also be righteous. The belief that God
has this desire, and that man, with God's
help, is capable of more or less success
fully fulfilling it, constitutes a chief feature
of the particular religion which I am seek
ing to explain. But God has ordained that
human goodness should be both attained and

34 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
hampered by imperfection, ignorance, and sin.
The more intensely a man realises God the
more hateful will sin appear to him. Yet it
is not given to any man to avoid sin alto
gether. Human nature is so constituted as
to contain within itself the potentiality, never
wholly unrealised, of sin, as well as the potenti
ality, never wholly unrealised, of righteousness.
Man, looking into his own nature and com
prehending it, loathes this sinful potentiality,
and loathes, too, the actual sins which it
has caused. This very hatred of sin is itself
an evidence of man's relationship to God. It
were otherwise inconceivable. But the divine
element in man can be weakened or streng
thened by man's own power. Though none
can say that God's saving and redeeming help
may not, at any moment, suffice to transform
the soul, and make it break through the bond
age of sin, it is also true that repeated wrong
doing dulls and dims the spiritual faculties, so
that the sense of God grows weaker, and the
likelihood of the divine element within being
quickened by the "God without" becomes
gradually less and less. Contrariwise, the purer
and better a man is the stronger will be his
power of realising God and of communing with
him. We are again confronted with a circular
argument which is not vicious. Righteousness
makes us realise God better ; the better we
realise God the more righteous we shall be.

in LIBERAL JUDAISM 35
Why is it that we feel that wrongdoing
is a religious offence ? What is the meaning
of the phrase to " sin against God " ? The
oldest Jewish explanation would, I believe,
be, that God in revealed words has bidden
us do some things and avoid other things,
and that foremost among the things we
should do are deeds of mercy and justice
and love, and that foremost among the things
we should avoid are deeds of hatred and
cruelty and lust. He has bidden us in our
very thoughts and words be pure and truthful
and loving. We can, however, no longer
look at the matter in quite so simple or child
like a way. The highest commands of the
Bible are divine because they are very good ;
they are not (so most of us now think) very
good because they are divine. Yet we still
believe that he who sins, sins against God
and violates his law. Only the law is rather
general than special ; it is attained from within
rather than imposed from without. Just as God
is the God of truth, and as the laws of nature
are his laws, so is God goodness and love,
and the laws of goodness and love, as man is
growingly able to discern them in increasing
purity and fulness, are his laws, — laws which,
by his very nature, he must wish us to dis
cover and to obey. If he helps us at all,
he has helped and helps us in this discovery
and obedience. Thus to sin against God is

36 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
to sin against goodness : the one implies the
other reciprocally, for to sin against goodness
is to sin against God.
People talk of conscience as the voice of
God ; and whatever the genesis and history of
conscience may be, this phrase represents a
truth. Fpr if any part of us recognises good
and evil, and urges us to do the right and to
avoid the wrong, and if there is in man any
element which may rightly be called divine,
then conscience is a manifestation of that
divine element. It is not the voice of God in
any magical sense, but in sober earnest, in the
very make and constitution of our human
nature. There is a higher and a lower Jewish doctrine
on the subject of sin. Yet the lower doctrine
was never taught in isolation : it is only so
presented and isolated for controversial pur
poses by modern Christian writers. So far as
the sinner and his own character are con
cerned, the essence of sin lies not in the deed
as done, but in the sinfulness of it and in its
effect upon him. There is many a sin which
does not issue, or is not expressed, in deed.
Yet it may be no less a sin. From a social
point of view the essence of the sin may
probably lie outside the sinner and in his
deed. A man steals. From a social point of
view the sin lies in the committed act, the
consequences of which may be wholly and

iii LIBERAL JUDAISM 37
eternally irreparable. From the point of view
of the sinner the essence of the sin lies in
himself and in its results upon him. Sin and
crime " deserve " punishment, and from more
than one point of view we may conceive both
society and God legitimately " punishing " the
evil-doer. But from a strictly religious point
of view punishment has no necessary connec
tion with or effect upon sin. Punishment is
desirable if it make the sinner less sinful ; it
is undesirable if it make him more sinful ;
it is religiously indifferent if it leave him the
same. The lower and inadequate view of sin
looks upon it in causal relation to punish
ment. On that view a prayer to God for
forgiveness means only, " Remit the punish
ment due to the offence." But the only
religious prayer is, " Grant me punishment, if
it will cure my sinfulness. Give me strength
and aid by which to conquer it." Religion
is concerned not so much with sin as with
sinfulness, the sinful nature, the sinful tend
ency. For a man cannot think, will, or do
sinfully without a deposit being, as it were,
left upon his character : in that sense each
piece of sinfulness adds a stain ; it adds weight
to weight, and leaves at last a burden hard to
shake off. The act is one thing, its recoil
upon the doer is another.
About all these ideas and conceptions

38 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
Judaism has happily, so far as I know, never
laid down a hard and fast theory. For such a
theory will always be unjust to some of the
facts. It cannot account for all the subtle
complexities and varieties of human nature.
We still accept the truth of the old Biblical
adage : " There is no man that sinneth not."
But what is meant by sin may be extremely
various. If a man was never conscious of
imperfection and sin he would have no know
ledge or consciousness of righteousness. For
human righteousness implies an ideal towards
which the best of us strain and strive, but to
which, just because it is an ideal, we never
can attain. Of his own distance from that
ideal, and of his lapses in his journey towards
it, every one is conscious. He who felt no
imperfection would be either below or above
the human level. His very nature would be
either sub-human or superhuman ; or, if he is
conscious of no sin, and thinks he has reached
perfection, what can this be but self-righteous
ness and pride ? We may safely assert that
for any human being to consider himself as
good as he can be is itself a sin. It indicates
a perverted intelligence, or a darkened heart,
or an incapacity to realise God. But if it be
true both that no man is wholly good, and
that no human goodness is perfect, it is also
true that no man is wholly wicked. It is not
wholly true of any man that evil is good to

in LIBERAL JUDAISM 39
him and good evil. Man can neither become
God nor Devil. He oscillates between two
extremes, of which the one is the Supreme
Reality, the other a figment of his own brain.
Here the important question arises, How
do men conquer and prevail over sin ?
The question is closely connected with the
doctrine of man's relationship to God and of
God's saving influence upon man.
It may at once be noted that different
persons are differently affected by their sin
fulness and sins. Yet we cannot argue that
those who have the most constant conscious
ness of sin, and the most passionate loathing of
it, are always and necessarily the best persons,
or the most likely to become heroes and saints.
Some people are frequently troubled about
their sinfulness and imperfections, and yet
seem scarcely the better for their anxiety.
Some are intensely and vividly conscious of
the defiling nature of sin, and the conscious
ness helps them forward. Some go through
a crisis. By God's grace and their own effort
they break through what they feel to be the
bondage of sin ; and though they do not live
faultless lives thereafter, yet their sins trouble
them far less, both because they are smaller
and less frequent, and also because they feel
their souls are now in general harmony with
the will of God, and their lives are not passed
in constant conflict with evil. Others experi-

40 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
ence no such conflict, but pass through life
doing their best, humbly, cheerfully, faithfully,
as in the presence of God. They grieve for
their sins, but are not disheartened, for they
know that "to err is human " ; yet none the
less do they seek to get the mastery over their
sinful tendencies ; they repent and ask sincerely
for the help of God ; they become better
because they believe that God has forgiven
them. Some find it harder to be good
than others, and which of these is the better,
God only knows. Some seem good by
" nature," and some by law. If the law is
accepted and realised by their own souls and
minds as the noblest and the best, their eager
devotion to it may lead to the most superb
goodness, and their failures to be true to it
to the most passionate consciousness of sin.
They who are good by "nature," without
law or the need of law, are often sweet and
radiant souls, whose nature or instinct seems
itself the very seal and stamp of the Divine.
No one theory of goodness or of sin will fit
all these varying types of human goodness
and human frailty. What is generally wanted
seems to be : on the one hand, a keen realisa
tion and loathing of sin as a defilement and
a burden, a separation from God and a barrier
to free communion with him ; and, on the
other hand, a fearless confidence, which, relying
upon God's aid and strength, moves boldly

in LIBERAL JUDAISM 41
forward and does its best. Religious care
lessness and religious scrupulosity seem equally
bad. It is often said that the best way to
attain happiness is not to seek it ; it might
also be said, by way of paradox, that the best
way to lead the highest life is not to think too
much how to lead it.
The man who thinks most of what he can
do for others has by this very means done
best for himself. Of course this does not
imply that we should not often look into our
lives, bring our sins before our consciousness,
and deeply consider how we may best over
come them ; but it does imply that a constant
anxiety about our own measure of attainment
or deflection may degenerate into selfishness,
scrupulosity, or externalism. A man may be
more careful about avoiding wrong than about
doing right, or he may estimate the right by
a low measure. He may forget that goodness
and sinfulness are not, so far as he is con
cerned, and from the religious point of view,
so many acts done and so many acts avoided,
but the character as a whole, in all its com
plexity, as God alone can see it and judge it.
Judaism, which up till the present time
has been what is commonly known as a legal
religion, was liable to the perversions of
legalism. Every religion has the defects of
its qualities ; each one has its own peculiar
dangers. In any historical narrative it would

42 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
be necessary to discuss this matter at length,
and to show why Judaism has sometimes
suffered in this particular way. But here I
am only concerned to give my own views,
and may leave history on one side. But of
one irreligious conception, of which Christian
theologians commonly accuse it, Judaism,
throughout its long and varied history, has
never been guilty. It has never taught or
believed that man becomes good or conquers
sin of his own unaided strength, by his own
unaided understanding. If that were the
case, what would be the meaning of the old
prayers, still rightly preserved in every prayer-
book : " O favour us with knowledge, under
standing, and discernment from thee. Blessed
art thou, O Lord, gracious giver of know
ledge " ? Or again : " Cause us to return, O
our Father, unto thy law ; draw us near, O
our King, unto thy service." Or this : " Lead
us not into the power of sin ; let not the evil
inclination have power over us ; subdue our
inclination so that it may submit itself unto
thee." We therefore believe, and we shall
continue to teach our children to believe, that
no man can do without God, and that there
is a real, though undefinable influence of the
divine Spirit upon the human soul.
But Judaism (as it seems to me most
wisely) does not theorise about this influence,
and does not one-sidedly exaggerate it. It

iii LIBERAL JUDAISM 43
does not attempt to explain how precisely
this influence is exercised. It is reasonable
to believe that the purer the human soul,
the more susceptible it is to the divine
aid, the more efficacious its prayer. But
beyond this we need not and cannot go.
The Psalmist says : ' By thy light, we see
light," and this statement we can still accept.
" Through his strength we are strong."
While, however, we lay just stress upon what
God, in answer to or even without our
prayer, may do for us in our efforts towards
goodness, it seems foolish and inaccurate to
ignore what we ourselves contribute to the
total result. Whatever philosophers may tell
us, and however they may explain it, or limit
it, or even explain it away, we Jews must
still continue to believe in " free will," in the
sense that man, within varying degrees, is
responsible for his actions, and that he
" merits," from a certain definable point of
view, approbation or blame. Here again we
lay down no theory. All we insist on is
that the simple adage, " God only helps those
who help themselves," contains a truth.
Man can and must strive towards the ideal,
and the unity of his action and being is com
posed of mysteriously blended elements,
which may justly be called human and divine.
So, in the Jewish liturgy, the statement, " Thy
right hand is stretched out to receive those

44 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
who return," is frequently combined with the
prayer, "Bring us back to thee, and we will
return." The conquest of sin, whether sudden or
gradual, is in either case the combined result
of human endeavour and the divine grace.
The particular features in it upon which
Judaism has always laid the greatest stress are
repentance and atonement. Here, too, we
cling to the belief that part is the work of
man and part is the work of God, and here,
too, no single theory would seem to fit the
facts. Man was not unredeemed up to a certain
date in his history. The conception of a
Fall is at variance with what we know of
human development. It has seemed conson
ant, and therefore, to faith, it is consonant,
with divine goodness and wisdom that man
should have developed out of lowliest begin
nings. His ancestors were probably mere
animals, and ages upon ages of savagery
intervened between the brute ancestor and
anything which we should now call civilisa
tion or enlightenment. Why this had to be
God only knows. Why have there to be
such persons as the aboriginal savages of
Australia, who, at the approach and contact
of civilisation, can only learn its vices, decay,
and disappear ? These are puzzles which no
Theistic philosophy can explain ; it is the

rii LIBERAL JUDAISM 45
burden which Theism, and all who believe in
Theism, must bear. The divine pity must
be equal to the immensity of its task. The
explanation may lie behind the veil.
Man is liable to sin. Is the ultimate reason
of this that it was only through sin that
human goodness could have been attained ?
Vile sins have been committed at every date in
man's history, by Christians, by Jews, by
believers, and by unbelievers. But man can
also attain to a high degree of holiness and
purity. He may attain to it gradually with
out any crisis or sudden change ; he may
also cease to be a "sinner," and become
almost suddenly a " saint." But, in either
case, there will have been room and necessity
for the mental and spiritual phenomenon of
repentance. The desired result of repentance is atone
ment. Man wishes to feel at one with God,
reconciled to him. This atonement can be
conceived both outwardly and inwardly.
Outward atonement is the feeling that God
has "forgiven" our sins. If we desire this
feeling merely to avoid the punishment of our
sins then the outwardness reaches a low
religious ebb. In such a case God is merely
regarded as supreme power, and not as ideal
perfection, or the Good. The desired feeling
may, however, shade off into the higher wish
that God may be at peace with us in order that

46 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
we may feel at peace with him. In this way
the outward atonement becomes inward. In
old days the outward atonement was an
intense reality, and it did not cease to be a
reality when the inward atonement was also
desired likewise. But we no longer pray for
outward atonement to-day, partly because we
do not believe that God is ever " angry "
or "unreconciled" in a merely human sense
of the word, partly because we are convinced
that in this life, or in any future life, we shall
only suffer for our sins what it is good for us,
what it is our highest interest, to suffer. In
this respect the doctrine of Plato, as enunciated
in the Gorgias, has completely triumphed.
But we do desire inward peace — to feel at
one with God and reconciled to him. This
we can obtain through repentance. Repent
ance lies partly in our own power, and yet
we do well to pray : " Help us to repent."
God, in human language, inclines himself to
us as we strain forward towards him. By
a law of his being which we can never hope,
and which we do not need, to understand,
he, as it were, imparts of himself to us if
we honestly and eagerly desire to be at one
with him. Reconciliation is neither purely
human nor purely divine. It is both in one.
The " at one ness " and the sense of it are
never complete and not always permanent.
We can make no hard and fast theory. As

in LIBERAL JUDAISM 47
I have already indicated, repentance may in
some lives produce an " atonement " of such
a magnitude and constancy as to constitute
an epoch. The inward peace then achieved
is never subsequently disturbed. The quon
dam sinner feels reconciled with God. By a
false apprehension of religion, or by a mis
conception of a common and even whole
some doctrine, a man may have continually
striven to do his duty and yet continually be
agonised by the sense of failure. In spite of
this error, or even because of it, a crisis
occurs by which his whole attitude towards
God (and, perhaps, as he mistakenly thinks,
God's whole attitude towards him) becomes
changed. He feels a new creature ; he has
begun a new life. He is now full of a child
like confidence in the goodness of God, and
petty faults cannot shake him from the quiet
and blessedness of that trustful conviction.
Repentance and reconciliation may be felt
in quite another way than this, a way less
decisive and trenchant, but not necessarily
less ethical or religious. For, as I have
already said, in thousands of good and noble
lives there is no one, big, religious crisis
at all. Life marches on with a fairly even
flow, and, on the whole, some religious
and moral progress is made. But, inter
mingled with this progress and retarding
it, there is also some wrongdoing and sin.

48 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
There is no one big repentance or one critical
upheaval, but many little repentances and
many little reconciliations. Yet it would be
unjust to say that they are shoddy and unreal.
The old Rabbis spoke well when they said :
" He who says, ' I will sin and then repent,'
his repentance will not avail him." If the
validity of a revolution is to be judged by its
success, so, within certain limits, may we test
the purity of repentance. Yet if a man com
mit a sin twelve times in a year and feel re
pentance after each committal, who but God
can know whether, without those seemingly
flimsy repentances, he might not have trans
gressed twenty-four times instead of twelve ?
Who but God can read aright the complex
subtlety of the human soul ? If a man moves
forward one foot and slips back eleven inches
he yet makes progress. He, too, may feel at
peace with God, because he believes that God
is merciful and loving, that he understands
the frailty of man, and realises how much
harder it is for some persons to be good than
for others. And specially he may feel at
peace with God in moments of sincere con
trition and repentance, — moments which, in
one sense, he knows should be less frequent,
but which, in another sense, he is aware had
better come frequently than not at all.
Atonement, then, according to this Jewish
teaching, is a matter between God and our-

iii LIBERAL JUDAISM 49
selves. On the one side is man, aspiring,
struggling, sinning and repenting ; on the
other side is God, immutable, righteous and
alone. Between them and their dealings with
each other there is neither intercessor nor
barrier. God, the eternal giver, is ever ready
to receive us. The streams of his influence
are ever issuing forth from him : it is for
man to put himself by effort and repentance
into an attitude in which he can partake of
this influence and move forward by means of
it. Even as he strives to put himself into
this attitude — in the very process of effort or
repentance — the influence already comes to
him as saving help and cheering strength.
God joins forces with him. The two agencies
work together. It is only with vague meta
phors such as these that we can represent
what happens to our own minds. But any
thing less than these metaphors seems to fall
behind a truth, which may surely be none the
less a truth because, in its subtlety, it cannot
be expressed in formula; or reduced to words.
What has hitherto been said seems to
indicate that the communion between God
and man is a fundamental doctrine of religion.
Deny that man and God communicate with
each other, and you destroy the possibility of
the deepest religious experience. If God does
not influence man, and man is not " heard "
by God, such experience is a delusion. It is
E

SO LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
this communion which gives meaning and
reality to prayer. We might indeed offer
adoration and praise to God as the Creator
and Ruler of the world, even if he did not
enter into conscious and living relations with
every individual soul, but the deeper phases
of prayer would be impossible and absurd.
Most of us have felt difficulties about
prayer. Perhaps the main reason for these
difficulties is that we too closely confound
prayer with petition. Now to pray is not the
same thing as to pray for, though he who
utterly disbelieved in the validity of " praying
for " would probably before very long cease
also to pray. By " praying for " I mean
asking God to give you something which you
have not got. Liberal teachers of all religions
would, I fancy, agree that it is idle or even
wrong to pray for external and material
things. To pray that it may be fine to-morrow
conflicts with our highest conceptions of God,
who is revealed not in capricious lawlessness,
but in abiding law. Drink prussic acid in
sufficient potency and quantity, and no prayers
can save you.
It has often been said that the highest
prayer is contained in the words " Thy will
be done." In one sense the words state
a truism. All that happens, hard as it is
to acknowledge it sometimes, happens by
God's will. What the words rather mean

in LIBERAL JUDAISM 51
is : " Whatever befalls me I shall accept
in resignation and faith as God's will,
and therefore as right." It is the mood
of Job when he said : " The Lord gave, the
Lord took : blessed be the name of the
Lord." It is the mood of Socrates, who was
convinced that naught could befall a good
man but what was ultimately to his good.
Religious faith demands that we should even go
farther, and believe that the ultimate destiny
of every man, bad or good, will tend towards
his own final welfare. But the words " Thy
will be done " must not be understood as the
paralysis of human effort or as the expression
of indifferentism. The general on the eve of
battle may pray " Thy will be done " as regards
his own personal life, but he will none the
less passionately desire that the victory on the
morrow may be his and his country's, and he
will none the less do all in his power to
achieve it. Nor will he for a moment
accept failure as the inevitable will of God.
He will do all he can to reverse it on the next
occasion. The case is very different with regard to
praying for spiritual results. It may indeed
be argued that we should only pray for that
which lies partly within our own power. Yet
even this does not mean that prayer is vain.
Our moral achievements are partly due to our
own effort, in the narrower sense of the word,

52 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
and partly to the grace of God. So, too, our
prayers for strength or for repentance may
tend to put us into that condition of mind
and soul when, according to the law of his
nature and ours, the spirit and grace of God
can more potently act upon us. Such a prayer
is not, then, ineffective of result, and yet it is
also true to say that such prayer is its own
answer. Moreover, prayer is not mere peti
tion ; it is also aspiration, resolve and com
munion. " No other action," it has well been
said, " is so mysterious ; there is none in
which we seem, in the same manner, to
renounce ourselves that we may be one with
God." * He who neglects prayer while yet
believing in God would seem, in the truest
sense of the words, to be " sinning against his
own soul."
As a practical corollary, all parents should
realise the need of cultivating in themselves and
in their children the faculty of prayer. Here
is one reason (among many others) for regular
family worship, inasmuch as the average person
who ceases to pray in public may gradually
cease to pray in private. The divine spirit,
we may assuredly assume, is still within us,
whether we believe and remember it to be
there or not. We may also assume that the
divine grace comes even to those who neither
1 Jowett : The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians,
Romans, vol. ii. p. 247 (second edition, 1859).

iii LIBERAL JUDAISM 53
ask for nor recognise it. But it does not
follow that those who consciously seek most
for God (and live a life that corresponds with
their search) do not find him most, or, if we
may use so material and inadequate a metaphor,
have not most of him. Amid the tempta
tions of the world many can only remain
unsullied by asking strength from the source
of strength and of all good — by putting their
trust, as the homely phrase runs, wholly
upon God.

CHAPTER IV
So much, then, as regards the relation of God
to man within the limits of man's life on
earth. It is in our view of this relation that
our conception of the true nature of the
Divine Being is expressed. We can only
realise God by reference to our own lives, or
by what we suppose that he does in us, to
us, and for us. And even what is commonly
regarded as the central doctrine of Judaism
takes its importance for us from precisely the
same point of view. Ever since the prophetic
period Judaism has laid great stress upon the
Unity of God. That unity has been very
differently conceived at different times. At
first Jehovah, or Yahweh, the God of the
Hebrews, was the One God in the sense
that there was no other God like him, and
especially none whom his people Israel might
worship. He was " one," too, in the sense
that he had not, like the Baals of Canaan and
Phoenicia, a variety of local manifestations.
Later on he was " one " in the sense that he
was the only God, that there was no other God
54

chap, iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 55
than he. After the rise of Christianity, when
the dogmas of the Incarnation and the Trinity
were introduced, the " Unity " again assumed
a different aspect. Then it was taken to
include the Jewish disbelief in those dogmas,
our emphatic dissent from the view that God
ever became man, and that a man was God.
All Christians assert that they believe in God's
unity quite as much as Jews believe in it.
Only they say that their unity is less barren,
meagre, abstract, remote and transcendental
than the Jewish unity. We, on the contrary,
still maintain that our unity is better,
simpler, truer than theirs. We still deny
that any man was God, and the necessity
or possibility of the Incarnation. We admit
that God may have not merely three " aspects,"
but three million. We can appreciate a
philosophic interpretation of the Trinity ; we
can understand what is meant by God in
man, God in history, God in nature ; the
divine Spirit in man, the divine Spirit in
nature ; God " reaching down " to man, God
" returning " to his own infinitude. All
these are partial expressions of valuable truths ;
they only cease to be valuable when their
partial and metaphorical character is forgotten,
and they become stiffened into theories and
hardened into dogmas. But while we, too,
believe that man contains within him a frag
ment of the Divine, we deny that any par-

56 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
ticular man was also " very God " and of
" one substance " with the Father.
Nor are these differences between Judaism
and Christianity merely differences of dogma
upon abstruse technicalities of metaphysical
theology. They touch the religious life of
the individual. Both sides would agree to
this, and Christians would say that only they
fully know the Father who know the Son,
and that the blessedness of redemption in and
through Christ constitutes a religious joy and
religious experience deeper and more glorious
than can be known to the members of any
other faith. And Jews would say that none
can feel so near to God as those who in their
communion with him recognise and require
no intercessor and no mediator. Judaism
(whatever it may have been in the past) is now
a religion without priests : no mystic rites or
words intervene or mediate between man and
God. When we are told that the Jewish God
is distant, we smile with astonishment at the
strange accusation. So near is he, that he
needs no Son to bring him nearer to us, no
intercessor to reconcile him with us or us
with him. The child needs no one to bring
him into the very presence of the Father.
We are to-day more exercised about our
life with God on earth than on what will
happen to us after that dissolution of body
from soul which we call Death. This does

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 57
not mean that our earthly life may not be a
mere brief preparation for a purer and better
life hereafter, a life with possibilities of know
ledge and of love transcending aught that
we can now realise and conceive. But into
the nature of this other life God has not
permitted us to see. We may think of it as
a life of progress and increasing purity ; we
may be convinced that God will take care of
us always, and that upon the good and the
bad alike he will always exercise his purifying
righteousness and his redeeming love ; but
beyond this general and comforting conviction
we do not and we cannot go.
In old days the attitude of many persons
towards a future life was very different. They
thought less of purification and opportunity
than of punishment and reward. They be
lieved less in the immortality of the soul
than in the resurrection of the body. They
were greatly concerned as to their own
future prospects. What would happen to
them after death ? Were they " saved " ?
If they " rose " again, would they be " pun
ished " in hell or " rewarded " in heaven ?
Could they attain " salvation " by " works,"
or must it be by " faith " ? And if by " faith,"
then what exactly constituted a living and a
saving faith ?
Few people trouble their heads about such
matters to-day ; liberal Judaism, at any rate,

58 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
has passed beyond them. That is not
because we do not believe in a life after
death. It is true that we do not believe in
what the thirteenth " Principle of the Faith "
calls the " resurrection of the dead," if indeed
these words were intended to mean a bodily
resurrection, which many scholars deny. But
none the less do we hold that the earthly life
is not the end. As to what happens to us
after death we have no conception, and we
form no theory. It is reasonable to assume
that the lot of the wicked and the righteous
will not and cannot be the same, but what
the "punishment" of the one may mean,
or the " reward " of the other, is known
to God alone. This only we hold : that no
punishment can be other than remedial, dis-
ciplinal, or educational, and that therefore no
punishment can be "eternal." How any one
can believe in eternal punishment, or in endless
damnation, or in any soul which God has made
being "lost," and yet also believe in the love,
nay, even in the justice, of God, is a mystery
indeed. But the human mind is capable of
believing at one and the same time the most
inconsistent dogmas, and there is no doubt
that there have been and that there are thou
sands of persons who believe both in God's
love and in " everlasting punishment."
What the divine tests of goodness may be
are unknown to us. God sees a thousand

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 59
delicacies of character which we do not see.
He alone can truly judge ; he alone can make
full " allowance," or, on the other hand, read
fully the evil heart. But we cannot believe
that God's tests are more clumsy and less
ethical than man's. And if to us a man is
not good according to the religious dogmas
which he believes, but according to his deeds,
his will, his thoughts, his character, it will
not be otherwise with God. It seems almost
superfluous to mention that liberal Judaism
rejects the conception that a preliminary
test to " salvation " is to believe in any par
ticular religious dogma or to have undergone
any particular religious rite.
"Justification by works" and "justifica
tion by faith" can each be made to wear a
religious or ethical character, but the per
version of the second is worse than the
perversion of the first. To hold that a
man who, owing to intellectual and moral
difficulties, does not believe in God and
yet leads a pure and noble life, will be
"punished" for his unbelief, or even "damned
eternally," seems a calumny upon God. The
evils which "justification by faith" has caused
in the history of Christianity would need the
most impartial and well-informed of historians,
for justice would have also to be done to its
good side and to the benefits, both moral and
religious, which it has undoubtedly conferred.

60 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
" Justification by faith " seems at bottom
to be a healthy protest against a perverted
conception of justification by works. It
may be taken to signify "justification by
character." It is a ludicrous idea to suppose
that you can buy salvation by doing a certain
number of rites, fulfilling a certain number of
laws — even moral laws — or avoiding a certain
number of sins. No human judge would
assess character in such an external way : he
would not add up the items of " good " and
the items of " evil," subtract the one from
the other, and strike a balance. Character is
more subtle than money. If you try to fulfil
a thousand laws, of which even five hundred
are " moral," with the object of " reward,"
you may really deserve "punishment." Your
heart may be full of conceit, self-righteous
ness, or pride ; you may be selfish and
timorous, thinking only of your own " salva
tion," unloving,' pitiless, and sullen. Here is
one of the dangers of " legalism." Man can
not acquire merit in relation to God. Do
your best, and you fall far short of the ideal.
And the better you do and are, the more
fully you realise the size of your gaps and
your failures. No man on the score of his
works has a right to " salvation." Rights and
merits are conceptions which have meaning
as between man and man. They are value
less and inapplicable between man and God.

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 61
Justification by works seems a healthy
protest against a perverted conception of
justification by faith. It may be taken to
signify "justification by morality," so that
finally the two conceptions will coincide,
because morality and character mean for the
individual the same thing. It is a ludicrous
idea to suppose that so long as you believe truly,
you may do what you please. It is still worse
to suppose that, even if a certain set of dogmas
can be labelled " true " and another set
" false," a man who sincerely holds the latter,
and lives a noble life, is not far more accept
able to God than the man who sincerely holds
the former, and leads a life less excellent.
But all these discussions about terms and
formulas are becoming musty and outworn.
When we die, all of us, good and bad alike,
are in the hands of God, and nothing will
befall us which will not be in absolute accord
ance with supreme righteousness and supreme
love. Redemption and purification ; fuller
knowledge, deeper righteousness, nobler love ;
with what other conceptions and hopes of
the future life, if God grant that life to
us with our human personality retained and
revived, can we move forward to the death
which shall lift the veil ?
To the average man the difficulties of
believing in God, and more especially in a
God to whom it is worth while and not pre-

62 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
sumptuous to pray, are twofold. First, there
is the difficulty that the only proof or veri
fication of the reality of communion with
God is that communion itself. If a man
say, I cannot see how there can be any active
relation of the infinite and divine Spirit with
the finite spirit of man, it is impossible to
prove to him that he misjudges alike the
power of God and of man. You can point
to the wide consensus of opinion on this
particular subject among so many great and
good men of many ages and many lands, but
this consensus is no proof, and it can, more
over, be explained away. This is what the
late Professor T. H. Green meant when in
his famous address on Faith he said : " You
cannot find a verification of the idea of God
and duty ; you can only make it. . . Though
the failing heart cries out for evidence, at the
worst live on as if there were God and duty,
and they will prove themselves to you in
your life." Try and (in most cases) you will
find. The second difficulty of belief to the
average man is quite different. It is the
old problem of Evil, which, in one or other
of its protean forms, has puzzled and agonised
men's minds from Job's days and before him.
Evil as misery, idiocy, or madness, — evil as
undeserved misfortune, desolation, and ruin, —
above all, evil as sin, — has ever harassed and

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 63
burdened the heart of man in its struggles to
find and rest in God. This is not the place,
and I have not the knowledge, to give even the
meagrest outline of the history of the problem,
nor of the various solutions and palliatives
which religion and philosophy have attempted
to discover and suggest. Nor can I treat of
the varying attitudes which, in the course of
its long history, Judaism has taken up towards
the grim mystery. Judaism has theorised
little, for no hard and fast dogma will serve
our turn.
Whatever was thought about the matter
before the conception of an eternally righteous
Deity had been clearly and firmly attained,
is of no present interest. It was not un
natural that when the idea was reached that
God only acted on principles of righteousness,
suffering and evil were at first strictly re
garded as the invariable results of sin. Now
some evil may be and is the result of sin, but
the dogma that this is true of all evil caused un
fortunate consequences. A heavy or sudden
calamity led either the sufferer or the spectators
to infer that owing to his own, or possibly to
his father's sin, he was the victim of God's
justified wrath. As there is often no relation
whatever between suffering and desert, the
frequent consequence of this crude and out
ward dogma of " tit for tat" was scepticism
or despair. By its other aspects it also pro-

64 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
duced self-righteousness, morbid scrupulosity,
shallow externalism, and cruel misjudgments.
An immense change in the whole subject
took place owing to the growth of the doctrine
of a future life. It was now far easier to aban
don the false conception that suffering was
always the consequence of sin. Even before, a
few higher minds had realised that some suffer
ing, at any rate, might be disciplinal and purify
ing, and not a punishment. It was far easier
to maintain and enlarge that conception when
death was no longer regarded as the end to
joy and to the life with God. A life in
" heaven," or a life after the resurrection
upon a renovated earth, could be considered
as the more than adequate compensation for
any quantity of mortal ills. Moreover, the
whole character and estimate of material joys
and evils became cheapened when the limit
of existence was no longer marked off by
death. And the prosperity of the wicked
ceased to be a trial to faith, when in another
world their punishment could be carried out
more effectually and on a mightier scale.
Evils were no longer confused together :
moral and physical evil were separated to the
mind. Rabbinic Judaism produced no consistent
theory upon the problem. This fluidity of
opinion had a good as well as an evil side.
It allowed progress, but it also allowed old

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 65
and outworn errors to continue. The Rabbis
never quite shook off the dogma that all
calamities must be the punishments of sin.
Absurd examples of this doctrine still figure
in the orthodox prayer-books. They occur
happily in quotations only and not in the
prayers themselves. Thus in a passage quoted
from the Mishnahwe are told that "seven kinds
of punishments come into the world for seven
important transgressions. If some give their
tithes and others do not, a dearth ensues from
drought," with other nonsense to the same
effect. But, on the other hand, the absence
of fixity permitted other and nobler doctrines
to be taught at least as widely. The future life
served to the Rabbis, as it serves to ourselves, as
the key by which the problem will ultimately be
solved for all. They spoke, as we too speak,
of the chastisements of love. And they felt,
as we too feel, that to the mere understanding
the problem was in the last resort incapable
of solution. " It is not in our power," they
said, "to comprehend the calamities of the
righteous or the prosperity of the wicked."
Faith can accept as a harmony what the
understanding must always regard as dis
sonance : a righteous God and an evil and
suffering world. Those who have seen and
battled with most evil, both in its physical
and moral forms, are usually the profoundest
believers in righteousness and in God. The
F

66 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
most strenuous fighters with degradation and
sin are usually the most passionate believers
in a God of love. A wonderful phenomenon,
and one which in itself seems a witness to
the reality of the Divine. Reason can indeed
suggest palliatives, but faith and love ask for
no palliatives ; they dare to know all and
still they believe.
Elsewhere I have indicated what these
palliatives are and in what branches of evil
they fail us, so that we are left, as it were, to
battle with the problem alone. "Some forms
of suffering can be shot through with explana
tory and ennobling light which makes them
bearable and even good ; but other forms
remain dark and inexplicable. The sufferings
of sentient animals, and more especially the
sufferings inflicted upon them by thoughtless
and cruel men, continue to be a hopeless
puzzle. Among mankind there are evils
such as idiocy, madness and moral degrada
tion, which seem beyond explanation. There
are problems respecting the relation of
civilised to uncivilised races ; there are
problems respecting the endless individuals
who have lived and died without any approach
to that mental and moral stature of which
mankind is capable. There is not merely
the strange difference which oppressed the
mind of Job between the happiness of this
man and that ; but we ask, and ask in vain,

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 67
what can be the meaning of that suffering
and squalor which do not ennoble or purify,
but lead in many cases almost inevitably
to sin and depravity ? To these and many
similar problems no answer can be given ;
we, no less than Job, must simply trust in
the infinite wisdom and righteousness of
God. " On the other hand, for certain aspects
of suffering there are ennobling alleviations.
Suffering may be and often is a warning
and a discipline. This use of suffering may
be expanded almost indefinitely. We all
of us have seen how in times of trial and
trouble people are frequently at their best.
Unexpected reserves of goodness and self-
sacrifice are then displayed. The brave
endurance of misery at home, the ardent
struggle to relieve it abroad, and the good
fight against degradation and sin, have pro
vided, and still provide, the noblest oppor
tunities for the exhibition of human patience,
pity and human love. A world in which
there was no wrong to redress, no evil to
conquer, no misery to heal, would destroy
some of the best possibilities for human
greatness at a blow. Where would be the
opportunity for compassion, for sacrifice,
for love ?
" Again, we may rightly argue that moral
and mental excellence are entirely incom-

68 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
mensurate with all outward prosperity or
adversity. The one true good is righteous
ness ; the one true evil is sin. Hence the
prosperity of the wicked is no more a
' problem.' For if they be wicked, then they
possess in their wickedness the greatest evil.
Hence, too, a rigorous Stoic would say that
the afflictions of the righteous constitute no
problem. For if he be righteous, he pos
sesses in himself the greatest good. If
punishment is calculated to cure a man of
his wickedness, the most severe misfortune
that can befall a wicked man is that he
should not be punished. For then, ex
hypothesi, he will still continue to possess in
himself the greatest evil. And if righteous
ness be the greatest good — unique and sui
generis — then it does not materially add to
the good fortune of a righteous man whether
he meet with so-called ' prosperity ' or so-
called ' adversity,' for in either case he
already possesses in himself the greatest
good. " Put thus baldly these assertions are
paradoxical, yet every one must see that
there is contained in them some element of
ennobling truth. And in fact these para
doxes have had a great influence for hope
and comfort in the history of the world.
" And, again, there is much suffering which
is voluntarily undergone by one person for

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 69
the sake, or the place of another. Suffering
for the sake of others seems to give it a
high and holy place in the scheme of God's
world. If it be true, as George Eliot
says, that men ' still own that life to be
the highest which is a conscious voluntary
sacrifice,' we must also admit that this
highest would be unattainable if there were
no such things as sorrow and pain. Without
suffering no sacrifice, and this thought gives
to a great quantity of suffering a peculiar
glory and a distinctive worth. It says in the
Talmud, ' Of those who suffer humiliation
but do not inflict it, who are reviled but
revile not, who do all from the love of God,
and rejoice at their sufferings, the Scripture
says : They that love him are as the sun
when he goeth forth in his might.'
" Looked at from this point of view
suffering, which in one sense was man's
direst problem, becomes in another sense
man's chiefest prerogative. Suffering and
pain can be regarded as the condition of
progress, both of the individual and the race.
We rise on stepping-stones of suffering and
pain to ' higher things.' And not only
we individually, but also humanity as a
whole. This, again, is a thought which
has been much dwelt upon in modern times,
for it seems to go hand in hand with,
and to transfigure, the modern doctrine

70 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
of evolution. From the lowest, crudest
beginnings man has slowly risen and is
slowly rising still. All that he, by the
will and by the grace of God, has achieved
in his long history has been achieved at the
cost, and through the means, of struggle and
of suffering. This view of suffering and
even of evil as a great educational instrument
in the progressive movement of the human
race from the lower to the higher (whether
the progress be in the sphere of truth, of
beauty, or of goodness) can also be illustrated
from the poets. But strengthening and stimu
lating as this thought may be, it does not
really give a satisfactory solution to the
problem of misery and evil unless, together
with this gradual evolution and education
of the human race in the mass, there is also
a gradual evolution and education of each
individual human soul. Thus, for the last
and most potent l alleviation ' of all, we
come to the great hope of hopes — that the
self-conscious life of man is not terminated
by death. What hope of comfort or redress ?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
" ' And Death once dead, there's no more
dying then ' (Shakespeare, sonnet cxlvi.)
If this hope of England's greatest poet be
justified, then indeed the problem of evil

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 71
may also ultimately be solved. Then the
idiot or the savage may also have his chance,
and gain his insight into truth and goodness
and God. Then the flotsam and jetsam of
humanity, its sinners and its deformities,
need not be merely regarded as the price of
ascending civilisation, but each of them,
with his own place and value, will justify
his Creator. Only if man be immortal can
we justly say with Browning : —
And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fulness of the days ? Have we withered or
agonised ?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing
might issue thence ?
Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should
be prized ?
" Now this belief in the immortality of
the soul is dependent upon our faith in God,
and therefore the answer suggested by the
speeches of the Almighty to Job is our answer
still. Rightly and solemnly has Jowett said :
' Thus the belief in the immortality of the
soul rests at last on the belief in God. If
there is a good and a wise God, then there is
a progress of mankind towards perfection ;
and if there is no progress of men towards
perfection, then there is no good and wise
God.'1 And let us note his words, 'a
progress of mankind towards perfection.'
1 Dialogues of Plato, vol. ii. p. 180 (third edition).

72 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
That is what we want the future life for.
We do not want it for ' punishment,' still
less do we want it for ' reward ' ; we do
not even so very greatly want it for the
redress of this life's inequalities in outward
prosperity ; we want it for the progress
of men towards perfection. We want it,
if I may say so, for the sinner even more
than for the saint. And yet shall the soul
of the righteous be, as it were, limited
to earth, and then perish utterly? We
would fain believe that
transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit otherwhere.
" And therefore we echo the Hebrew sage's
trust : ' The souls of the righteous are in
the hand of God : their hope is full of
immortality.' " 1
Such seems to me to be the attitude which
liberal Judaism may assume towards this
eternal problem of Evil. It is a simple and
childlike attitude, we may be told, which
hardly befits the problem's hugeness and
complexity. But, on the other hand, it does
not attempt to explain what is inexplicable ;
it does not say that every form of evil can be
solved by one and the same solution, or
indeed that the problem as a whole and in
1 I have taken these paragraphs from my Bible fir Home Reading,
vol. ii. pp. 201-Z07.

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 73
all its aspects can be solved at all. It may
not explain, but at all events it does not
explain away. It makes a great demand
upon faith, but, so far as the utmost of
human agony is concerned, and through
the long drawn-out story of their varied
sorrows, the Jews have never proved them
selves unequal to the strain. And so
indeed it would seem to be : God has not
put upon faith a greater burden than faith
can bear. A knowledge and experience of
evil often increase faith instead of lessen
ing it ; amid the darkness of sorrow and sin
the divine goodness seems to shine more
brightly. The love of God to man is often com
pared to the love of a father for his child.
Hence both Jews and Christians speak of
" Our Father who art in heaven." And the
relation which we may feel towards God is
also most aptly figured in the relation of a
child to his father. The metaphor, like all
metaphors, has its limitations ; it is a meta
phor, and must not be pushed too far. To
begin with, God is perfect and self-sufficient.
There are many duties of a son to a father
which have no parallel whatever in the rela
tion of ourselves to God. A son may serve
or benefit his father ; in what sense can we
render service to God ?
In olden days men " served " the gods from

74 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
very mingled motives. Such service might
be a kind of bribery or, if it savoured of
wizardry, it went even near to compulsion.
In one way or another material advantage
was sought as the price of rites or prayers.
Outward religion was a bargain between man
and Deity. These coarser and cruder notions
became gradually spiritualised. Men still
hoped to secure God's favour in return for
service rendered, but the service was looked
upon as a privilege to them as well as a
glory to God. The general conception of
the Old Testament is that Israel's duty and
prerogative consist in making the world at
large acknowledge the greatness and unique
excellence of Israel's God.
This conception is sometimes interpreted
more widely and spiritually, sometimes in
a more particularist and outward form
with which at the present day we can
feel only partial sympathy. It may be,
and we believe that it is, the divine in
tention that all the inhabitants of the world
should acknowledge the one and only God,
but this goal of history is devised in man's
interest and not in God's. God was, and
is, and will be eternally perfect and self-
sufficient. He needs nothing for himself.
He was perfect and self-sufficient before our
earth began, he will remain perfect and self-
sufficient when the life of earth has ceased.

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 75
The glory of God may be the goal of our
endeavour, but it is our glory to show forth
that glory ; it is not God's glory that it should
be shown forth by us. " God doth not need
either man's work or his own gifts." We
may humbly believe that the divine Father
is pleased by the adoration of his human
children, but we must be on our guard
against the developed use of any metaphor
which would imply any want to be satisfied
in the absolute and eternal perfection of the
divine nature.
But there are various other aspects of
man's relation to God which are well
symbolised or indicated by the metaphor of
father and sons. It expresses, first of all, our
glad dependence upon God. He is the
author of our being ; to him we owe every
gift we enjoy, every power we use. We feel
gratitude towards God. But, secondly, the
metaphor expresses what we have already
observed to be the radical and necessary truth
by which alone religion can exist. There is
a kinship between God and man. Between
two beings wholly unlike each other there
can be no communion or sympathy. Man
can commune with God, only if, at how
ever great a distance, he is like God. The
son is created in the image of the father.
That image is but the fraction of a fraction of
the father's perfection ; but it is a fraction.

76 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
Truth and goodness, as man conceives them,
are not wholly other than truth and goodness
as God conceives them.
Man, therefore, is not merely the creation
but the child of God, and the wiser and
better he is and the more he knows and loves,
the more is he God's child. Here, then,
we have a second and very important mean
ing in the metaphor. And there is yet
a third. The relationship between a son
and his father, in its highest and best form,
is a remarkable mixture of intimacy and
reverence. The son is happy and fearless in
his father's presence, but he never forgets
what is due to a father from a son. He
knows his father, and his father knows him,
and the fuller the knowledge the greater is
the son's affection and intimacy. He is not
afraid that the father should read his very
soul ; even for his faults his father will
" make allowance," and in loving justice and
righteous love he will reprove or forgive
them. It will be easily seen how much of
all this seems applicable and transferable to
the relation between man and God. Here,
too, the highest and purest relation contains
intimacy (in a special sense) and reverence.
Man is happy and fearless in the realised
presence of God, but he always remembers
the whole measure of the difference which
separates, and eternally will separate, the

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 77
human from the divine. God is very near
to him, but he is man and God is God. The
better and the more intensely he can realise
God, the greater will be his love for God, and
the more continuous and the more vivid will
be the " intimacy " between them. The man
pours out his soul- in unperturbed communion
with the Father in heaven. Alone with the
alone, without mediator or intercessor, he
enters the presence of God. Though he is
mere man and the Father is very God, he
needs no mixture of human and divine inter
mediary to act as go-between or messenger ;
he makes his way, God-aided but alone, to
the presence of the Father. He has no fears
before God. He is not sinless, and he hates
his sins. Yet even before the divine purity
he does not seek to hide them. God " makes
allowances " with more righteous love, with
more loving justice, than any human father.
And he prays unto God that he may be
purified of his sins by any suffering that God
may send him. He feels near to God and is
at peace. There are other metaphors besides that of
father and son by which the relationships of
God to man and of man to God can also be
expressed. None, however, seem to fit and
suit so well. Christian theologians commonly
argue that the father and son relationship
was first developed and realised by Jesus.

78 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
They often say that the Christian feels him
self to be God's son, while the Jew feels
himself to be God's servant. The Christian
feels near to God, happy and fearless with
him. The Jew is ever conscious of the
immense distance which separates him from
God ; he does obeisance ; he feels no intimacy.
The one communes, the other serves ; the
one loves, the other fears.
It is probably true that no one has ever
felt more purely and intensely than Jesus the
Fatherhood of God, and that the doctrine is
nowhere expressed in simpler and better words
than in the Synoptic Gospels ; but that to the
Jew God is " far," that he feels no intimacy,
that he does not commune or love, and that
to him God is not a Father, but only a Lord, a
Master and a King, is a falsehood.1 One
great aim of Christian theologians seems to
consist in finding contrasts, and they make
free use of the fact that light looks all the
more brilliant with dark shadows as its foil.
Liberal Judaism need not imitate these
unhistoric practices. We may freely absorb
and adopt whatever is good and true in the
New Testament ; it is a one-sidedness about
equal to that of the Christian theologians
themselves, when old-fashioned Jewish critics,
1 A favourite verse, often quoted in the Jewish liturgy, is Jeremiah
xxxi. 20 : " Is not Ephraim my dear son ? " It is given an individual
istic application.

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 79
on the plea that whatever is new in the
Gospels is not true, and whatever is true is
not new, declare or imply that there is no
religious profit and spiritual gain to be ob
tained from their perusal.
Yet, on the other hand, the metaphor of
subjects and king is not without its value.
In fact, the important thing is not so much
the metaphor in itself as the way in which it
is interpreted. The son and father metaphor
may be interpreted objectionably, and so may
the subject and king metaphor. If the king
be regarded as a despot, whose commands
the subjects seek to obey in slavish and
cringing fear, what can be more objectionable
and irreligious ? But if the king be con
ceived as the living and self-conscious ideal
of Righteousness and Wisdom, what greater
privilege and joy can be conceived than that
of fulfilling his commands ? What can such
commands be than perfectly wise and good,
if they are the outflow of divine perfection ?
It is man's glory to perform God's will,
when he realises who it is that gives the
order. The command is no arbitrary ukase ;
it is accepted by the conscience and the mind
as necessarily and assuredly good. Obedi
ence is rendered willingly, because God is the
King. The law of God is the law of good
ness. In its service is happiness and freedom.
One can get as much "joy " and "nearness,"

80 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
as much devotion and abandon, out of the
subject and king metaphor as out of the
father and son metaphor. For the subject is
no mere subject : he feels towards God what
the enthusiastic clansman feels for his chief
tain and lord. It is no mere grudging and
calculated obedience which he renders — so
much work for so much reward. It is the
dedication of the whole life, together with
the willingness to sacrifice life, in the ser
vice of a beloved master, whom reason and
feeling alike acclaim to be perfect in wisdom,
righteousness and love.
That, let me here parenthetically observe,
is the old Jewish conception of the Law.
Obedience to the law is not a mere external
duty imposed from without upon reluctant and
unwilling slaves. But fulfilment of the law is a
glad service rendered to divine perfection ; if it
is man's duty, it is also his joy. Man accepts
the law as the pure product of perfection, and
therefore itself perfect. To fulfil the law, or
even to seek to fulfil it, is of necessity the
most complete self-realisation of which man
is or can be capable. We shall meet with
this conception again in dealing with the
Bible. I only notice it here in order that
liberal Jews may not be puzzled by the plausible
rhetoric of Christian theologians. They must
not think that a felt nearness to God, a glad
communion with him, and the willing dedi-

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 81
cation of life to his service, are the preroga
tives of another creed. Orthodox Judaism,
too, is as capable of these essential religious
experiences as orthodox Christianity. The
metaphor of the son and the father is not
limited to Christianity, and the metaphor of
the subject and the king is not necessarily
prejudicial to the higher developments of
personal religion.
The " service " which we may render God,
like the relation in which we stand to him,
may be expressed and displayed in all the
three great departments and divisions of our
human nature. Feeling, willing, and know
ing are all implicated in our relation to God,
and the service of God asks from us their
conscious exercise and discipline.
According to the famous passage in
Deuteronomy we have to love God with
heart, soul, and might. The list is less clear
and accurate than a modern enumeration
might be, but it means the same thing.
The whole man is asked for in the service
of God. To begin with : Knowledge. It
is obviously impossible for the majority of
us to be philosophers or critics, but, on the
one hand, every one must serve God by culti
vating his intellectual powers, while, on the
other hand, those who claim and reach
a certain level of culture and knowledge
in other departments of thought must not

82 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
leave religion and Judaism on one side.
They owe it to themselves and to their com
munity, they owe it to man and to God, to
think about these solemn and all-important
matters, and thus not to let religion slip' out
of their lives and their children's lives for
lack of consideration and reflection. They
must not give up the habit and practice of
prayer because they have never thought out
the question whether prayer is or is not an
illusion, whether it is or is not one of the
highest exercises of the human mind. They
must not slip away from Judaism because
they have never given themselves the trouble
to think whether Judaism can and should still
be a living religious force among the religious
forces of to-day. They must not, in short,
neglect God and his service because they
are too lazy to think about him. And they
must not hold unworthy notions about God
because they are too indolent or too timid to
clear up their minds, or to grapple with the
problems, so far as these problems fall within
their power and ken. God and religion are
either worthy of our utmost thought, or they
are empty figments of the mind.
Then, secondly, the Will. By saying that
the service of God requires our wills, we
imply the close relation of religion to
morality. The essence of God, according to
our purest conception of him, is that he is the

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 83
ideal of Righteousness and Love. He is the
source and condition of morality, as he is the
source and condition of knowledge. If there
were no God there would be no goodness.
They who recognise or believe that, must also
logically perceive and allow that the service
of goodness should also be the conscious
service of God who is the source and con
dition of goodness. And we can also invert
the statement, and truly say that the service
of God is the service of goodness. The most
characteristic and most essential service of
God is the service of our fellow-men. The
life of active and social righteousness, the life
of redeeming and regenerating love, the life
of beneficence and of justice, — such lives, lived
as a conscious self-dedication to God, render
him the highest and purest "service." It
is the eternal glory of the Hebrew prophets
that they announced and emphasised this
great and superb truth. One God and one
only to be acknowledged and adored, and the
" service " of this God to be shown and ex
pressed in justice, mercy and loving -kind
ness, — that was the essence of Judaism as
proclaimed and promulgated twenty - six
centuries ago, and that is the essence of
Judaism to-day. We need and can render
no service to God for his sake and benefit ;
all our service is for our own sake, for our
own benefit. He needs not our worship

84 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
and praise ; but it is good for us to worship
and praise him. He needs not our prayers
in order that he may " remember " us or
" forgive " us : the righteousness, the mercy,
the love of the supreme and perfect God can
not be increased by man. " Canst thou love
creation more than he who created it ? "
But, thirdly, the service of God demands
not only our " wills," but our Feeling. The
truly religious man is he who feels that
God is near him, who feels the divine pres
ence, who feels joy in the thought of God
and bliss in the fulfilment of the divine will.
Such feeling may lead to grave aberrations ;
untempered by reason and morality it may
end in lazy dreaming. Or, again, it may be
degraded into sensual excesses, foolish hallu
cinations, or wild absurdities. The history
of mysticism in all religions may furnish
proof of these aberrations. Nevertheless
here too one might cite the proverb, Corruptio
optimi pessima corruptio, and one might argue
that if the degradation of mysticism is religion
at its worst, the purest mysticism is religion
at its best. Religion and morality must be
blended together. When the moral law is
felt to be the will of God, and when at the
same time the man's desire is to make his will
subservient to the divine will, this necessary
blending is accomplished. And when, again,
the man feels that what is best in him is from

iv LIBERAL JUDAISM 85
God and of God, that his soul is not without
kinship with the Divine, and his will is not
without divine support and sustenance, then
the highest stage of religion is being achieved.
Man is not lost in God, but when he feels
most himself, he is also least severed and
separate from God. He humbly believes
that he is " at one with " the Divine. " Not
my will " — not the lower human will, with its
personal and selfish aims — but " Thy will,"
the higher human will, which desires nothing
but what is consonant with truth, righteous
ness and love. Of such a mysticism, which
never loses its hold upon facts, which is never
forgetful that God is Pity and Righteousness
and Truth, and that nothing which does not
promote' the reign and the triumph of pity
and righteousness and truth can be con
sistent with or pleasing to God, there is small
likelihood of danger or excess.
Such are the ideas of the general relations
of God and man to one another, which I would
venture to put forward as an individual phase
of liberal Judaism to-day.

CHAPTER V
We have now to turn to matters more con
troversial. A Jewish parent who had read
the foregoing pages might say : " There is
nothing specifically Jewish in them. The
doctrines, thus far set forth, might be held by
a Unitarian or a Theist. To hold these doc
trines does not constitute a Jew." But the
argument is false. For cardinal doctrines of
Judaism are contained in the preceding chap
ters, even although other persons who are not
Jews believe them too. Judaism came first.
If offshoots from Christianity abandon essential
and differentiating doctrines of Christianity,
and thereby construct faiths similar to our
own, it is surely, at least, as rational to argue
that the adherents of these newer faiths have
reverted to or adopted the main tenets of
Judaism as to assert that, because their tenets
are like ours, therefore ours are not Jewish
and our own. Let no one be dispossessed of
his Judaism because another man holds it
under a newer name.
Yet there are other tenets of Judaism (and
86

chap.v LIBERAL JUDAISM 87
more especially of orthodox Judaism) which,
though less important than the main doc
trines about God and his relation to man, are
specifically Jewish in the sense that none but
Jews cherish and maintain them. And there
is one special doctrine relative to the Jews
themselves as a separate religious brother
hood, charged with a peculiar mission, which
may be justly regarded as essential to every
phase and type of Judaism.
This portion of our subject is delicate and
difficult. Some persons feel more deeply
about matters wherein they differ from others
than about matters of even graver moment
wherein they agree with them. And it is in
relation to the questions with which we have
now to deal that many persons feel puzzled
and uncertain, so that some are inclined to
give the whole of Judaism up through sheer
doubt and despondency. For it is here that
the greatest difference is felt to exist between
the old Judaism and the new. It is here that
people are beginning to ask themselves, " Can
we still be Jews?" For the old Judaism
taught that God had specially revealed him
self to a particular race and to this race only ;
that this revelation was accompanied by miracles
and wonders, and that the contents of it were
contained in a Law which was perfect, im
mutable and divine. The old Judaism taught
that the words of the Hebrew Bible were all

88 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
" true," that its " miracles " really happened,
that its writers, and more especially Moses,
the author of the Pentateuch, were divinely
and supernaturally inspired. Thus of the
thirteen " Articles of the Jewish Creed," the
sixth declares that " all the words of the
prophets are true"; the seventh that "the
prophecy of Moses was true," and that he
was the " chief of the prophets, both of those
that preceded and of those that followed him " ;
the eighth that "the whole Law as we now
possess it" (in the Pentateuch) is the "same
that was given to Moses" ; and the ninth that
" this Law will never be changed."
Now the new Judaism, it must be frankly
owned, believes none of these articles. Reason,
the source of which is God, creates the dis
belief. Thus the new Judaism does not be
lieve that all the words of the prophets are
true, it does not believe that Moses was the
chief of the prophets, or that the whole Law
is Mosaic, and it does not believe that the Law
is eternally binding upon Jews. It believes
that in disobeying and modifying a great deal
of that Law it is acting in accordance with
reason, and therefore with the will of God. Is,
then, the difference between the old Judaism
and the new too great to be bridged over ?
Does the new Judaism require not merely the
distinguishing adjective, but also a new sub
stantive in place of the old? To the old

v LIBERAL JUDAISM 89
Judaism the Jews were a peculiar people in
the fullest sense of the words ; how far is
that doctrine still held by those who wholly
believe in the impartial equity of God ?
While recognising the magnitude and bear
ing of these differences we must not exaggerate
them. The new or liberal Judaism may still,
I think, call itself Judaism, and not merely
liberal and new.
The meaning of " inspiration "has greatly
changed and widened, but it would be erron
eous to say that we no longer believe in it.
It has been already stated that the essence of
religion consists in the influence of the divine
Spirit without upon the human spirit within.
We can open the windows of the soul to the
divine light, and the saying of the Psalmist
is true : " With thee is the fountain of light :
through thy light do we see light." Two
things are predicable of this communion of
man with God and of this influence of God
upon man. They take place according to
law, they vary in clearness and power.
Moreover, the divine will and the divine
law are necessarily the same. They are
different expressions for the same thing.
Hence there is no incongruity in saying, for
example, that Isaiah was specially inspired by
the divine will. There was no infraction of
law. The special inspiration of Isaiah is not
so much a theory as a fact. We may express

90 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
this by saying that Isaiah had a great insight
into religious and moral truth, and that he
expressed this remarkable insight in a re
markable manner. Or, again, we may say
that the prophet was specially receptive to
the divine Spirit ; the light of God shone
into his soul. But it does not, therefore,
follow that all he said was true or new, or
that there has not been much which is both
new and true taught and learnt since his
death. God does not allow man, whether in
science or religion, to learn at any one period
all that may be known. He holds back
reserves of truth for advancing humanity.
But what this view of inspiration depends
on is a belief that God really rules the world,
hard as it may sometimes be to believe it. For
if God rules the world by his will and through
his laws, then we are bound to interpret, so
far as we can, the facts of history in the light
of that belief. A great many of those facts
yield no interpretation ; we cannot discern
their purpose or significance. But if we may
rightly hold that the highest good is specially
of God and is the expression of his will, then
we must surely believe that the Hebrew
prophets were of God, and that fundamental
elements of their teaching are the clear ex
pression of his will. The great doctrine of
the One God, who is absolutely true and
righteous, and the great doctrine that religion,

v LIBERAL JUDAISM 91
or the service of God, consists in the acknow
ledgment of the divine Unity and in the
practice of righteousness, compassion and
humility, were taught to man, not exclusively,
but yet cogently and clearly, by the
Hebrew prophets, so that if ever men were
justly called inspired it is they. Liberal
Judaism can still hold that the Jews were a
peculiar people, that they were " chosen " by
God for a particular end, and that certain
prophets and heroes among them were
" specially inspired."
But the differences between the old view
and the new must not be ignored. The
change in our conception of inspiration has
tended to make us take a wider view of it.
We no longer say : This particular book is
inspired, and no other book is inspired ; these
particular men were inspired, and no other
people were inspired. We no longer confine
God's providence so narrowly. We do not
say : All religious truth is contained in the
Hebrew Bible ; whatever is outside it is either
not new or not true. More especially liberal
Judaism (but here I only speak for myself)
does not say : Whatever is new in the New
Testament is not true, and whatever is true
is not new. It does not say that Jesus of
Nazareth was not inspired.
First, then, with regard to the ancient and
the modern view of the Law. The ancient

92 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
view has been already alluded to. It is
summed up in the seventh, eighth and ninth
articles of the creed which were quoted above.
God gave, so it is held, a perfect code to
Moses, which code we now possess. This
code contains a number of ritual and a number
of moral ordinances ; the sum of them consti
tutes religion. It may be that the ritual
ordinances were given for the sake of the
moral ordinances, but all of them are equally
divine, and all, so far as circumstances permit,
must strictly be obeyed. All are excellent ;
all are of God. It used to be held, and
officially it is held to this day, though few
educated persons would now venture to main
tain or allude to it, that in addition to the
written Law, God also communicated to Moses
a series of ordinances which were intended to
be, and which were, handed down from
generation to generation, and that these un
written commandments constituted the basis
of a second and Oral Law. Thus there are
really two divine Laws : one contained in
the Pentateuch ; one forming the substratum
of the subsequently written and codified
Rabbinical legislation. Few educated persons,
as I have just said, would venture nowadays to
put in any plea for the Mosaic origin of any of
the Rabbinical ordinances, yet official and or
thodox Judaism is still bound to the observance
of these ordinances, and there are thousands

v LIBERAL JUDAISM 93
of Jews to whom in ritual matters Biblical and
Talmudical ordinances form an inseparable
unity, and who would regard the abolition
of either as equally destructive of Judaism.
The exaltation, and I might even say the dei
fication, of the Pentateuch proceeded with very
rapid strides from the time when the curious
process of accretion by which the book received
its present form was finally completed. Con
currently with this exaltation went the manu
facture, development and canonisation of the
Oral Law. The result was that Judaism
became, and till modern times has ever since
remained, a legal religion, and many of the
virtues and some of the vices of legalism
attached to it. I need not here make a list
of those virtues and vices. The latter have
been systematically set forth, and as systemati
cally exaggerated, by Christian theologians in
order to make the better foil and contrast to
the strongly anti-legal religion which is taught
in the Epistles of St. Paul. But it is true to
say that religion was held to consist in the
fulfilment of the Law, or in the fulfilment of
the numerous individual commandments which
constitute the Law. Judaism became identi
fied with the Pentateuch and its extra-biblical
developments, and from a religious point of
view, a Jew was a man who followed and
practised the so-called " Mosaic " commands.
It is, moreover, easy to see how it was

94 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
natural that great stress came to be laid upon
purely ritual ordinances, such as the dietary
laws. For a law like " Thou shalt not steal,"
or " Thou shalt not bear a grudge," formed
part of the moral code of other religions as
well, so that by a false logic the distinguishing
marks of Judaism seemed to consist in those
ritual and ceremonial enactments which were
wholly peculiar to it. A man who stole and
obeyed the dietary injunctions was a bad Jew,
but a man who, though he did not steal, trans
gressed the dietary laws was not a Jew at all.
Nor was this point of view entirely irrational.
What was dimly felt was that, as regards the
ceremonial laws, everybody can observe them
if they choose. As regards the moral laws,
human weakness and sinfulness come in. Thus
he who breaks a moral law is pro tanto a bad
Jew, but even though he yielded to temptation,
he regrets and repents of his sin. But he who
eats a rabbit or a hare simply does so either
because he does not want to remain a Jew, or
because he does not believe that the prohibi
tions to eat these animals are of God. And if
he does not believe that the prohibitions are
of God, he is ipso facto not a Jew. But liberal
Judaism asserts that a man may eat rabbit, and
yet want and claim to be a Jew ; it asserts that
Judaism does not involve or imply a belief in
the divine origin or the permanent religious
value of the dietary laws.

v LIBERAL JUDAISM 95
In short, we cannot measure the difference
between the new and the old by any ritual
details. The truth is that liberal Judaism has
ceased to be a legal religion. In a legal religion
the central feature is a belief in a perfect and
God-given code, all the enactments of which
must be scrupulously obeyed and fulfilled.
Orthodox Judaism still declares that this be
lief, with all its implications, constitutes an
essential dogma of the faith. If there can be
no Judaism without this dogma, then liberal
Judaism is falsely named. It may be liberal,
but it is not Judaism. But is this dogma,
with the legalism it involves, of abiding neces
sity in any and every phase of the Jewish
religion ? Let us closely scan the arguments
which come from " orthodox " Jews on the
one hand, or from Christian theologians on the
other. Both are equally interested in main
taining that without the belief in, and the
practice of a code acknowledged as divine,
there can be no such thing as a religion fitly
called Judaism any longer.
To criticise this position I have to attempt
the very difficult task of putting the modern
or liberal view of the Law within the compass
of a few pages.
Essential doctrines of Judaism were pro
claimed by the prophets of the eighth, seventh
and sixth centuries before Christ. No God
but one, and that God perfectly righteous,

96 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
perfectly wise. The service of God to be
shown not in external rites, but in social
rectitude and well-doing. A few prophetic
utterances express a large portion of our
present religion. " Seek good and not evil.
Hate the evil and love the good, and establish
justice in the gate. Let justice roll on like
water, and righteousness as a perpetual stream.
I desire love, and not sacrifice ; and the know
ledge of God rather than burnt -offerings."
When to these sayings we add such verses
from a later prophet as : "I the Lord am the
first, and with those who come after I am
still the same," or, " Before me no God was
formed, nor shall there be after me," or, "I
am the first and I am the last, and beside me
there is no God," — we realise that a con
siderable quantity of Judaism is here contained.
It is true that a religion must deal with many
other matters as well. In these prophetic
statements there is no reference to the life
after death, to the relation of God to the
individual soul, or to the problems of sin
and evil. But, nevertheless, the backbone of
Judaism is made up of the two doctrines of
the one and only God, who rules the world in
love, righteousness and wisdom, and of the
service of this God, the true worship of him
— in other words, religion on its active side —
consisting in social rectitude, justice and
compassion. Love, righteousness and wisdom

v LIBERAL JUDAISM 97
are the supreme attributes of God, and love,
righteousness and wisdom, manifested and
exercised towards and for the benefit of his
fellow-men, are the watchwords and methods
of the human service of God. That is religion
as the best Hebrew prophets conceived it in
their highest moments. In all this, it will be
observed, there is nothing of an immaculate
and divine code. How then did this code
and the conception of it, now embodied in the
thirteen articles of faith, grow up ?
The sentences which I have just quoted
from Amos and Hosea were probably really
written by those prophets in the eighth century
B.C. Though the " books " which bear their
names have been " edited " and interpolated,
yet the best scholars are agreed that the bulk
of these " books " is the work of the men
whose names they bear. But when we leave
the prophets, and trace the preprophetic litera
ture backwards, we are immediately confronted
with difficulties. Doubtless the doctrine "Thou
shalt have no other gods besides me, Yahweh,"
reaches back to Moses, but it probably meant
that no other God must be worshipped in
Israel besides Yahweh, not that no other God
actually existed. The twin doctrines of the
absolute goodness of the divine character, and
of the service of God by man being rightly
manifested by goodness and by goodness alone,
are in their purity and fulness the creation of
H

98 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
the eighth century prophets. Amos and
Hosea and Isaiah knew nothing of a perfect
law, half moral and half ritual, given by God to
Moses ; and the reason why they knew nothing
about it seems to be that such a law, claiming
such an authority, did not then exist. There
were laws, and collections of laws, both moral
and ritual, so far as one can make out, but
there was as yet no Pentateuch, no one
" perfect " and universally acknowledged
Mosaic code. The prophets of the eighth
century and of the seventh century are quite
independent of the Law. They speak on their
own authority. They never appeal to it or
to its Mosaic authorship. Even to Moses
himself, the Prophet and Founder, they hardly
ever allude.
The Pentateuch as we now possess it is a
compilation. Some of it was written before
the eighth century ; a great deal of it was
written afterwards. But the parts which
were written before the eighth century were
" edited " later, and their editorial accretions
and corrections materially add to the com
plexity of the Pentateuchal problem. The
stories about Moses were written down cen
turies after Moses lived. The true history
of his life cannot now be ascertained. If
he was the chosen leader who brought the
Hebrew tribes out of Egypt, if he gave
them a national consciousness and the ele-

v LIBERAL JUDAISM 99
ments of a national religion, he was a great
and momentous figure, but he was not the
Moses of the Pentateuch. Yet if his religion
comprised the command, " No other God but
Yahweh," and if it linked justice with religion,
it contained the seed from which the fruitage
of the prophets could spring. Moses remains
the founder of Judaism, but we can but see
him through a mist. We can never know
him as he truly was. The second founders
of Judaism, whose doctrine includes some of
the very essence of our own faith to-day, are
the eighth century prophets — Amos, Hosea,
Isaiah. How then did the Law grow up ? That
would take too long to explain. At first
it was oral. The priests were the earliest
teachers and judges, and their decisions on
matters both moral and ritual were gradually
written down. Moses was priest and judge,
as well as lawgiver and prophet ; and as his
reputation grew, all laws given in his spirit,
and in believed accordance with his teaching
(a very vague and elastic proviso), were spoken
of as Mosaic. They were put in his mouth,
and doubtless a younger generation honestly
believed that the laws of an older generation
were actually his. So things went on, but
till the age of Jeremiah there was no general
" Law of Moses," no one code acknowledged
by the people as a whole. There were

ioo LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
" Mosaic " laws, but not a Mosaic Law. The
first Law is not the Pentateuch as an entirety,
but the Book of Deuteronomy, and of that
book only a core.
Deuteronomy seems to have been the pro
duct of an alliance between the prophets and
the priests. It was a kind of compromise.
Prophetism lost something by this alliance ; it
lost something by its doctrines being codified
and turned into laws. It also lost something
because the code (doubtless as a concession to
the priests) included many ordinances on sub
jects about which the prophets were indifferent,
e.g. about forbidden foods and about sacrifices.
Yet these very ordinances about sacrifice were
necessary in order to obtain the abolition of
all sacrifices except at Jerusalem — a very
excellent limitation from both a religious and
a moral point of view. It would seem that
at a later stage in his career Jeremiah regretted
the adoption of Deuteronomy ; but from a
more comprehensive and impartial point of
view, and judging the book in its completed
and expanded form, we may unhesitatingly
call it one of the noblest of religious codes.
For evil as well as for good it gave the Jewish
religion that direction and bent towards
legalism which it has ever since retained.
Deuteronomy was published and adopted
about the year 621 b.c. Thirty-five years
later Jerusalem was captured and sacked by

v LIBERAL JUDAISM 101
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. During the
Babylonian Exile many fresh legal compila
tions were put together. Some of these
covered ground already touched upon by
Deuteronomy ; others dealt with details of
ritual, which by the authors of Deuteronomy
were passed over in silence. These later
compilers wrote from a more pronouncedly
priestly point of view than the authors of
Deuteronomy. The code which Ezra set
before the people about 444 b.c, and the
adoption of which marked a new epoch in
Jewish history and in the history of Judaism,
was itself the product of at least two of these
priestly compilations. It cured many of the
religious evils under which the Jews were
then suffering, but it cured them at a con
siderable cost. Legalism was now definitely
and finally triumphant. The new code with
its historical framework was gradually welded
on to Deuteronomy and the still older narra
tives of the patriarchal and Mosaic periods,
and within, perhaps, a hundred years after
Ezra, the Pentateuch as we have it now was
completed. It was soon universally acknow
ledged as the perfect Word of God, the
immaculate, unique, consistent and homo
geneous code which God had miraculously
revealed to Moses, and which Moses had
written down at the divine command.
The laws in the Pentateuch relate to a

102 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
great variety of subjects. There are injunc
tions about justice, mercy and kindness ; there
are laws about the family and slaves and
property ; there are laws about marriage and
divorce ; there are laws about judgment and
rule ; there are laws about the land. Then come
the specifically religious laws : there are laws
about idolatry and superstition, about clean
and unclean, about sacrifices, about the Sabbath,
festivals, fasts and sacred seasons, about sacred
places, sacred persons and sacred dues. The
aim of all these laws to their priestly com
pilers and adapters is contained in the
famous injunction : " Ye shall be holy, for
I the Lord your God am holy " — an in
junction which it is as unfair on the part
of Protestant critics to limit to the ritual
and ceremonial elements of religion as it is
unfair on the part of Jewish preachers to limit
it to the moral and the spiritual. " Holi
ness" is an inclusive term, summing up all
those outward and inward qualities and
practices which, from the priestly point of
view, are necessary to the members of a
nation elected by God and dedicated to his
service. The origin of the ceremonial laws is com
plicated and obscure. Many ordinances
which gradually became most characteristic
of Judaism, such as those about circumcision
and unclean foods, had originally nothing to

v LIBERAL JUDAISM 103
do with the religion of Yahweh. Some belong
to a primitive stock of Semitic observances ;
some were taken over later from Canaanite
or other sources. In either case they formed
part of the popular religion, which grew up
and flourished very much under its own
auspices. The eighth century prophets
thundered against this popular religion, with
its mixture of idolatry and the worship of
Yahweh. But they did not attempt to
reform it. It was the code of Deuter
onomy which first essayed, on anything like
an important scale, to substitute a recog
nised, official and legitimate system of cere
monial for the wayward luxuriance of the
popular creed. The priestly codes followed
in the same path. But many popular super
stitions and ceremonies were too deeply and
widely spread to be rejected or eradicated.
They were therefore pruned, taken over and
legitimised. Doubtless, too, even the better
priests regarded many a ceremony as an
integral part of religion which the prophets
would have spurned or neglected.
In all these ways, and by virtue of all these
reasons, it came to pass that the ritual laws
of the Pentateuch contain a number of ordin
ances which are mere variations of a common
Semitic theme. They are not characteristic
and new as the teaching of the prophets is
characteristic and new. They have the

104 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
closest parallels among kindred peoples. To
us to-day many of them seem relics of religious
points of view which have completely passed
away. But they are not enjoined in order
to force God's favour or magically to avoid
his wrath. As ordinances of the Law they
became the expression and pleasure of God's
sovereign will ; and since it was believed that
they were in very deed and truth the com
mandments (given both for Israel's benefit
and the divine glory) of the absolutely wise
and absolutely righteous God, the same qualities
of perfection which belonged to the Lawgiver
belonged also to his Law.
Thus, with all its excellences and all its
defects, the Law determined for centuries the
character of Judaism. Its divine origin, its
wondrous perfection were more and more
emphasised. After the Maccabean revolt
legalism was never seriously questioned again.
The Law created jurists, and these jurists
spent the leisure of their lives in study
ing the Law, in elaborating and defining
it. A crowd of oral injunctions grew up,
intended to make the transgression of the
written Law more difficult and to interpret its
meaning more closely. Precept was added
to precept and command to command, and
yet (it must be allowed) the higher spirits
in Israel found no burden in all this mass of
behests and prohibitions, but rejoiced in them

v LIBERAL JUDAISM 105
exceedingly. The Law was a privilege ; it
was a sign of God's peculiar love for
Israel — a token of Israel's sonship and
election. The more laws the merrier. The
Rabbis said : " The Holy One was pleased to
make Israel worthy ; wherefore He gave them
a copious Torah and many commandments,
as it is written, It pleased the Lord for His
righteousness' sake, to magnify the Law and
make it honourable."
So things went on. After the destruction
of the Jewish State by the Romans (72 a.d.),
a great many ordinances, which the Law itself
only allowed to be observed in Palestine
and while the Temple worship existed, neces
sarily became obsolete. But a large number
remained in force, and legalism was not less,
but rather all the more, the distinguishing
feature of the Jewish creed. Yet as the
system permeated every class it became
endeared to all. The Law was the glory of
every Israelite. Those who lived under its
yoke were least conscious of its weight. A
vast proportion of its commands became as
much custom as precept. Not to eat milk
and meat together seemed as natural as not
to eat horse is natural to ourselves. The one
abstention was no more a burden than the
other. And thus what Sirach taught about
Wisdom grew to be the literal truth about
the Law. " She shall be turned for thee into

106 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap, v
gladness. And her fetters shall be to thee
a covering of strength, and her chains a
robe of glory. Thou shall array thee with
her as a crown of rejoicing." Outsiders
could, and outsiders can, only discern the
fetters and the chain; but to the immense
majority of those who wore them they were
transfigured into the robe of glory and the
crown of joy.

CHAPTER VI
Such was the origin and growth of the Law
and the manner of its dominion. It did not
start with any philosophical conceptions of
legalism. These were to come far later.
Yet from the beginning the aim must have
been to apply principles and make them
effective. It was not enough for prophets
to say : " Worship one God only ; do
righteousness ; love mercy," — in one word :
" Be a holy people unto the Lord your God."
This holiness had to be driven into the
minds and thoughts of the people by a long
process of abstinence and deed. Only
detailed laws could produce the desired
result. Neither Deuteronomy nor the later
Levitical legislation would have been possible
without the teaching of the prophets. The
prophets would not wholly have approved
of the Law. But without the Law there
would have been no holy people.
In spite of Christian theologians (who are
ignorant of the true effects of the Law and
of the inner spiritual life of the orthodox
107

108 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
Jewish congregations of the past and the
present) the Law did produce holiness ;
it did sanctify life. In every generation it
did produce a large number of saintly and
holy persons — persons whom the purest and
most spiritual morality would declare to have
been holy. It is true that, mixed up with
that holiness, there were conceptions and
practices which to us seem to have nothing
to do with holiness ; and it is true that these
conceptions and practices have had evil effects :
the ceremonial has sometimes triumphed over
or submerged the moral, and legalism, which
could and can be a noble and spiritual type
of religion, became sometimes cheap, outward
and mechanical. But it is also true that these
very conceptions and practices which to us
seem so distant and so strange were (and
are) by the better and more religious minds
in each generation wrought into the very
texture of holiness itself ; instead of spoiling
the result, they formed part of its excellence ;
the outward was transfigured and became also
inward. The mechanical forms were shot
through with the purest spirituality ; they
were woven into the very warp and woof
of the saintly life.
The Law, then, is to be the producer of
holiness. God gave it for that end. As time
went on other complementary conceptions
regarding it grew up, for the Law stimulated

vi LIBERAL JUDAISM 109
thought. It was not to be obeyed mechani
cally. The people whom it trained were to
be a wise people ; they were to " reflect and
consider." The Rabbis were no philosophers
by profession, and no philosophy of religion
or Judaism arose among them. Yet as many
of them were able men, and as much of their
lives was passed in thinking about the Law,
it could not be but that a half unconscious
and wholly unsystematic philosophy gradually
arose. Philosophic conceptions of the Law,
of the function and place of law, in
religion and in Judaism, were framed by
one man and another. These conceptions
and reflections were themselves the product
and expression of life under the Law. They
were the genuine offspring of facts. Yet,
as the summing up by the highest minds
of the Highest Life, as they knew it, they
influenced life in their turn, and made the
actual more ideal. The sayings of the Rabbis
are genuine products of real experience, but
at the same time they did not keep apart
from that experience. Sprung from it, they
reacted upon it again.
This half unconscious and wholly un-
systematised philosophy of religion, which is
to be found in the huge Rabbinical literature,
still needs an adequate historian and exponent.
In the Middle Ages, meeting, through Arabian
intermediaries, with Aristotelian and Platonic

no LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
philosophy, it became modified and systema-
tised. But among the people it has continued
in a more or less unconscious form down to
the present time. The Law has produced
countless noble lives, and a great variety
of religious and ethical excellence. No im
partial observer would fail to praise the many
examples of moral delicacy and religious
beauty which have been produced by and
are characteristic of the Law. It had also
the defects of its qualities ; if there are types
of religious and ethical beauty, there are types
of moral and religious deformity which are
also its own. Upon neither can I here dilate,
for this book is not a history.
But what has to be mentioned is this.
The Law not only produced a distinct type
of the religious and ethical life — both for
good and for evil — but it also produced a
religious Weltanschauung, as> the Germans
would say, of great depth and nobility, and
very little known to the world at large. It
was not the mere doctrines which made up
Judaism, — or at any rate not those funda
mental doctrines which are enumerated in the
" thirteen principles of the faith " : these are
merely the skeleton ; the flesh and the spirit
are other than they. The flesh and the
spirit are the particular religious view of
life which these doctrines have produced.
It is this view of life which constitutes the

vi LIBERAL JUDAISM in
warm, living reality. Divorced from it the
doctrines become mere dogmas, of little
influence upon action, and capable of being
stiffened into formalism. So, too, the
doctrines might conceivably be held as mere
intellectual propositions by anybody : it is
the view of life carried out into action which
made and makes the Jew. In the view of
life quite as much as in the doctrines — the
Thirteen Principles — consists the differentia
of orthodox Judaism ; here we find its dis
tinguishing marks which separate it from
other creeds.
Now, how far is this view of life inde
pendent of orthodox dogmas, and how far
can it still form part of liberal Judaism ?
This is a crucial question. For if it can form
no part of liberal Judaism serious conse
quences follow. A very large gap would
then sever liberal from orthodox Judaism,
and it might conceivably be that the two
religions should not properly be spoken of
by the same name. Here we have the same
difficulty reappearing which was mentioned
before. And if this view of life is no con
stituent portion of liberal Judaism, which also
rejects some of the thirteen articles of faith,
is not liberal Judaism hardly to be distin
guished from one of the more modern phases
of Unitarian or Theistic belief?
In so far as this view of life depends upon

112 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
the conception of a perfect, divine and im
mutable Law, liberal Judaism cannot share it.
With our changed view of the written and of the
Rabbinic law, our attitude towards ceremonial
enactments and symbolic rites, and their place
and function in religion, must also undergo a
profound modification. We shall not experi
ence the evil of these enactments, but we shall
also not experience their good. We shall have
to seek the same end with fewer or other means.
We shall not misuse the old means, but
neither can we use them. For in their ful
ness and completion they can only be used for
good if the doctrines on which they rest are
believed. When these collapse, to use the
means is often a hollow mask, an empty
formalism, a sheer pretence. Yet in spite of
our differences in belief, there can still, I think,
remain something of truth and value. There
can still remain a view of life — it may be
even clarified and ennobled — which will link
us with our orthodox brethren and with the
historic past, and will stamp our religion with
a peculiar Jewish characteristic. It will give
substance, warmth ' and colour to the simple
dogmas of our faith ; it will clothe them with
flesh and blood. In addition to the funda
mental and distinguishing doctrine of the
Mission of Israel (of which more will be said
later), it may tend to differentiate liberal
Judaism from those other Unitarian or

vi LIBERAL JUDAISM 113
Theistic faiths which in their historic ante
cedents are developments or recoils from
Christianity. Surely if this be so, the result would add
to the richness of the world. Is it not a
good thing if each religion should have its
peculiar excellences ? Can any one creed
include and express every aspect of religious
and ethical truth ? Can it enjoin and stimu
late every true and noble form of the moral,
religious and spiritual life ? There cannot
be a single poet who has the excellences of
Wordsworth and Keats and Browning and
Arnold rolled into one. The world is richer
for the many true poets, though one is greater
than the other. May not the world be richer
in possessing many varieties of " Unitarian "
faith ? Will liberal Jews lessen that richness
by deserting the oldest of these varieties, —
the variety which is theirs by right of birth
and right of transmission ?
What, then, is this view of life, and how
may it be described ? It is the belief that all
life should be sanctified and transfigured by
religion. The raw material of life is not to be
made less, but to be put to noble uses. We are
not to cut off the offending hand, but to curb,
practise and employ it in the service of God
and man. Man is to humanise himself by
order, by rule, by conscious adherence to law,
to the moral ideal. Man is neither above nor

u4 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
below law ; neither beast nor angel. He is
above the beast because he himself accepts the
law which he obeys. He recognises it as the
law of his own being, and yet as a higher law.
It is the law of God, and its source is God.
Man is below the angel, because he has to
become holy by adherence to the law. There
is that in him which conflicts with law, which
has to be brought into conformity with law,
before it is in the best sense humanised. To
obey the law because it is divine, and for no
ulterior motive whatever, — this is the highest
which man can achieve.
And this is Judaism. The law which man
is to obey and fulfil is both human and divine ;
God is its source and God enjoins it. It is
independent of man and outside him, but it
is also within him. He realises himself in
accepting the law. He is most a slave when
he is most lawless ; when he is most lawful
he is most free. For every step in the argu
ment there could be ample Rabbinic illustra
tion and proof.
Now to the orthodox Jew the moral law is
embodied in the Pentateuch. The ceremonial
law is also moral, because it is the good and holy
God who has given it, and he has given it for
moral and holy ends. To the liberal Jew the
moral law is not and cannot be contained in a
book ; it is an ideal which is progressively
interpreted. Its content varies ; it becomes

vi LIBERAL JUDAISM 115
better, larger, more delicate ; but its formal
and constraining character remains the same.
The liberal Jew can no longer regard cere
monial laws as part and parcel of the moral
law ; they are at the best only its servitors
and dependants ; but in the principle of law,
and of self-imposed and glad subjection to
law, he is at one with his orthodox brother.
The law is a curb, but man (with God's
help) applies his own curb to himself. He is
his own rider. Man has desires and impulses
which can go wrong and unite him to the
beast, but these very desires and impulses are
the material of his greatness. Made subject
to reason and to the moral law, they are no
longer a hindrance to the ideal, but promote
and exemplify it. Lust is bestial. But human
love in its highest exemplification is only
possible on an animal basis made obedient
and subservient to law. The beast (if non-
moral) knows no conscious order. On the
one hand, there is instinct ; on the other,
the law of man imposed as an arbitrary force
from without. Man accepts the law and
glories in it. He knows that when he most
obeys he is most himself. This, too, is Judaism.
Order and rule form the basis of the
moral and the human life. Take such a
seemingly indifferent and yet fundamental
portion of life as eating and drinking. The
beast eats when he is hungry. Man eats at

116 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
regular and prearranged intervals. He exer
cises some restraint upon his own desires.
Yet after a time this restraint is no longer felt
as such. It becomes a habit, a custom. And
this, too, is part of the Jewish conception of
law. Life in a great many divisions of it is
to become habitual ; so moralised, so quickly
responsive to law, that law is no longer felt.
He who is habitually moral in small things
will have time and capacity for great things
when the opportunities arise.
Man, moreover, selects and prepares his
food. He regards certain kinds of food as
abhorrent. Orthodox Judaism has devised a
multitude of enactments about food, and in
them we see how the application of a sound
principle can be carried into extremes with evil
results for the religious and spiritual life. Of
this side of the orthodox Jewish Law I shall
shortly have more to say. Meanwhile we
realise that even so ordinary a matter as eat
ing and drinking can be sanctified by religion
and law. Only man says " grace " over his
food. He renders thanks to God the giver.
The Jewish conception is not to say, " The
less you eat the better " (Judaism is against
so negative an asceticism), but to say, " Eat
rightly, with discretion and order, with glad
ness and gratitude, remembering God."
Thus religion is to enter into all life,
sanctifying and ennobling it. The will is

vi LIBERAL JUDAISM 117
both consciously and unconsciously to conform
to the ideal ; to conform, in other words, to
the law which is both without and within, —
without, for its guarantee and. its author are
God ; within, because it is in harmony with the
very essence or highest element of human
nature, which is itself an " effluence " from
or akin to the Divine.
It could be shown that, in many another
province of life the Jewish principle was not
to cut off or destroy, but to tame, to civilise, to
transfigure, to sanctify. The Rabbinic laws
about the relations between man and woman
are no longer familiar or sympathetic to us.
They have passed away, and like the past
cannot be recalled. Yet their aim was noble.
Man is not to destroy the animal in him, but
to consecrate it. While on earth he is man
and not angel ; but how noble man can be if
he conform with law !
Have we not here a truer and nobler
asceticism, a real practice and training in
virtue, when we are bidden to use and train
our very passions for the fuller manifestation
of the Divine ? Desires and endowments —
outward and inward alike — are to be used for
the service of man and for the glory of God.
There was another principle at work in
the Jewish conception of law, a principle
which was set forth by Aristotle as a main
doctrine of Ethics. Man becomes a flute-

n 8 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
player not by mere wishing to be a flute-
player ; aspiration is not enough — he becomes
a flute-player by playing the flute. " Practice
makes perfect." The character of holiness
is acquired by holy deeds. Here again the
old orthodox position, though fundamentally
sound, was in application overdone. The
principle of law was too often lost by the
multiplicity of laws. Spontaneity and fresh
ness are as necessary to the perfect human
character as conscious adherence and habitual
conformity to a given standard or ideal. Too
often in Jewish orthodoxy one cannot see
the wood for the trees. Yet the principle is
not unsound. Benevolence, for instance, must
be realised in deed. Aspiration and feeling
left to themselves may be inadequate. The
Law made channels for benevolence. It
ordered that a certain large minimum was to
be given away to the poor from each man's
property ; it ordered that on certain feast
and holy days further and extra gifts were
to be made. Yet the springs of benevolence
were not dried up by these prescriptions ; on
the contrary, they were stimulated. Nor did
the Law fail to recognise that, on the basis
of this mere giving of property, there was a
far higher charity to follow — the giving of
self. The benevolent man must complete his
conformity to the ideal of goodness by
becoming the charitable man. Giving must

vi LIBERAL JUDAISM 119
culminate in service, and action in character.
But in order to be, enough doing must precede.
The phrase " a religious habit of mind "
contains its truth. Outward forms of religion
are partly intended to create, or help in creat
ing such a temper or habit of mind.
Even the highest thoughts and feelings are
partly conditioned by habit. We are " crea
tures of habit," not merely in the low sense in
which the phrase is frequently used, but in
the higher sense that habit is half of character.
Does it seem unreasonable and mechanical
that in our thoughts of God and in our
prayers to God habit should enter in ? Yet
it is not so. For what we can always think of
and do, we may perhaps never think of or do;
too much opportunity is as bad as too little.
Therefore the wisdom of man has devised
fixed times for prayer, so that at other and
unfixed times we may freely and spontaneously
pray. Liberal Judaism may readily accept the
propriety of certain religious forms for the
creation of certain religious habits.
Character is shaped by deeds, and character
is partly habit. The best man is not the man
who is good with perpetual struggle, but he
who is good by the habit which has become
second nature. This is the doctrine of Aris
totle, but it is also the doctrine of Judaism.
Struggle marks character in the forming ; of
the formed character we say, " He could not do

120 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
wrong if he tried." Such a man is perfectly
free, but he is the slave of law. God Him
self we may regard either as absolutely free or
as absolutely bound. Pure chance is pure
slavery ; so, too, pure goodness is pure
liberty or pure bondage. Wordsworth's " Ode
to Duty" well expresses the Rabbinic and
Jewish conception of goodness. " In the
light of truth thy Bondman let me live." So,
too, in a cancelled stanza of sound doctrine
but poor poetry : —
Yet not the less would I throughout
Still act according to the voice
Of my own wish ; and feel past doubt
That my submissiveness was choice :
; Not seeking in the school of pride
For " precepts over dignified,"
Denial and restraint I prize
No farther than they breed a second Will more wise.
We may therefore say that the doctrine of
making religion commensurate with life and
of sanctifying all human activities is thoroughly
Jewish. Whatever our business and occupa
tions may be, we lead a Jewish life by hallow
ing them to the service and the glory of
God. Conscious adherence to the ideal
law of goodness and duty is the ideal of
Judaism. When our lives show the closest
bondage to this law we are most free. When
our action is, in one sense, most automatic, it
is also most spontaneous. When we are most

vi LIBERAL JUDAISM 121
truly the servants of God we are also most
ourselves. For the Law is God's law, but
it is also ours. It is imposed upon man from
without, and yet it is freely accepted from
within. Woe to him if he deny its obligation
or attempt to shake it off. He sins against
his own soul. He makes havoc of his own
self. To love God is to love his Law ; and
the product of that love, as also its cause, is
the fulfilment of the Law for its own sake,
with undivided homage and with unselfish
love. Deeds will build up character, and
character is expressed in deeds. In this con
ception of Law and Sanctification liberal
Judaism possesses a doctrine which should help
its adherents to realise the distinctiveness of
their own faith, and the validity of its claim
upon them for their whole-hearted allegiance.
For though liberal Judaism has ceased to be
a strictly legal religion, it does not abandon
the great Jewish conception that religion is a
discipline as well as a faith. In this limited
sense, liberal Jews, like their orthodox brethren,
belong to a religion of Law.

CHAPTER VII
We have now to return to the Law in the more
original and restricted meaning which it bears
in orthodox Judaism. Here its first and
most important signification is the Pentateuch.
The central position which the Codes of the
Pentateuch occupy in the religious scheme of
Jewish orthodoxy depends entirely upon one
particular dogma. If that dogma be true, or
rather if that dogma be believed, then the
exaltation of the Law is justified. If it is not
believed, then a reconstruction of the ortho
dox position is obviously needful. If you
believe that the Pentateuchal law, as we have
it now, is directly of God, then it must be
perfect ; then, too, it must be wise and right
to fulfil it to the utmost of your power. The
Law says, " Ye shall keep all my statutes :
if a man do them, he shall live by them. I
am the Lord " ; and it says this both about a
law like " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself," and about a law like " A garment
of mixed stuff of divers sorts shall not
come upon thee." The two laws follow

chap, vii LIBERAL JUDAISM 123
each other, and there is not a word to show
that the one was to be temporary, the other
permanent. The prohibition to eat certain kinds of
fat in cow or sheep is spoken of as a
" perpetual statute," and every Jew who be
lieves the prohibition to be divine must
necessarily hold that the law is as binding to
day as when it was first delivered. If the
wise and good God gave these laws, the laws
are wise and good ; nor has the wise and
good God given any suggestion or hint that
a time should come when it would be right
and proper for the unassisted reason of man
to pick and choose among these laws, and to
say, " These I will obey ; those I will dis
regard." Can man know better than God
what is good for him ? Some laws are
specially limited to Palestine ; others are only
capable of being observed in a Jewish "State " ;
but the remainder, which are independent of
place and conditions, must be observed in
their entirety by those who believe that they
were directly given by God.
But what are those Jews to think of the
Law, and how are they to act as regards its
ordinances, who do not believe in the dogmas
which make its observance both rational and
incumbent ? Judaism has been so long iden
tified with a belief in the divinity of the Law
of Moses and with the practice of its com-

124 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
mandments that this question is one of grave
importance. The liberal Jew can only look at the Law
from the historical point of view. He has to
consider its genesis, the process by which it
came to be what it is. He will hold that an
ordinance which was of value two thousand
years ago is not necessarily of value to-day.
He will remember that the ritual elements of
the Law were perhaps necessary in order per
manently to impress upon the minds and
hearts of a people certain prophetic concep
tions of supreme value and truth. He will
realise that provisions such as the distinction
of meats, which have nothing to do with the
essential doctrines of the prophets, were per
haps necessary in order to preserve and to
maintain that nobly stubborn race, which, in
spite of secular persecution and slander, has
kept watch and ward over the portals of Mono
theism. Though he cannot hold that the Law
is of God in the sense that his orthodox
brother gives to those words, he will never
theless believe that its disciplinary and cohesive
powers have not been without their purpose
or failed of their effect. He can appreciate
the greatness of the Law although, as a critic
and historian, he can trace its compositeness
and its origin. In the Law he finds many
echoes from the Prophets of deepest value
and beauty. Here is the doctrine of the

vii LIBERAL JUDAISM 125
divine Unity and Uniqueness. Here is the
great injunction " to love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart." Here is the command,
" Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
Here is many a wise and gentle ordinance of
righteousness, of justice, of charity. Here,
too, is the great discovery that six days' work
and one day's rest is the best division of
human time. Here are the great conceptions
of holiness and of a holy people, and of the
imitatio Dei, — conceptions which, though we
who have learnt from our predecessors may
have widened and purified them, yet go back
for their establishment and their acceptance
to Josiah, to Ezra, and to the Law.
But the liberal Jew cannot regard the Law
as the centre of Jewish belief and practice.
If he were founding a public service de novo,
he would not make the reading of the Law
its central and most important feature. If
he were building a synagogue, without refer
ence to past custom, he would not put scrolls
of the Law into an ark, and make that
ark the most sacred part of the building.
If he had such an ark, he would put in
it the prophecies of Amos, Hosea and Isaiah,
rather than the Pentateuch, for the Prophets
are more primary and more essential than
the Law.
In respect to their value to-day he can bilt
regard the ordinances of the Law in the mingled

126 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
light of reason and of history. In themselves
the laws are to him no longer good because
they are divine. They are only divine if
they are good. But he will not refuse to obey
a law, or regard its public observance as un
desirable, merely because it is a ceremonial
law, or merely because he can no longer
believe that it was divinely revealed to Moses
by God. Its observance may still be desir
able from different motives.
The ceremonial laws of the Pentateuch
(as of the Oral or Rabbinical Law as well)
may be divided into two classes : those which
affect the individual in his home and private
life ; those which concern the public worship
of the Synagogue. The laws of the second
class, however, likewise affect the individual.
The laws which affect the individual in his
home and private life may, for our present
purpose, be limited to one single group,
namely, those which deal with food.
The dietary laws of the Pentateuch mainly
relate to certain beasts and fishes, the flesh
of which it is forbidden to eat. To drink
blood is also strictly forbidden, and is clearly
regarded with the most vehement abhorrence.
On the basis of this prohibition the Rabbis
developed a number of regulations with regard
to the slaughtering of beasts and their pre
paration for food in order that the greatest
possible quantity of blood might be wrung

vii LIBERAL JUDAISM 127
and squeezed out of the flesh. Here, as in
so many other points, they passed beyond the
limits of common sense and of reason. All
the Pentateuchal law meant was, that pure
blood was not to be drunk. The reasons for
this law go back to the most primordial be
liefs. Blood was considered highly dangerous ;
it was intensely sacred and intensely "taboo."
It was used on solemn occasions for mystic
rites, for sacraments and sacrifices. In the
blood the life was often supposed to reside.
On what grounds the Pentateuchal lawgivers
and compilers forbade the drinking of blood
it would not be easy to say. Partly they
shared these old beliefs ; to them too (as on
one occasion they say) " the blood is the life " ;
to them too all blood was something holy,
which belonged to God and not to man. But
they also forbade blood because it was used in
various superstitious and pagan rites, and be
cause it played a great part in the sacraments
and sacrifices of neighbouring cults, all of
which they desired to remove and keep away
from the holy people of Israel. Few people
want to drink blood to-day, and therefore
the prohibition has little relation to modern
life. It is otherwise with the forbidden meats
and fishes. Our neighbours eat pig, hare,
and rabbit ; lobster, oyster, and crab ; and
these animals are forbidden in the Pentateuch.

128 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
The origin and motive of the prohibition are
obscure. It is natural to suppose that they
were forbidden because they were unwhole
some, but it is almost certain that even in the
Pentateuch these food taboos have other
reasons and meanings. Such taboos are
widely spread over the world : they exist in
savage tribes at a low level of knowledge and
culture ; some of them are supposed to find
their origin in phases of totemism. Why
the Pentateuchal lawgivers only permitted the
flesh of animals which chew the cud and cleave
the hoof, and of fishes which have fins and
scales, has, so far as I am aware, never been
satisfactorily explained. No doubt many
animals specially unwholesome in a hot climate
are excluded by this rule, and it is quite
possible that sanitary reasons may have affected
and stimulated the establishment of the law.
But the more effective reasons in which its
origin is to be sought were probably not wholly
different in kind and sphere from those which
prompted the prohibition about blood.
How should a liberal Jew regard these
laws ? Ought he to observe them, and if so,
why ? I put aside motives of sentiment.
Some persons may wish to observe them be
cause their parents observe them, or because
they have so long been identified with Jewish
practice. Some do not mind eating a hare,
but refuse to touch any form of pig. These

vii LIBERAL JUDAISM 129
are mere individual sentimentalities and idio
syncrasies with which we are not concerned.
Nor do I think that the question of health
comes in. What we should eat and from
what we should abstain are matters which can
far more properly and wisely be settled for
us by a modern physician or professor of
dietetics, than by following the provisions of a
law written down more than two thousand
years ago, and not even then devised and
enjoined for reasons of health. If it is better
for our health not to eat pig or lobster, by
all means let us refrain from eating them, but
it is ridiculous to think that in acting from
that motive we are following the " Law of
Moses." The Pentateuchal dietary laws
must be followed, if at all, as a whole. If
we pick and choose, avoid rabbit but eat
prawns, we are simply following personal
predilections or the doctor's advice. Even if
we observe them all from the sanitary point
of view, we are imposing a purely modern
and secular interpretation upon an ancient
and religious code. It may, indeed, be argued
that care for bodily health is part of religion,
and that no man who grossly neglects his
body can expect to do full justice to his soul.
He is an incomplete man unless all his faculties
are brought to their best. But these prin
ciples are only true when stated as principles.
Translated into detail, they cease to be part
K

130 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
of religion, just as, though it may be said that
recreation and physical exercise are part of a
man's moral duty, no modern system of ethics
would attempt to lay down precise rules as to
what exercises are to be practised and what
exact forms of recreation are right or wrong.
Again, as these laws do not concern the
public life and worship of the community, it
may be questioned whether their observance
tends to maintain the corporate spirit or the
consciousness of Judaism. That conscious
ness must depend on nobler methods, as it
is required for nobler ends. The dietary
laws, both Pentateuchal and Rabbinical, have
kept the Jews together through the dark ages
of persecution and disability, but they have
undoubtedly exercised an influence for evil
as well as an influence for good. In the first
place, they have directly tended towards an
unnecessary and unsocial separation. In the
second place, they have tended to make per
sonal piety a question of food, cooking, and
dishes. A " pious " Jew has too often been
one who observed extraordinary precautions
in the minutiae of the dietary laws. The
taunt that Judaism is a " kitchen religion "
has not always been without its grains of
truth. It may more reasonably be argued that, as
these laws exist, and as on the whole they
operate for health, and as on the whole they

vii LIBERAL JUDAISM 131
hinder the centrifugal tendencies of the age
and help to bind the atoms of the community
together, they should be observed, even by
liberals, as a discipline. They are a practice
in self-denial. I would not seek to minimise
their importance from this point of view.
The Pentateuchal dietary laws can usually be
obeyed without violating any higher civic
duty. Under such circumstances, their ob
servance may act as a reminder of our special
duties to God and man, and as a simple
exercise in self-control and self-denial. When
combined with the Rabbinical laws, this exer
cise has often been purchased at too heavy
a cost. We should all acknowledge that
English Jews should (and do) contribute their
fair proportion of soldiers to the army. The
soldier is bound to violate the dietary laws.
I have never yet heard any definite pro
nouncement from the authorities of English
orthodox Judaism whether, so long as he is a
soldier, the Jew may violate the dietary laws
with an easy and untroubled conscience.
The liberal Jew need have no hesitation on
the subject.
It must be left to each individual to
balance these conflicting arguments and to
decide between them. The future of liberal
Judaism, the future of Judaism as a whole,
are surely independent of dietary considera
tions. The dietary laws concern our private

132 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
lives. For my part I would neither say that
a liberal Jew did unwisely in transgressing
them, nor yet that he acted illogically in
observing them. But if he observe them, it
is of necessity for very different reasons
from those of his orthodox brother. For
the orthodox Jew believes that God Himself
ordered Moses to bid the Israelites obey
these laws, while, ex hypothesi, the liberal
Jew professes no such belief.
Far more important than the dietary laws
are those provisions of the Pentateuch which
affect both private life and public worship.
The Law shows its predominance in the very
structure of the Synagogue, of which the most
important and sacred portion is the Ark.
Here the scrolls of the Law are enshrined,
and in the ordinary worship of the orthodox
synagogues, the reading of the Law occupies
the central place, and takes up an unreason
ably long time.
It is probable that these features of the
Synagogue and its service will gradually be
modified if liberal Judaism continues to
flourish and expand in the New World and the
Old. A three years' cycle for the reading of
the Law instead of a one year cycle materially
shortens the time devoted to its reading,
and leaves more room for true prayer and
hymnal song. Abolition of the dilatory
system of "calling up to the Law" is also

vii LIBERAL JUDAISM 133
of advantage from the same point of view.
Liberal Jews must realise that we go to
Synagogue not to hear a recital of laws or
stories, but primarily to pray. A modification
of the Synagogue structure will be more slow
in coming, but will doubtless follow in time.
We may regard the Ark with its scrolls as a
kind of symbol, and into symbols we can
read our own interpretations. So long as the
service consists mainly of prayer and singing,
with appropriate readings from the Bible
(including the best portions of the Law), the
structure and equipment of the building is
after all a matter of only secondary signifi
cance.

CHAPTER VIII
The control of the Law is not only exercised
over the equipment of the Synagogue and
the manner of its services, but it also deter
mines the days on which the principal ser
vices are held. From the time when the
Law was accepted and became predominant,
it provided the public and private embodi
ment for the religion ; it was dogma and
practice in one. And thus it has remained.
One of the special difficulties which liberal
Judaism has to encounter and to settle is
connected with this question of embodiment.
Every religion must possess its embodiment ;
it must possess, at least on the public side,
its ceremonial and manifestation. Now the
public worship of the Synagogue to-day is
mainly connected with the festivals and holy
days fixed and ordered in the Pentateuch.
These are the Sabbath ; Passover, Pentecost
and Tabernacles ; the New Year and the Day
of Atonement. There are other holy days,
such as Purim and the Fast of Ab, which,
though not mentioned in the Pentateuch,
134

chap, viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 135
once played an important part in Jewish life,
but which are now dropping into desuetude.
Only one non - Pentateuchal festival seems
likely to maintain itself: the festival of
Chanukah, commemorating the Maccabean
revolt. The Sabbath is one of the most vital and
most difficult questions of modern Judaism.
A weekly rest, one day in seven, devoted to
worship, repose and recreation, is surely
one of the greatest of human institutions.
Though no divine voice miraculously pro
claimed the words " Remember the Sabbath
day to keep it holy," the Sabbath, whatever
its origin and history, is hallowed by the
wisdom and experience of the past.
How we are to observe the Sabbath is a
question which each one must settle for him
self. The details cannot be considered here.
But, speaking broadly, two things are desir
able : the first is that it should be a day of
rest ; the second is that we should spend,
whenever possible, one or two hours of it in
the public worship of God. Now the present
conditions of our life sometimes prevent both
the one and the other. The Christian day
of rest being Sunday, a large number of
Jews, and a considerable number of Jewesses,
are more or less bound to " work " upon
Saturdays. One of the most important ques
tions, therefore, which liberal Judaism has to

136 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
consider is, what attitude it should take up
towards this urgent and complicated problem.
It would not be irrational to advocate a
transference of the Sabbath from Saturday to
Sunday. There is no divine virtue in one
particular day. The old orthodox view was
that God created the world in six days and
rested on the seventh, and it was undoubtedly
believed that if the Saturdays were followed
back far enough, you would ultimately come
to the very Sabbath upon which God rested.
"Time" began on a Sunday. If this were
so, and if we still believed that God Himself
directly ordered us to observe the Sabbath
(that is, the seventh day, the Saturday), and
to rest upon it, it would be monstrous to
suggest any change or transference. Such
suggestion would amount to blasphemy. But
for " liberal " Jews this supernatural sanction
for the Sabbath has passed away. Thus, if the
whole of European and American Jewry could
transfer the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday,
and if all Jews were faithfully to observe the
Sunday by rest and prayer and worship, and if
they did not lose their Jewish consciousness by
the transference, but, on the contrary, deepened
and vivified it, then the change, so far from
being a loss, might be a benefit.
It is, however, exceedingly doubtful whether
these provisos could be carried into effect.
It is commonly alleged that where a " Sunday

viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 137
Sabbath " has been attempted, the speedy
result is that neither Saturday nor Sunday is
properly observed. In other words, average
human nature (I will not say average Jewish
human nature) has not the self-sacrifice, the
strength of mind and the tenacity of purpose
sufficient to make the change of religious
effectiveness and value. For it is a question
of will power. It would need strong resolu
tion and fixed determination for any Jew to
transfer to Sunday the feelings which his
early training and the lives of his ancestors
have centred upon Saturday. Yet by suffi
cient doggedness and sacrifice, and above all
by the most patient care devoted to the educa
tion of children, there seems no absolute or
overwhelming reason why a new generation
could not arise who would observe Sunday
with a full and eager Jewish consciousness,
and in all religious solemnity and fruitfulness.
Meanwhile for the present — and this book
is written to meet present needs — there is no
question of a transference of the Sabbath from
Saturday to Sunday. We have to consider
things as they are, and to make the best of
them. First of all, let us regard the Sabbath as
a day of rest and change. We are not
merely to cease from work, but we are also
to make it a different day from other days.
It is emphatically to be a day of " delight,"

138 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
but it is also to be a " holy day," " the holy
of the Lord, honourable." It is to be a
day of peace, of repose, of " collection," of
refreshment. The pleasures of the Sabbath
must be other than the pleasures of work
days, — -less noisy and less mundane, more
intimate, retired and inward.
Now, many Jews and Jewesses are unable
to give up their work upon the Sabbath. A
large percentage of the " working classes "
are habitually compelled to violate the Sab
bath. This fact is the one great argument
for the transference of the day from Saturday
to Sunday. I cannot enter here upon the
economic and social side of the question in
this place. Suffice it to say that both for
the " poor " and the " well to do," — for the
" lower," the " middle " and the " upper "
classes alike, — it is hard to see how a
certain amount of Saturday labour can be
avoided. For my present purpose I have
the more " well-to-do " sections of the com
munity in mind. It would be impossible
to argue that parents should only send
their sons and daughters into occupations
and professions where the Sabbath can be
observed. We are Englishmen, and we must
accept the responsibilities and difficulties of
complete emancipation. To say, for instance,
that no Jew ought to become a barrister or
a "civil servant" would be an untenable

viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 139
proposition, and yet, at the present time, these
professions almost infallibly involve labour
upon some portions of the Sabbath day. In
very many branches of business and commerce
it is, I believe, hopeless to achieve success if
no work is to be done upon Saturdays.
The conflict must, therefore, for the present
be left as it stands. If the Saturday be
maintained, the Sabbath must be violated ;
to the day on which it would not be violated
it cannot be transferred. I am far from
saying that for many and many a year to
come the second statement will not be as true
as the first. Only let none of us shut our
eyes. We do not improve facts by refusing
to look at them. We do not annul them
by declining to believe in their existence.
On the contrary, the facts must be faced
and borne in mind. Only so can their evil
effects be palliated, and their solution ulti
mately be achieved.
If, however, the Sabbath must be violated
by many Jews for reasons which none of us
can deny or demolish, so much the more
urgent is it that those who can observe it
should observe it, and that those who have
to violate it should limit their violation to the
smallest possible number of hours. Above
all, there should be no voluntary desecration
and misuse for the purpose of mere con
venience and unsuitable enjoyment.

140 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
Nothing is more deplorable and more
disastrous than the fact that a number of
liberal Jews voluntarily and needlessly dese
crate and misuse the Sabbath. It is ex
cessively painful that such persons should not
be able to see what harm they are doing to
themselves, to their children, to Judaism, and
to religion. It is mournful and humiliating
to think that they have not the courage and
self- control to make the very moderate
sacrifice which is required of them. It is
grievous that they do not realise the baneful
significance of their action. No wonder that
our orthodox brethren should laugh and
mock at liberal Jews and liberal Judaism,
when they see that so many supposed liberals
have no care or heed for Judaism or religion.
For let there be no mistake : the religious
life of the community and the religious life
of the individual depend on an adequate
religious observance of one day's rest in
seven. The Jewish Sabbath lasts from sunset to
sunset. Few well-to-do persons, at any rate,
need continue their work beyond sunset on
Friday evening. The remainder of the
day is at their own disposal. These evening
hours should be spent at home. To go to
concerts or theatres on Friday evening is
highly objectionable. It is the worst possible
object lesson for children when they notice

viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 141
that their parents make no difference be
tween week day and Sabbath. It is no less
objectionable that people should go out to
dinner or have dinner parties and card parties
at home upon the Sabbath eve. How can
these things be regarded as suitable enjoyment ?
Even for the sake of their servants and the
non- Jewish world, Jews should be ashamed to
act in so unseemly a manner. What can
be thought of them ? They must be con
sidered as persons who observe neither
Saturday nor Sunday, and have no regard
for the things of God. It is especially
offensive when a Jew voluntarily desecrates
his Sabbath in a manner in which few
Christians would dream of desecrating theirs.
The Jew, who should be the exemplar in
religious aspiration and practice, is despised
and rightly despised by his Christian servants
and his Christian neighbour. When will
liberal Jews understand that upon them falls
a double measure of responsibility ? It is for
them by their everyday lives to disprove the
common taunt that liberal Judaism is a mere
synonym for convenience or indifferentism.
The Sabbath hours, then, must be devoted
to rest, to family reunion, to peaceful and
reasonable enjoyment. I would not disallow
all games upon Saturday, more especially for
those who cannot enjoy them upon any other
day. The cultivation of the body is a

1 42 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
religious duty. For a hard-worked clerk to
play a game of cricket on Saturday afternoon
is one thing, for a rich banker to go out to
a dinner party on Friday evening is quite
another. The first, under certain circum
stances, is reasonable and right ; the second
is reprehensible and wrong. If any "liberal"
Jew should read these pages, I venture to
make the most urgent, I would even say the
most passionate, appeal to him to observe
the Sabbath. For the Sabbath is the one
supreme religious '¦'¦form " which the average
man and woman cannot dispense with. It
is an efficacious lever for the religious
education of children. Parents will neglect
it at the peril of their own spiritual life, and
at the too probable peril of the spiritual life
of their children. Let them count the cost
and weigh the chances. Will they run this
peril for the sake of a dinner and a game of
cards? Most literally and emphatically the
wrong choice is the rejection of Wisdom.
And he that " sinneth against ' ' that Wisdom
" wrongeth his own soul ; all they that
hate her love death."
But, in the second place, the Sabbath is
not merely a day of rest and change. It is
also a day on which we should commune
with God. A small part of it, at any rate,
one hour or two hours out of twenty-four,
should be devoted to family or public worship.

viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 143
One reason why it is reprehensible for persons
to use Friday evening for theatre-going or
dinner parties is that this season is so peculiarly
and conveniently adapted for private and family
worship. It is especially suitable to those
households where, owing to the exigencies of
their business or profession, some members
of the family may be fully occupied with
secular work throughout the morning of
Saturday. Friday evening is convenient both
for private and for public worship. It is
highly desirable that it should be used for one
or for the other.
The Synagogue services are as yet hardly
consonant with the beliefs and feelings of
liberal Judaism. I have already mentioned
the undesirable prominence and the immense
proportion of time which is given to the
reading of the Law. A second wholly
different objection is the absence of instru
mental music, the lack of vernacular hymns
and of congregational singing. A third
unsatisfactory feature is the liturgy itself,
which has too many repetitions, and includes
many things which are out of touch with
the beliefs and feelings of to-day. While it
errs by such commission on the one hand,
it also errs by omission ; there are not enough
spiritual prayers in it of a kind and quality
which appeal to our deepest wants and
aspirations. It is not that such Jewish

144 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
prayers do not exist ; it is only that they
are largely absent from the Sabbath ritual,
or are often cast in an oriental and unsuitable
form. On every other side of our lives
we are pure occidentals ; yet the service is
almost wholly oriental. How then can it
fail to jar upon us ? How can it adequately
evoke our sympathy and stimulate our
prayers ? A western service would be absurd
and out of place for eastern Jews ; why is it
not realised that an eastern service is out
of place for western Jews? The very separa
tion of the sexes perpetuates an orientalism.
The severance of wife from husband and
of mother from son in the house of God
seems to many of us unnecessary and
unnatural. And if the father is unable to
attend the Saturday morning service, the
youthful son is more liable to increase his
own abstention if he may not sit by the side
of his mother.
Finally, the language of the service is
Hebrew, and the use of a dead tongue operates
as a stumbling-block upon a very large number
of persons. Many parents do not take the
trouble or undergo the expense of teaching
their children an adequate quantity of Hebrew ;
many have not the opportunity or power to
do so. Moreover, unless a considerable
amount of time is given to its study, or unless
the pupil has a special aptitude for dead

viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 145
languages, it is difficult to learn enough to
make the liturgy completely familiar and
intelligible. If the language is not very
thoroughly learned it is very speedily for
gotten. In either case the use of Hebrew
becomes a discouragement to attendance at
public worship.
It is strange that our orthodox brethren
do not realise and recognise these facts. If,
indeed, the use of Hebrew were a Penta
teuchal law, the situation would be different.
Then they might say, " We are sorry, but it
is a divine law." But there is no question of
a divine law. The arguments for the re
tention of Hebrew are hardly adequate. Some
people like it because they are used to it ;
some think a sacred language is a good thing
in itself; some think the study of Hebrew
would die out if Hebrew were abolished in
the synagogues. Another argument is that
by means of Hebrew a Jew is at home in
every synagogue all over the world. But
ought we to legislate for the isolated few who
travel ? To the vast majority of English and
American Jews, would not German or French be
easier to follow and understand than Hebrew ?
The most serious argument for the retention
of Hebrew is that Judaism would immediately
go to pieces if Hebrew were no longer used
in the synagogues. Whether a religion which
depends upon the use of a dead language is

146 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
worth preserving I will not stay to inquire,
but I would venture to ask why it is that
the Reform Synagogues in the United States,
in which English is predominant, are well
attended, while the synagogues in London,
in which the language used is Hebrew, are
badly attended ? In fact, though the argu
ment is " serious," it is less argument than
assertion. No facts, so far as I am aware,
can . be brought forward to corroborate or
back it up.
The effect of Hebrew upon the class of
persons who attend- elementary schools is
religiously very dubious. The utmost that a
girl or boy of fourteen can achieve is to be
able to translate in a somewhat mechanical
manner the ordinary Sabbath prayers. It may
safely be predicted that, within four years of
leaving school, seventy -five per cent of the
children have forgotten the translation of
seventy-five per cent of the prayers they learnt
in their school life. Moreover, this transitory
Hebrew knowledge was achieved at a great
cost. Precious hours were lost for religious
and ethical teaching and for Scripture. Many
Psalms might have been learnt by heart in
English which could come back to the mind
in hours of difficulty and trial. Meanwhile
to the " poor " as to the " rich " the ordinary
Sabbath services are becoming more and more
unfamiliar and unappealing.

viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 147
This I have written not to make any
impression " on the other side " (for in religi
ous matters, as in political matters, written
arguments have small effect upon " the other
side "), but to show that I am in sympathy
with liberal discontent. But what I am not
in sympathy with is liberal indifference.
If things are bad, try to alter them. If
existing conditions do not suit, create other
concurrent conditions which will. Judaism is
not a State church. Its embodiment is capable
of modification and change.
The proper thing to do is to attend the
Synagogue services although one is not in
sympathy with them, and then to use every
legitimate means in order to effect a change.
It is a question of tenacity, self-sacrifice and
persistency. It is also a question of votes.
Another proper thing to do is to start and
support services which are compromises, or
which more or less correspond with liberal
beliefs and aspirations. Here again, where
there is a determined will there will be found
a way. Public worship affords the opportunity for
private prayer. Be the service never so
unsympathetic, one can abstract oneself from
what is going on and commune with God.
It is, therefore, the duty of liberal Jews,
wherever they can, to attend public worship,
even though it be of a kind and type which

148 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
in many respects conflicts with their beliefs
and their feelings. If they are regular attend
ants, they have more right to agitate for
reform. It is a test of sincerity.
Our duty towards our children is more diffi
cult. It is a doubtful good to make children
attend public worship at a very youthful
age. More especially must we hesitate to
send them to services which are likely to bore
or irritate them. What is disliked in youth
will be abandoned in manhood. Children's
services are now becoming increasingly
frequent. They are of considerable value,
and opportunities for children to attend them
should not be lightly neglected.
In spite of what has been said about
Hebrew, it is of great present importance
that children should learn it. There is no
inconsistency between desiring and even work
ing for an English service, and yet taking care
that our children should learn Hebrew. For
the children are here, while the English service
is not ; and if the children do not learn
Hebrew, they will lose the possibility of public
worship with all its great advantages to them,
and through them to the community at large.
I would, therefore, urge upon my fellow-
liberals to agitate for English one hour, and
to teach their children Hebrew the next.
Whatever we do, let not our children suffer.
To prevent them from reaping the benefits of

viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 149
public worship — so far as existing services
allow benefits — is to make them enter man
hood and womanhood with a maimed and
stunted growth. For what we have to do
with our children is to open as many doors
for them as possible. Give them the chance
(if time and money allow) of enjoying litera
ture, nature and art. Who would not agree
to this ? But it is far more important to
give them the chance of worshipping God
in public as well as in private. There are
none too many pathways by which we may
reach out to God and find him. Let us
not close the gate which leads to any one of
them. Coming back now to the Sabbath and its
observance, one can but emphatically repeat
the advice that a small part of its four-and-
twenty hours should be used in public worship.
But it will often happen that it is impossible
to attend any synagogue upon the Sabbath
day. One may be in the country, or the
weather may be unpropitious, or the service
may be unsuited for children, or the measure
of self-sacrifice needed to attend it may be
too large. For one or other of these reasons
the family may be left entirely to its own
resources. Hence the enormous importance
of proper family worship in modern Jewish
life. A short daily service is perhaps desirable,

150 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
but a service upon the Sabbath is imperative.
There should be at least one such service, but
if possible two — a very short service on Friday
evening, and a longer one on Saturday morn
ings. Where the father has to attend at his
office or business on Saturday morning, the
Friday evening service becomes all the more
necessary and important. There is no reason
why these services should not be prayerful and
sympathetic,— no reason why, in the highest
and best sense of the words, they should not
be attractive and pleasing. The language of
them will obviously be English, and the
Synagogue ritual can be modified and varied
according to the requirements and likings
of the particular family. One Sabbath need
not, and probably should not, exactly re
semble another. Sameness to some people
is monotony, and monotony is death.
The objects to be aimed at by these services
are the following : —
In the first place, they must seek to help
the spirit of prayer and the tendency or desire
to pray. Though each member of the family
may, and it is to be hoped does, say a few
words, or think a few thoughts, of prayerful
aspiration and communion night and morning,
yet these devotional exercises will be strength
ened by the weekly family service. More
over, to pray with others is not quite the same
thing as to pray by oneself. Each has its

viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 151
own characteristics and advantages. There is
one difficulty about Jewish family services
which it is perhaps not wholly easy to avoid.
They tend to become a reading of prayers
instead of a common prayerful communion.
The abandonment of kneeling has possibly
proved of some spiritual injury. Those who
mingle with Christian families, and have
attended their daily and family prayers, know
that the joint and collective repetition of the
Lord's Prayer, and the listening on bended
knee to a few solemn and beautiful collects,
may, and sometimes does, have a considerable
devotional effect. It might be well if during
the recital (by the head of the family) of a
few special prayers the rest of the worshippers
did not follow in a book, but softly repeated
the words after the reader. Some prayers
should therefore be known by heart. It is so
easy to follow the written page, and yet to think
of quite other things. What the worshippers
have to get into their minds is, that they are
not assembled together to read prayers, or
to follow them as read, but to pray. They
are met not for a reading, but for worship.
In the second place, the weekly services
should foster the unity — the spiritual unity —
of the family. They not only bring the family
together, but they cause them to meet for a
common purpose, as members of a common
faith. Young and old equally need the help

152 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
of God, and they join in praising him.
They are all his children ; in their relations
to him their differences in wisdom, capacity
and merit fall utterly away:
Thirdly, these services impress upon every
member of the family that the day which
brings them thus together is a special day, a
holy day. A pause is made in the flow of
life ; a Sabbath consciousness is fostered.
We bless the day and hallow it. And its
influence hallows and blesses us. We re
member that we are not merely to rest upon
the Sabbath and enjoy ourselves, but to
dedicate it to God, to spend it properly, to
use some portion of it for higher things, for
prayer, for holy thoughts, for communion
with the Supreme.
Fourthly, the family service is, at the
present time (and especially for all liberal
Jews), an important and necessary adjunct to
the public worship of the Synagogue. While
that worship is still inadequate, containing
many things which we should desire to see
omitted, and devoid of many things which we
should like to see present, the family service,
which is wholly in our own hands to fashion
as we please, may suffice to keep religion
active and living in many a home.
Thus, fifthly and lastly, by the family service
on the Sabbath the Jewish consciousness can
be vivified and maintained. For it is a

viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 153
Jewish service. It is as Jews that we meet
together ; it is as Jews that we pray. We
shall be less likely to desecrate the Sabbath if
on the Sabbath eve we have joined in hallow
ing it. The service produced and evoked by
the Sabbath will also benefit the Sabbath.
And it will, as it were, branch out in other
directions. Conversations on Jewish subjects
may spring from it. The ideals of Judaism
should be expressed and reflected in our
prayers, and these ideals can be talked about
and discussed. In our modern environment
there are many non-Jewish elements. Our
literature, our schools, our universities, our
art, our science, our politics, are all (and
of necessity) non- Jewish. The family service
is one very important means by which the
religious and Jewish consciousness can be
preserved. For Judaism must be preserved
in the home. The Synagogue can no
longer do it. The school can no longer
do it. It must be done in the home and
through all the agencies of the home. Of
these agencies the Sabbath services are among
the most effective and the best.

CHAPTER IX
The first and the most important of the
holy days enjoined in the Pentateuch has
now been considered. There are fifty-two
Sabbaths in the year, but the total number of
the remaining holy days is only seven. Of
these seven, five are festivals and days of
rejoicing, while two are of a more serious
and solemn character.
The festivals were originally feasts of
nature, and one of them has so remained.
They go back to very ancient times, and are
of pre-Israelite origin. They were probably
all adopted from the Canaanites, and special
Jewish meanings were gradually infused into
them. They were associated with important
historical events in the early history of Israel.
In the first of them the historical transforma
tion is complete. The third is still a " nature
festival " ; its historical reference is some
what halting and insecure. The second, in
the Pentateuch itself, is purely a festival of
nature, but in the Rabbinic period it was
closely allied to a historical event, so that
iS4

chap, ix LIBERAL JUDAISM 155
its character has been almost wholly
changed. The first festival, comprising two days of
rest, is the Passover. It celebrates the de
liverance of the Israelites from Egyptian
bondage — the exodus from Egypt. What
has liberal Judaism to say to it ? Has it a
meaning for us still ?
A general remark may be made which
will apply to all the festivals and holy days.
It is impossible to create festivals to order.
One must use those which exist, and charge
them, where necessary, with newer meanings.
It may indeed be that the subject of a festival
altogether conflicts with our conception of
religion or of our own faith. In that case
we may be unable to observe it. But, happily,
none of the five Pentateuchal festivals and
holy days is of this nature.
There is this further advantage in con
tinuing to observe and make use of them,
that they form a link which unites all Jews,
of whatever shade, to one another. They
bring and bind us together.
The Passover practically celebrates the
formation of the Jewish people. It is also
the festival of liberty. In view of these two
central features, it does not matter that we
no longer believe in the miraculous incidents of
the Exodus story. They are mere trappings
which can easily be dispensed with. A fes-

156 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
tival of liberty, the formation of a people for
a religious task, a people destined to become
a purely religious community whose con
tinued existence has no meaning or value
except on the ground of religion, — here we
have ideas which can fitly form the subject of
a yearly celebration, of two special Synagogue
services, and of two special holy days. It is
a matter of comparative unimportance whether
the practice of eating unleavened bread in the
house for the seven days of the Passover be
maintained or not. Those who appreciate
the value of a pretty and ancient symbol,
both for children and adults, will not easily
abandon the custom.
The second of the three festivals is Pente
cost or the Feast of Weeks. In the Pentateuch
it is exclusively a nature festival. It was the
celebration of the first-fruits. The Rabbis
associated this festival with the giving of the
Ten Words and the revelation at Sinai. They
supposed that this great event happened fifty
days after the Passover. Here again, we do
not regard the Decalogue as our orthodox
brethren regard it. They believe (we are to
presume) in the literal accuracy of the nine
teenth chapter of Exodus. They hold that
God Himself spoke the Ten Words. We
accept whatever view the best scholars may
take about the date of the Ten Words, and
we do not believe that any divine or mir-

ix LIBERAL JUDAISM 157
aculous voice, still less that God Himself,
audibly pronounced them. But their import
ance lies in themselves, not in their surround
ings and origin. Liberals as well as orthodox
may therefore join in the festival of the Ten
Commandments. Pentecost celebrates the
definite union of religion with morality, the
inseparable conjunction of the " service " of
God with the " service " of man. Can any
religious festival have a nobler subject ?
The third and last festival, like the Pass
over comprising two days of rest, is Taber
nacles or Booths. It was originally the feast
of Ingathering. In the oldest of the three
Pentateuchal codes it is called the feast of
Ingathering, at the end of the year, "when
thou gatherest in thy labours out of the
field." It celebrated the close of the agri
cultural year. It was specially connected
with the fruit and grape harvest, but also
with the threshing out of the gathered corn
and wheat. The Latin tabernaculum means a
little hut or booth. The name is first given
to the festival in the Book of Deuteronomy,
where its celebration is made to extend over
seven days. The new name Succoth, Booths
or Tabernacles, is best explained from the
custom of camping-out in the autumn among
the vineyard hills of Palestine in booths or
huts of improvised and rustic material. In
the latest or priestly code the custom is turned

158 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
into a law. The festival is rather arbitrarily
connected with the exodus from Egypt and
the wanderings in the desert, and all Israelites
are bidden to live in booths for seven days,
while an extra day of worship and of rest
is commanded for the eighth day. Hence
Tabernacles is now celebrated for eight days :
there are two holy days with Synagogue
services, one on the first day, and one on the
eighth. For us, to-day, the connection with the
wanderings from Egypt, which the latest
legislators attempted, has again disappeared.
Tabernacles is a harvest festival ; it is a nature
festival. Should not a religion have a festival
or holy day of this kind ? Is not the con
ception of God as the ruler and sustainer of
nature, the immanent and all-pervading spirit,
one aspect of the Divine which can fitly
be thought of and celebrated year by year ?
Thus each of the three great Pentateuchal
festivals may reasonably and joyfully be ob
served by liberals and orthodox alike. We
have no need or wish to make a change.
The two remaining holy days of the Pen
tateuch are of a quite different character.
They are closely connected with each other.
New and wider meanings have been infused
into them, so that their value and significance
to-day are very far from what they were at their
first origin and institution. Of the Day of

ix LIBERAL JUDAISM 159
Memorial little is said in the Pentateuch. It
is called a " solemn rest," " a day of blowing
of trumpets " ; but in what sense it is a day
of " Memorial," or whether it is the people
who are to be " reminded " of the approach
ing atonement, or whether, according to old
priestly ideas, God is to be reminded of the
people, is not clearly expressed.
Some time after the "Day" was instituted
the Jews began to date the beginning of the
year from it, and the Jewish religious year is still
so reckoned. But it is hard to have two "new
years " ; and for us Europeans and Americans,
the only new year possessed of meaning and
sentiment will be the new year which we share
with others— the first of January. Thus the
Day of Memorial can only be regarded as the
opening of that solemn penitential season
which is to culminate ten days later in the
Day of Atonement. Looked at from this
point of view it becomes a broadly human
day, the celebration of which presents no
difficulties to any one. It is a day of holy
reflection and preparation ; for the ideas of
sin, repentance and atonement are so large
and solemn that it is not unreasonable that
they should have a short season of life re
served and dedicated to themselves. The
period which intervenes between the Day
of Memorial and the Day of Atonement is
a sort of Jewish Lent, commonly known as

160 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
the " Days of Penitence." During these days
it is customary and proper to lead a life some
what more reserved and " collected " than
usual ; dinner parties and theatre-going are
out of place. It would be fitting during
that week to read a book or two about
solemn things, — about sin and death, or about
religion and immortality, or about repentance
and communion with God. We should then
be the better prepared for the Atonement
Day, and likely to profit by it more deeply, to
remember it more vividly.
No religion, so far as I am aware, possesses
a holy day with finer spiritual possibilities
than the Day of Atonement. None owns a
day more catholic and universal. The day
was not instituted or known till after the
return of the Jews from the Babylonian Exile.
Like the Day of Memorial, it belongs ex
clusively to the third and latest of the Penta
teuchal codes. But what we read about it in
that code gives us a wholly different con
ception of the day from that which most of
us cherish at the present time. Elsewhere I
have said, and I believe it is true, that "it is
not too much to say that the true Day of
Atonement has come into being since its own
foundation." It needed a long upward de
velopment before a day, originally instituted
on priestly lines and with old priestly ideas of
national sin and collective atonement, could

ix LIBERAL JUDAISM 161
be transformed into the purely spiritual fes
tival which we celebrate to-day.
The chapter from Leviticus, still read
in the Synagogue services, clearly shows
the sort of ideas on the basis of which the
day was founded. By a series of sacrifices
and mysterious rites, by fasting and the
" affliction of souls," the sins of the people
will on this day be forgiven by God. " On
this day shall atonement be made for you
to cleanse you ; from all your sins shall ye
be clean before the Lord." The original
authors of the day did not mean that an
individual Israelite might steal or commit
adultery in August, and be absolved from his
sin in September. Wilful sins could only be
" atoned for " after repentance, punishment
and restitution. The Day of Atonement, so
far as the individual was concerned, atoned
for unconscious sins only, but its special pur
pose concerned the community. From all
the sins of individuals, the nation, as a
whole, would be cleansed and purified by the
Atonement Day. No ill effects would ensue
to the people ; to prevent these ill effects
God graciously accepted the ritual and the
sacrifices. How strange and distant such ideas seem
to us now ! And though the authors of
the day did not go so far as to think that
its rites and the fasting would procure divine
M

1 62 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
forgiveness for every individual's sin, there is
no doubt that such a gross and superstitious
idea quickly arose. Alas, we are by no
means free from it to-day ! There are some
persons who only come to Synagogue once a
year, on the Day of Atonement. They
would not eat or drink anything on that day
for all the world ! Why do they come to
Synagogue once a year ? Because they are
silly enough to think that by this annual
rite they may ward off some of the con
sequences of misspent lives and evil deeds.
They have to learn the stern lesson, whether
in this world or another, that the consequences
of evil cannot be changed or diverted by any
magic or ceremonial.
Our deeds still travel with us from afar ;
And what we have been makes us what we are.
Already the early Rabbis had found it
necessary to say, " They who think in
their hearts, ' I will sin, for the Day of
Atonement will bring me forgiveness ' — for
them the Day of Atonement brings no for
giveness." The modern Day of Atonement is purely
spiritual. It is true that most Jews still fast
for twenty-four hours, but no one ascribes
any efficacy to the fast. It is an old custom,
which does no particular harm, and is anf
exercise in self-control. It has some dis-

ix LIBERAL JUDAISM 163
ciplinal and ascetic value. Judaism, perhaps,
slightly underestimates the place of asceti
cism in religion, and therefore it would be
a pity to abandon any stimulating ascetic
element, where it does no harm to any higher
or more spiritual purpose. Liberal Jews no
longer believe that God ordered all Israelites
to fast upon the Day of Atonement, but
there is no reason why they should not fast
as a purely voluntary discipline. The fast
is, however, a minor and subsidiary feature.
In every other respect, the day has only to
do with fundamental religious ideas, with the
conceptions of sin, repentance, reconciliation
and atonement. Such a day is absolutely
fitted and useful for every human soul. It
is as sacred and holy a day for the liberal as
for the orthodox, for reformer as for con
servative. I need not repeat here all that I have
said elsewhere about Repentance and Atone
ment. I would only venture to urge that
no liberal Jew, in his desire to avoid super
stition, or through his ethical conviction that
sin must involve its consequence, need have
any scruple in observing the Day of Atone
ment and in reaping from it all the comfort
and peace which it is capable of giving. The
day is given to us ; God has no need of it.
He does not specially forgive us on this day.
The prayers of the liturgy speak in old-

1 64 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
fashioned terms : we must modify and trans
late them in our thoughts. But yet the day
is not merely one which may do us good
because, through the long Synagogue service,
we have a chance of calm reflection, of earnest
resolve, of strong repentance. Such a day a
Positivist might celebrate too, though he does
not believe in God. But we celebrate the
day because we do believe that God helps us
to conquer sin, because we do believe that this
help will come to us more powerfully, if on
our part, by prayer, by repentance, by com
munion, we strain and struggle to receive it.
We do believe that the divine element in us
can be quickened and stimulated partly by
our own effort and partly by the grace of
God. We do believe that by these means a
sense of holy calm, a conviction of nearness
and reconciliation, may come to us, which
may make the day for us a veritable Day of
Atonement. For atonement is a far more
living conception and ideal to us than for
giveness. We do not ask that our past sins
may be forgiven in the sense that their effects
may be cancelled, for that is impossible ; we
do not ask that our sins should not meet
their punishment, for even if the request had
any meaning, we can only regard punish
ment as disciplinal and advantageous. All
we can and do ask for is better insight, purer
faith, fuller strength. We want to grow in

ix LIBERAL JUDAISM 165
holiness of life and in the love of God. For
this we ask God's help, for this end we try
by earnest prayer to realise better the true
vileness of sin, how it separates us from God,
and weakens and defiles us ; for this end only
we make repentance and seek atonement.
Surely a day which is used for purposes such
as these is suited for all. It involves no
superstition ; it is based on no assumed viola
tion of law. As our conceptions of God, of
sin, of repentance and of atonement are
deepened and purified, so is the Day of
Atonement deepened and purified too. Its
importance and nobility rest with ourselves.
We thus see that, while our estimate of
the Pentateuch has widely changed, we are
still able to use a great part of the religious
embodiment which it has given to Judaism.
The Sabbath and the Festivals, the Day of
Memorial and the Day of Atonement, — -these
can all remain. We can still use them fitly
for religious and spiritual ends. No one has
the right or the justification to withdraw
himself from outward communion with his
brethren on the inadequate plea that, owing
to his liberal views and his " critical " estimate
of the Pentateuch, the feasts and holy days
of Judaism no longer appeal to him. Pro
videntially, as we may not improperly say,
they depend on conceptions so broad and
essential, so rooted in human nature, that the

1 66 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
date and manner of their institution are of
quite secondary importance.
It is true that the same festival will be
celebrated from a different point of view
by liberals and by traditionalists. But this
difference is not merely unavoidable ; it is
harmless. Even among the traditionalists
themselves, are we to suppose that the culti
vated or the philosophic will think of God
and of his relation to man in the same way
as the uneducated or the simple ? Such a
sameness of thought is out of the question.
Upon the same words different persons will
put different interpretations. The prominent
references to the Law in the liturgy can
easily be given a new and different meaning
by " liberal " worshippers. To them the
Law is no longer the Pentateuch, but the
Moral Law, before whose majesty all men
must bow. That is the Law to which
they ask God to " open their hearts." That
is the Law which they trust may " become
pleasant in their mouths." Or, again, the
Law is the will of God. That we may know
and do God's will we ask him to grant us
" understanding and discernment." . Or the
Law is the Hebrew Scripture as a whole,
which still remains the formal and constituent
charter of Judaism, and of which we may
truly say, " Blessed art thou, O Lord, who
hast given it to us." In these various ways,

ix LIBERAL JUDAISM 167
which, because they are freely acknowledged,
are not sophistic or insincere, we may adapt
the language of the liturgy to our own beliefs
and aspirations.

CHAPTER X
If " the Law " was a difficult and delicate
subject, no less difficult and no less delicate
is the subject of the present chapter. For a
few suggestions must now be made about the
New Testament.
How are liberal Jews to think about this
famous book ? Is it good or bad ; is it true
or false ? Or is it both good and bad, both
true and false ? Is it bad and false when it is
new, and only good and true when it is old ?
No more can here be attempted than to
suggest the lines on which we may seek to
prepare ourselves to answer these grave
and far-reaching questions. Too long have
they been shirked or feebly dealt with by
Jewish writers. We can, I think, best clear
the way if we recall to mind the new con
ception of the Old Testament which liberal
Judaism would have us hold. To orthodox
or traditional Judaism the Old Testament
(and more especially the Pentateuch) is all
true and all perfect. There is no religious
truth accessible to man which is not contained
1 68

chap, x LIBERAL JUDAISM 169
in it. It may contain errors on questions
of science or history, but in morality and
religion it is flawless and complete. For its
source is God. It is obvious, when such
gigantic claims are made and believed for a
particular book, that no other book can con
tain any moral or religious teaching at once
true and new. The Old Testament is separ
ated by the hardest and fastest line of demar
cation from every other book in the world,
whether it be the New Testament, the
Upanishads, or the Koran.
The new conception of the Old Testa
ment takes a very different view of it.
Religious and moral truth, it holds, in their
perfection and completeness, cannot be
contained in any book. They are only
progressively revealed to man's heart and
understanding. The Old Testament is not
homogeneous in faith or doctrine. It has
higher and lower elements ; true teachings
and false teachings ; permanently good and
noble elements, together with other elements
which were good in their own day, but are
good no more. What is good and true in
it is of God in the same sense that we hold
that whatever is good and true has God for
its author and source. Because of its many
good and true teachings, because of its tran
scendent originality and excellence in matters
of religion, because of its immense issues for

170 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
good, we call it, and believe it to be, a
divinely inspired book.
Clearly this view of it does not separate it
by a great gulf from all other " sacred "
books. They too, in proportion to their
originality, their excellence and their influ
ence for good, may be "inspired" and
" divine." The Old Testament contains
much truth, but not all truth. Nor is it all
true. God may have chosen that the sacred
books of other nations and creeds should
also contain, together with much error, many
elements of new truth, supplementary and
complementary to the truths of the Hebrew
Scriptures. There is nothing a priori un
likely or inconceivable in the idea that he
should have done so. In fact, the more we
think of it the more we consider analogies
in other spheres of his rule and providence,
the more is it unlikely that he should have
desired all truth to enter into the world by
a single gateway or channel.
These reflections can be applied to the
New Testament. Why should not this book
too, written moreover by Jews, contain some
new truths about religion and morality sup
plementary and complementary to the truths
of the Old Testament ?
To orthodox Jews it would be more
difficult to make this admission in regard to
the New Testament than in regard to any

x LIBERAL JUDAISM 171
other religious book in the world. For they
would say that, so far from the New Testa
ment containing supplements and complements
to Old Testament teaching, this teaching is in
the New Testament frequently revoked and
denied. In the first place, the New Testament
asserts that the binding obligation of the Law
is at an end, and that the death of Jesus was
the death of the Law. It asserts that the
Law was but a temporary institution, and
that with the life, the death and the resurrec
tion of Jesus, a better and more efficacious
way began of reconcilement with, and draw
ing near unto God. It asserts that the
Law was even a hindrance to goodness, a
stimulus to sin. In the second place, it
maintains that the Messiah has come, and that
Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. In the
third place, by its doctrine of the Incarnation
of God in Jesus, it modifies and denies the
pure monotheism of the Old Testament, and
yet it claims to present a higher doctrine of
God and of morality. There is therefore
nothing for Judaism to learn from the New
Testament. The only proper attitude towards
it is uncompromising opposition. For if
Christianity be true, Judaism is false ; but if
Judaism be true, and the Old Testament good
and perfect, then is the New Testament false
and wrong.
What are we liberal Jews to think of

172 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
these arguments ? How are we to reply to
them ?
We have to look at the New Testament,
not dogmatically, but historically. We have
to see it as it is. We must not regard it as a
whole — consistent in all its parts — any more
than we regard the Old Testament as a whole.
Because one book or chapter of the New
Testament conflicts with our highest concep
tions of God, it does not follow that another
book or another chapter may not consort
with them. It may even contain some
" complementary or supplementary truth."
Moreover, for ourselves, the sharpness of
opposition has largely faded away. Its import
ance has lessened. Let us take the three funda
mental objections raised by orthodox Judaism
to the New Testament, and look at them
in the light of these general considerations.
The exact attitude which Jesus adopted
towards the Law is still a matter of dispute.
Books are written about it to this very day.
If it were certain and obvious, these treatises
would not be written. Much of the religious
teaching of Jesus (whether in itself good or
bad, old or new) is quite independent of his
attitude towards the Law, and can be inde
pendently regarded. It would seem that he
was disposed to think lightly of some Rabbinic
additions to the Pentateuchal law, and in
these very points we liberals must admit that

x LIBERAL JUDAISM 173
he saw clearly and did well. As to the Penta
teuch, he seems, in the true spirit of the ancient
prophets, to have urged the greater importance
of the moral commandments and the com
parative unimportance and secondary character
of the ritual and ceremonial commandments.
Would not Amos, if he had lived again, have
done precisely the same ? Jesus seems to have
taught that all religion and morality flowed
from two or three great and central principles,
and that it was well and serviceable to look
at religion and goodness from this unifying
and centralising point of view rather than to
split them up into a number of disconnected
and heterogeneous enactments. Any philoso
phical analysis of religion and morality would,
I believe, approve of such a procedure. It is
certainly not un- Jewish. There are close and
independent parallels in the teaching of the
later Rabbis. So far, therefore, as the teach
ing of Jesus about the Law can still be ascer
tained, we seem to see in it something of the
attitude of the prophets of the eighth century,
and (though he started from different premises)
something also of our own.
As regards the teaching of Paul, in his
chief and presumably authentic epistles, we
seem to have passed beyond his contradictions
and antitheses. We see the exaggeration of
his estimate of the Law ; its gross historic
inaccuracies. We know that the pride and

174 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
the despair, the self- righteousness and the
alienation from God, which Paul regards as
the necessary consequences of the Law, are
for the most part fictions and chimeras.
They were not the normal products of the
Law, but only its occasional evils and per
versions. Moreover, the whole question has
become remote to us. For we liberals no
longer approach God through the Law ; we
no longer regard the Law as the unalloyed
product of God. We move freely in the
divine presence — needing neither the Law nor
Christ as intermediary or introduction. But
in spite of Paul's historic inaccuracies, in spite
of his amazing forgetfulness of the Jewish
doctrine of repentance and atonement, in spite,
too, of the remoteness for us of the opposition
Law versus Christ, we may still admire the
profundity of his genius, and adopt many true
and noble elements of his religious and ethical
teaching. If we can exercise a careful eclecti
cism in Deuteronomy and Isaiah, we can also
exercise it in the Epistles to the Romans and
the Corinthians. Disentangling it from its
temporary setting, we can discern and appre
ciate the religious truth contained in Paul's
doctrine of faith ; ignoring his almost wilful
misconceptions of his opponents, we can dis
cern and appreciate the nobility of his doctrine
of love. Then, secondly, as to the Messiah. It is

x LIBERAL JUDAISM 175
still disputed, and in the last few years there
have been quite a number of treatises on the
subject, whether Jesus regarded himself as the
Messiah or not. And if he considered that
he was the Messiah, in what sense did he
use the term as applied to himself? Did he
believe that at the last moment God would
interfere and interpose, and that before his
death he would fulfil the predictions of the
prophets ? Is that the true meaning of the
famous cry, " My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me ? " Or are the present
statements and speeches in the Gospels accurate,
and did Jesus really believe that he must
first suffer and die ? Was his true Messiah-
ship to begin only after his death, and did
he imagine that the Messianic judgment and
reign would be established in their fulness
soon after his resurrection from the grave ?
Are the unfulfilled vaticinations ascribed
to him those which he really uttered ?
The notion, now so often attributed to him,
that he was to fulfil the old prophecies in a
higher and spiritual sense, that whereas Isaiah
and the others had prophesied a Messiah who
should be an earthly conqueror and deliverer,
he was going to establish a spiritual reign
in the hearts and souls of men, seems to
me exceedingly difficult. It is easy for us
moderns to separate what we are pleased to
call the kernel of the prophetic teaching

176 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
from its husk, but could Jesus have done
it and yet have believed in the divine in
spiration and mission of the prophets them
selves ? Could he have believed that God
deliberately bade them prophesy falsehoods,
foretell a Messiah whose special and appointed
task it should be to accomplish deeds which
the true Messiah, when in the fulness of time
he came, was never to accomplish at all?
Such a conception seems a psychological
puzzle. It would be an application of the
doctrine "for the hardness of their hearts"
of excessive daring. Is it perhaps more likely
that this correction of the prophets should
have been made up afterwards to suit the
result — emendatio post eventum ?
But however this may be, and whatever
Jesus may have thought about himself and
his own position and mission, to us the
questions involved have a historic interest
only. The whole doctrine of the Messiah
no longer concerns our religious life and
aspirations. We do, indeed, believe in the
conception of the Messianic age, or at any
rate in the optimistic faith which underlies it.
We believe that God rules the world, and that
he means it to become not worse, but better.
But we no longer believe in a personal Messiah,
who will lead back the Jews to Palestine, and
exercise the sway and power of conqueror
and king. From the visions and the faith of

x LIBERAL JUDAISM 177
liberal Jews, to whom Judaism is a religion,
and the Jews are not a nation but a religious
community, such a belief has wholly dis
appeared. Even though we hold that Jesus errone
ously supposed himself to be the Messiah
predicted by the prophets, it does not follow
that he was not a great religious and ethical
teacher. Isaiah was wrong in several of his
predictions, but he is a great teacher all the
same. Jesus may have been wrong as to his
Messiahship, but none the less he may have
been a great teacher. Doubtless the picture
of him drawn in the Gospels is sometimes
idealised and inaccurate, but none the less may
the teachings attributed to him be of profound
religious value, and contain many " supple
mentary and complementary truths." It is
simply not the case that one cannot separate
the teaching of Jesus about religion and
morality from the claim, only rarely ascribed
to him, of thrusting himself between man
and God as a necessary intermediary and intro
ducer. To the doctrine contained in Matthew
xi. 25-30 liberal Jews will be as opposed as
their orthodox brethren. Jews had found
rest in God before Jesus came, and without
his help we have found rest in God ever
since. Our history proves it. Otherwise we
could not show more martyrs than all the
sects of Christianity put together. But even

178 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
if Jesus said the words contained in those six
verses, which is extremely doubtful, that does
not make other words ascribed to him less
worthy of our adoption and our praise.
It is this sifting and critical manner of re
garding the Gospels and the New Testament
which must also be applied to the third diffi
culty, the alleged higher doctrine on the one
hand and its enfeeblement of pure mono
theism upon the other. The old oppositions
are seen to be erroneous and exaggerated.
There may be some new things in the book
which are bad, and some new things which
are good. The notion that the Old Testa
ment teaches a God of justice, the New
Testament a God of love, that the keynote of
the one book is retribution, of the other book
pity, is childish and absurd. We shall rather
say that in some respects some passages of the
New Testament show a declension from the
highest conceptions of the Old Testament,
while in other matters there are passages in
the New Testament which supplement and
complete the doctrines of the Old Testament.
I would venture to say provisionally that
our conceptions of character and of sin, of
our duty to the sinner and the " outcast,"
and of religious inwardness and spiritual
intensity, can be heightened and deepened by
a study of the New Testament.
Nobody should be more qualified for a

x LIBERAL JUDAISM 179
calm and impartial investigation of this book
than liberal Jews. We need have no diffi
culty in accepting from it whatever is good
and true. We need not be excited about it,
whether to refute or to advocate. What is good
and true in it is divine, because what is good
and true is of God. Liberal Judaism does
not teach that all goodness and truth in re
ligion are or can be contained within one book ;
its equilibrium and fundamental tenets are not
upset if the Jews who composed the New
Testament, amid much error, said also several
things that were new and true. The Jews
who wrote the Talmud did the same.
Nor can we forget the huge importance
of the New Testament in the history of the
world. No one who reads it can fail to see
that here we have works of genius, first-class
works, whatever their truth and their good
ness. It would be a mournful and irreligious
thing if a book which, together with much
evil, has also done so much good, which has
had such gigantic influence, which has formed
the religion of so many noble souls, and
which the most different sorts of people in
every age — believers and unbelievers alike —
have agreed in thinking the greatest and
most beautiful of all religious books, — if
such a book contained nothing which was
both new and true.
But all this does not commit us to any

180 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
particular view of the central hero. Jesus,
so far as we can gather, was a great and in
spired teacher, but what precisely he thought
and taught will always remain obscure. The
Gospels were written by the disciples of his
disciples for purposes of edification. They
idealise on the one hand ; they darken on
the other. To increase the lonely greatness
of the hero, the disciples must be made
stupid, the people ungrateful, hard-hearted,
wicked. To estimate the Jewish religion (as
Christian theologians do) from the New
Testament is to produce a caricature ; to
find a portrait of Jesus in the Gospels is to
look for a photograph in an idealised pic
ture, painted several years after the subject's
death. Nor can the New Testament be acknow
ledged by Jews as a part of their own Bible.
The Hebrew Scripture remains by itself ; it is
the charter of Judaism. The New Testa
ment is, after all, the charter of another
creed. So things must remain for many a
year. To read a chapter of the New Testa
ment in a " liberal " Synagogue would pro
voke misunderstanding, even although to
read a piece of a modern religious poem, such
as In Memoriam, which could not have been
written without the New Testament, does
not. But, outside the Synagogue, it is right
for liberal Jews to read the New Testament ; it

x LIBERAL JUDAISM 181
is their duty, and it is within their power, to
appraise and estimate it correctly without
prejudice or passion. What on these lines we
appropriate and admire can never make us
less devoted to Judaism, because what we
admire and what we appropriate will be itself
Jewish, the " supplement, the complement "
and the expression of Jewish doctrine and
of Jewish truth.

y~~*Jf-

CHAPTER XI
The outlines of a working conception of
Inspiration and of the Bible have now been
suggested. We have not minimised or
attempted to gloze over the differences
between the old view and the new. Yet the
conception turns out to be one with which a
Jewish embodiment of outward religion is not
inconsistent. We have now to consider a
matter closely connected with what has just
been said, and even more vitally important.
What is the religious function of the Jews
at the present time ? Can we still speak of
a Jewish Mission? Are the Jews in any
religious sense a " Peculiar People " ?
Let me assume, ex hypothesi, that the
social and political ideal of liberal Judaism
had been fulfilled. Let me assume that all
religious and national prejudices and persecu
tions had wholly ceased, that the Jews were
as free in Russia as they are in England, and
that every Jew in England or America was a
complete Englishman or American, and every
Jew in Russia was a complete Russian. Let
182

chap, xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 183
me assume that the link which united the Jews
together was recognised by themselves and by
outsiders to be solely a religious link, and
that their general position and condition in
the world was such that it was no advantage
anywhere, and therefore no meanness every
where, for a Jew to cease to belong to his
own community and to join another religious
organisation. To-day, unless a man be
genuinely convinced of the truth of Christi
anity, one can hardly think it other than
mean in him to separate himself from the
community. So long as there anywhere exist
persons who are persecuted because they are
Jews, so long is it a mean thing if any com
fortable Jew ignores the bonds which bind
him to his fellow- Jews, and drops the duties
of brotherhood. The lax (that is, not the
non - observant, but the unattached) Jew is
now — under the present mournful circum
stances of persecution, disability and distress
— a merely despicable fellow. It is not now
an entirely religious question. We have,
therefore, to make up a hypothetical con
dition of affairs in order that the religious
question may be considered by itself and
without prejudice. We have to look at it
scientifically and without other elements
which change, distract and disturb.
The old view of the relation of God to
the Jewish people corresponded with the old

1 84 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
view of the Hebrew Bible. It remains, there
fore, to be seen whether the new view of the
Bible must greatly change our view of that
relation. Now the fact is that the Hebrew
Bible contains no one consistent doctrine
about the relation of the Jewish people to
God. It contains a variety of doctrines and
implications, some higher and some lower.
And it may also be said that traditional
Judaism throughout its history has maintained
no single and consistent view upon this crucial
subject. Historically we can see how these differ
ences arose. Jehovah or Yahweh was origin
ally a national God, whose pleasure and profit
it was to protect and aggrandise his own.
That was the popular conception. The wars
of Israel were the wars of Yahweh, and
Israel's victories were Yahweh's victories as
well. The more sacrifices and praises that
Israel could render to Yahweh the greater was
Yahweh's glory, the keener his satisfaction.
Gradually the conception was moralised.
Yahweh was the God of justice, and injustice
displeased him. He punished the individual
Israelite for his sins. But if iniquity dis
pleased him in the individual, it also displeased
him in the state. National guilt would pro
duce national punishment. Thus the glory
of Yahweh as a moral God might be shown,
not in Israel's victory, but in Israel's defeat.

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 185
This was the new doctrine of the prophets
which caused such astonishment and disbelief
among their contemporaries. Amos presents
it in its purest form. Because Yahweh has
a special relation with Israel, therefore he
requites their misdeeds. " You only have I
known of all the families of the earth ; there
fore I will visit your iniquities upon you."
A noble and notable utterance of epoch-
making importance.
But why did Yahweh " choose " Israel ?
In old days nobody asked the question.
The race had its god, as the child had its
father. The one relation was as natural as
the other. But when the conception of
Yahweh was magnified and moralised this
naive assurance would no longer suffice. The
relationship could no longer be regarded as
purely natural and obvious. For Yahweh was
different from other gods. As he increased,
they dwindled ; as he became greater and
purer, they became feebler and less real.
Thus Yahweh's relation with Israel must
have been due to his own choice. It was a
voluntary arrangement, entered into of his
own free-will. Why did he enter into it?
Various opinions were expressed. It was
because of the merits of Israel's progenitors.
It was for Yahweh's own glory that there
might exist a holy people, dedicated to his
service and living in accordance with his will.

1 86 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
The glory of Israel was still the glory of
Yahweh, for the other nations of the world
would realise in Israel's wisdom and holiness
the supreme power of Israel's God. Here
the newer view harked back to the older,
unconscious realism of the pre - prophetic
period. Or, again, it was entered into out of
kindness to and affection for Israel. Yahweh
in his free choice loves Israel, and though, as
the righteous God, he must, sadly enough,
chastise Israel for Israel's sin, he will forgive
Israel as soon as mercy and equity allow
him ; he will never forsake his people ;
he will at the last redeem Israel from all
distresses and exalt his " peculiar treasure "
above all the nations of the world. Or,
again, to Israel God gave his Law ; the
nation which accepted the Law is worthy of
Yahweh's love and shall eternally receive it.
For through the Law Israel becomes a holy,
wise and peculiar people, with close and special
relations to God. Lastly, a very few chosen
spirits conceived the idea that while Israel
was chosen for the sake of Israel, it was also
chosen for the sake of the world. Israel was
chosen to be the light of the nations, to make
known to them true religion.
These different views could be maintained
concurrently, and fused together in various
proportions. The lower views were never
wholly eliminated. This continuance of

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 187
lower and higher together was due to the
fact that though Yahweh became the sole
God of the world, he yet never ceased to be
the special God of the Jews. Even to the
Rabbis he still fulfils this double role.
Religion was still national ; patriotism was
stimulated by religion, and religion was
stimulated by patriotism. Such action and
reaction had consequences of grave import
both for evil and for good, which we cannot
now stay to consider.
As a result, the orthodox or traditional
view of the relation of God to Israel is still
lacking in clearness and precision. It cannot
speak to-day with the naive simplicity of
either the Biblical or the Rabbinical ages ;
yet it cannot move freely among the written
statements of the past. Israel is still the
" chosen people " ; the Jews are God's trea
sure, specially beloved by " their " God.
" He has not made us like the nations of
other lands." God has bestowed upon Israel
his Law, the performance of which gives
a peculiar religious bliss, the possession of
which is a peculiar privilege ; but this Law
as a whole is for the Jews alone. The
liturgy looks forward to a time when " all
the children of flesh will call upon thy
name," but on the whole it looks forward to
this time (as is humanly natural, consider
ing when and under what circumstances the

1 88 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
prayers were written) less for the sake of the
"children of flesh" than for the sake of Israel
and its prosperity, and for the sake of
Yahweh and his glory. It is remarkable that
the " Thirteen Articles of the Jewish Creed "
make the coming of the Messiah a dogma
of faith, but are wholly silent as to the
Mission of Israel.
But orthodox and traditional Judaism,
while it dare not brush away any statement
of Bible or liturgy, yet when it speaks on
its own account touches a higher note.
It believes in Israel's mission, and that
mission is made to consist in some service
rendered to the cause of Monotheism. The
1 Jews are not to proselytise ; their Law is
1 for themselves alone ; they are not to purge
their religion of its national elements ; their
public worship is still to be conducted in a
language which no non- Jew can understand ;
but as purely passive " witnesses " — as silent
depositaries of a charge and a cause which
God himself entrusted to their hands and
care — they render a service to Monotheism
and to religion. Such, so far as I can gather,
is the orthodox view of the relation of Israel
to God. It is a view which makes for
endurance and for heroism. It is still faith
ful to the old conceptions : Israel is the
best beloved, the treasure, the holy and
chosen people ; the Law is and ever will be

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 189
Israel's own peculiar heritage ; but yet the
constancy of the Jews to God and to the
Law is not only for their own sake (nobly
as it will be rewarded), but it is also for the
sake of religion, so that his Unity may at last
be acknowledged by all the races of men.
The "liberal" view of the relation of
God to Israel is (I venture to think) clearer
and more consistent. No liberal " articles
of faith" would omit the "Mission of Israel"
from the list. But because liberal Judaism
can take up a perfectly free and critical atti
tude towards all ancient documents (whether
Biblical or Rabbinic), it can reject all lower
teaching upon the subject, and retain only
what is higher, catholic and spiritual. Yet
its doctrine will be none too sublimated for
common use. It is not attenuated to invisi
bility. It serves for duty. It enjoins. It
orders our lives.
As the belief that there is a real relation
of God to the individual is the kernel of all
religion, so the belief that, in a different way,
there is a real relation of God to the Jewish
community, is the kernel of Judaism.
We must not be driven to abandon this
belief because it is hard to realise the mode of
its operation, the method of its work. It is
hard enough to believe or realise that God
rules the world, that he directs it towards
a higher end ; but in spite of the hardness,

190 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
we nevertheless believe. Hard as the world
is to explain with God, it is harder yet
without him. Therefore we throw in our
lot with the believers. But if he rule the
world, it is almost a necessary consequence
that the functions and capacities of different
races, nations and communities are guided
and determined by him. Greece was no
more a chance product than Judaea. The
Christian would allow and even assert that
the Jews received and fulfilled a divine
mission ; only to him the mission was con
cluded at the birth of Christianity. Hence
forward (such is the common view) whatever
the Jews had to say in religion was known.
Christianity absorbed the best of Judaism
and went beyond it. It is the completion
and fulfilment of Judaism. The Jews would
benefit themselves, and thereby benefit the
world (because the more believers of the
highest truth the better), if they all became
Christians to-morrow.
In direct opposition to the Christian
estimate of Judaism, the justification to the
Jew of his continued separation, and the con
solation for all the miseries and malice he has
to endure, lie in the belief that his religion is
of value to himself and to the world. It is
surely not unreasonable to say, " If to him
self, then to the world." It may indeed be
urged that a given religion is the best for

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 191
its adherents at a certain stage of culture,
or that a certain race needs a certain
religion ; yet that the highest truth is not
found in that particular religion. The purest
truth is not always most suited, from an
ethical point of view, to every race at every
time. Such was the religious philosophy of
Maimonides, the famous Jewish teacher of
the twelfth century, and the author of the
Thirteen Articles of the Jewish Creed. He
thought that a pagan world could not bear
the pure Monotheism of the Jewish faith.
Christianity, therefore, with its Man-God,
its Mother of God, its Trinity, and its Saints,
was a half-way house between heathenism
and Judaism. It was not the highest truth,
but it was the most suitable, and therefore a
part of the divine education of the world.
Pagan nations could not absorb more, but
ultimately the truth of Monotheism would
prevail. The educated Jew of Europe and America
could clearly not be harmed by adopting any
phase of Christianity if it appealed to him as
the highest truth. But because he regards
Judaism as already containing the purest
religious truth it is unnecessary for him to.
make a change. Judaism is best for him.
But if Judaism contain the highest and purest
truth it is also best for the world, if not at
once, then ultimately. The Jew must, there-

192 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
fore, maintain and preserve the truth till the
world is able to receive it, and to profit by
its reception. We no longer believe that Israel was called
and chosen for its own well-being. History
shows that Israel was chosen for suffering
and trial. As to the divine glory, we are
incompetent to measure it. We can leave
God's glory to God, except in the sense that
it is our glory to give him glory. We no
longer believe that God has any partial love
for Israel, or that the proportion of Jews in
" heaven " will be greater than the proportion
of Gentiles. All these lower conceptions have
been swept away. The preservation of the
Jews has been effected, not for their own
future exaltation, but for the sake of religion.
Every Jew, whether liberal or orthodox, must
believe this doctrine. It is in its applica
tion that liberals and orthodox necessarily
differ. For the liberal does not believe
that the religious duty or mission of the
Jew lies in a changeless fidelity to the Mosaic
and Rabbinic Law. The mission has always
a religious character, but its method and
emphasis vary with the exigencies of the
time. We can, we should, and we do im
prove and develop our religion, even while
we preserve it and maintain it for the
benefit of the world.
The religious conceptions of liberal

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 193
Judaism are obviously regarded as true and
important by liberal Jews. Pure Mono
theism, the direct communion of man with
God, the direct relation of God to man, the
close connection of religion with morality
and of morality with religion, the proper
place of forms and ceremonies, the absence
of priests and intermediaries, — all these things
are in liberal Judaism united together, and,
with other complementary doctrines, they
form a consistent, harmonious and historic
religion. We believe in the truth of these
doctrines ; we believe in their religious, ethical
and social value. How then can we not
believe that it is our duty and our mission
to aid in their maintenance and diffusion ?
Saints there have been and are of all forms
and phases of belief and unbelief, but none
the less do we believe that a given set of
doctrines are truer than another set, and
if truer, then of more ultimate spiritual or
ethical advantage to mankind.
Under these circumstances why should
liberal Jews, who, ex hypothesi, hold these
doctrines, be lukewarm in their Judaism ?
The religious isolation of the individual
cannot be the best possible service to the
religious cause in which he believes. It may
be a temporary necessity, but the best condi
tion, both for him and for the cause, will be
one in which his own religious life both
o

194 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
strengthens, and is strengthened by, the com
munity. Liberal Jews must not think that
they best serve the cause of Theism by an
abstention from the community in its corporate
religious life. It may be that they feel at
present unable to join in that life ; it may be
that circumstances are unfavourable to the
creation of a distinct corporate religious life
of their own ; or it may be that the chosen
apostle or teacher to create this life has not
yet arisen ; but, in any case, the present condi
tion of things must not be looked upon as
either normal or satisfying. The individuals
of rare religiousness and spirituality who now
live aloof and apart are certainly not wasted.
Their fair and holy lives, their lofty and noble
personalities, influence those who can under
stand and appreciate them. " The effect of
their being upon those around them is
incalculably diffusive." Nevertheless they
might do all this, and yet do more. The
cause of religion, the cause of Jewish Theism,
the power and purity of the community as a
religious force, would be strengthened and
increased if these rare natures were an integral
part of the religious organisation to which
they now only nominally belong. Their
influence would be doubled ; it would be
not merely individual, but also collective.
The power and beauty of such natures would,
as it were, be reflected back upon the com-

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 195
munity. In helping to transform and develop
it they would also be its outcome and ex
pression. For the majority of mortals aloofness is
not merely bad for the community, but also
harmful for themselves. For them religious
isolation is religious detriment. There is a
parallelism, in this respect, between religion
and morality. In his excellent little book,
called The Making of Character, Professor
MacCunn discusses with approval the prevail
ing Greek doctrine, that " character will never
come to its best until the day that sees society
reorganised as, at once, a school and sphere of
virtue." In his chapter on "The Religious
Organisation," he points out how " Church
membership can do much to quicken indi
vidual responsibility. ' ' He naturally alludes to
the famous passage in Plato's Republic, which
has its bearing on religion as well as on ethics,
about the philosopher whose " lot has fallen
amidst adverse and evil social surroundings,
and to whom it seems a hopeless struggle
to make the society of which he is a member
better." He, indeed, " holds his peace and
goes his own way, content if only he can live
his own life and be pure from evil and un
righteousness." And what he does is well.
But it is not the best ; for if he had found
the right society, the fitting state, " he would
himself have reached a higher stage of growth,

196 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
and have secured his country's welfare as well
as his own." Plato's solemn words apply to
religion as well as to morality.
Thus the best and ideal thing would
be that the liberal Jew, for his own sake
as well as for the sake of Theism, should
take an active part in the corporate life of
some religious organisation. By so doing he
would both give and gain. The religious
life, as we have seen, is not wholly dissimilar
in this respect to the citizen life. Here too
there is a giving and a gaining in one and the
same life. But it may still be asked, What
religious organisation should the liberal Jew
join ? Should it be Judaism or another?
It must be understood that I am here
discussing the subject only and solely from
one particular point of view. To abandon
the religious brotherhood of Israel now, when
the large majority of that brotherhood are in
such evil plight ; when there is so much to
be done ; when all should stand by and give,
if they can, a hand ; when it is of the utmost
importance that every good man and woman
should emphatically acknowledge their mem
bership in the community, and help by their
mere acknowledgment and strenuous life to
maintain its honour and its name ; — to abandon
the community now would seem the act of
one without imagination or sympathy. All
I ask here is, whether for the sake of Theism

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 197
liberal Jews would do better to join some
other religious organisation rather than to
remain members of the Synagogue ?
And just a word in explanation of the
phrase, " For the sake of Theism." Am I
making the mission of Judaism to consist in
a matter of theology rather than of religion ?
Not so. But the service and the knowledge
of God are reciprocally conditioned by one
another. To know God as he is, is beyond
man's ken and power. There is, moreover,
a deep meaning in the teaching that the
service of God produces a knowledge of him.
God is, as it were, revealed to man more and
more clearly by a certain attitude of mind
and will, a certain trend of action. But the
will and the life which make man more sure
of God, and reveal to him more of the divine
character and nature, are themselves not with
out their theoretic basis. It is a working
theory about God which shapes and directs
the will and the life, and as this theory varies,
so also must they. If a man's conception of
God be, for example, that of the self-con
scious and eternal ideal of goodness and truth,
his service of God will be coloured by his
working theory. He will test all stories and
books and dogmas about God by his own
highest conceptions of righteousness and truth.
He will regard no service displeasing to God
which is also dedicated to truth or to righteous-

198 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
ness, no service commendable to God which
impairs the supremacy of either the one or
the other.
The nature and existence of God are not
merely the subject-matter of theology : they
are the essence of religion. For religion
without God is a misuse of words. The
religious life involves the belief that God
is the source of goodness and of truth, or,
in other words, that if there were no God
there would be no truth and no goodness.
Without some Theistic metaphysic goodness
and truth cannot, as I believe, maintain them
selves. " Is it not clear that if there be no God,
goodness is a mere earthly episode, a mere
transitory chance ? Here on this earth man
has been evolved from the animal ; he exists
for a time ; after a time he will pass away ; he
has learned to talk about love and righteous
ness and truth, but there is nothing beyond
the earth which corresponds with these words
or has created these conceptions. They
chanced to appear ; they will chance to dis
appear — chance creations as they are of vary
ing sensations of pleasure and pain.
And may we not go a step farther and argue
that goodness depends not only on the exist
ence of God, but also on the belief in him ?
If, indeed, goodness and truth owe their being
to God, it is impossible to suppose that God
will suffer the belief in him to die out

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 199
among men. But if, for the sake of argument,
we assume that the belief did die out, then, as
it seems to me, goodness itself would also
gradually dwindle away. People would come
to perceive that goodness, in the old sense
of the term, had no superhuman or extra-
human sanction or source, and with that
perception the texture and quality of their
goodness would gradually grow weaker and
poorer. Woe, then, to the permanent stability
of human goodness if man loses the belief in
God ! And for these reasons the cause of
Theism includes, as it seems to me, the cause
of morality as well. Moreover, every phase
of Theism involves a particular kind of belief
about God, and this belief may determine and
colour our actions.
If we believe that God not merely hates
sin, but also the sinner, that in his universe
there is such a thing as everlasting punish
ment, that he has favouritisms of race and
creed, these beliefs can hardly help influencing
our character and our deeds ; or if we believe
that God is near to man, that in some strange
way he helps our struggles towards goodness
and truth, that the relation of father and child
is a true analogy of God's relation to our
selves, that God is One in such sort that in
him justice is the same as love, and righteous
ness the same as mercy, — will this belief not
influence our service ? It is true that service

200 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
deepens the knowledge, but it is also true that
knowledge (or, in other words, a working
theory about God) directs the service. " For
the sake of Theism " therefore includes " for
the sake of religion."
There is or should be sufficient unity in
man to make his knowledge (or, if you will,
his theories) ennoble his action, and his action
deepen his knowledge. So too in theology and
religion. In the last resort, each religion must
surely maintain that the truer the theology
(i.e. the better and purer the working theory
about God) the better the religion. Each
religion has its saints and heroes ; it is a hard
saying that the religious life which one religion
dictates and induces is superior to the religious
life of another. But the votaries of each
religion have to maintain (and they do so
logically) that the religious life inculcated by
their own particular creed is on the whole the
fullest and the best. No less than this must
be the claim of Judaism.
It is not denied or deniable that some
outside Theisms have certain advantages for
" liberals." They are freer, more western,
more connected and in touch with the
main stream of thought and culture ; they
make fewer demands upon our patience.
To some, Unitarianism may still seem too
Christian ; to others, " Theism " may seem
too cold ; but, speaking generally, the advant-

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 201
ages which I have mentioned belong to them
both. For individuals, therefore, to whom
the romance of Judaism and the tribal or
historic links which appeal so keenly to many
minds no longer afford attraction, to whom,
also, the urgent obligation to remain within
the community at the present time of stress
and storm is unrealised or unknown, the
temptation to desert Judaism, and to join
some Unitarian or Theistic body, may be
very strong. From the purely individual
point of view, it becomes a matter of personal
inclination and taste, on which there is no
arguing. We have, however, to consider it
in its relation to the community as a whole,
and to the outer world.
Now this is a practical question which is
before us, and we must regard it as practical
men. It is clear that we have not to deal
with large numbers ; we have to deal with
driblets and individuals. There is no question
of the Jews as a body, or even of a collected
mass of them, giving up their separate religi
ous organisation and joining another. It is
only a question of a few here and a few there.
The other religious bodies, then, will not
appreciably be strengthened. But, on the
other hand, Judaism will appreciably lose ;
and the loss of Judaism would be the loss of
Theism as well. For the Theism in which
liberal Jews believe would best be served if

202 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
all the eight or ten million Jews in the world
were keen Theists in the liberal sense. They
are Theists even now. Is their liberalism
likely to come the sooner if liberal Jews
abandon the community ? It is a very serious
and evil thing for a religious organisation if
its liberal elements become alienated or in
different. A reforming and transforming
force is thereby removed. The steady pres
sure of a keen and increasing band of liberals
must inevitably produce important results,
supposing that pressure is maintained for an
adequate and continuous time. If all liberal
Jews were active members of the Synagogue,
could they not make a considerable difference,
both in its services and ceremonial, and in the
very conception and presentation of its teach
ing and doctrine ? If the liberal forces are with
drawn, can liberals complain of conservatism
and sterility ? This argument will not be un
familiar to many persons. It is the argument
of the Broad Church party who desire to
reform from within instead of destroying from
without. Again, without presuming to criticise either
Mr. Voysey's community or the Unitarian
Churches, it is reasonable to remember that
they too have various difficulties and weaknesses
of their own. The one is at present a small
and solitary body, of recent origin, with no
great historic past, and with small guarantees

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 203
for its continuance and expansion. The other,
from my Jewish point of view, is perhaps
hardly separated with adequate sharpness and
decision from orthodox Christianity ; more
over, the children of Unitarians often marry
into the Established Church, and their off
spring is lost to Unitarianism. And liberal
Jews, though they can approve and appropriate
the nobler teachings of the New Testament,
are not prepared to call themselves Christians.
They are not prepared to call any man
master ; and certainly not one of whose life
and teaching, great and illustrious though
they be, the records are so uncertain and
contradictory, and bear such clear evidence
of exaggeration and inventive arrangement.
They require no mediator between the human
child and the divine Father.
Under these circumstances the liberal or
nominal Jew, while doing obvious harm to
his own community, will confer no benefit
upon the cause of Theism by joining another
religious organisation. Theism will best be
served by two separate contingents, one
Christian and one Jewish, each liberal and
progressive, each in sympathy with one
another, but each distinct, and with its own
peculiar differences and modifications. The
cause of pure religion will best be served by
Jews cleaving to Judaism and liberalising it.
Doing most good to our own brotherhood,

204 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
we shall also do most good to the world.
The second is involved in the first.
If this position be justifiable our separatism
is also justified. The Jews can only preserve
themselves by refusing intermarriage. Other
wise the tiny minority would gradually be
swallowed up by the majority. The true
religious reason for Jewish separatism is so
often misunderstood that it seems worth while
and even necessary to dwell upon the subject
in some detail.
It would be acknowledged on all hands
that there may be more grounds or motives
than one for the same action, and that two
men may concur in the propriety of a given
deed although they differ as to its justifica
tion. This elementary fact may be applied
to the question of Jewish separatism. It can
be observed and justified from two different
reasons. These two reasons may combine ;
a man may hold them both, but they may
also be very sharply dissociated from each
other. There is, then, first, the reason of
race ; and, secondly, there is the reason of
religion. There are persons who want to maintain
the Jewish race quite apart from any religious
consideration. There are some who would
even go so far as to speak of the Jews
as a "people" or a "nation," and would
desire to keep up, as they call it, the national

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 205
idea. Such persons would object to inter
marriage on purely "racial" or "national"
grounds. There are others who combine
these grounds with motives of religion. There
are others, again, who, while by no means
assenting to the theory that the Jews are a
nation, have yet a sort of sentimental, un
reasoned, atavistic feeling of race, and dislike
the notion of intermarriage. With all these
I am in disagreement. If it were not so, I
should indeed be guilty of a contradiction
when I desire the " denationalisation " of
Judaism, and support the counter-theory of
an "Englishman of the' Jewish persuasion."
A man can only belong to one nation at a
time. But, heart and soul an Englishman by
nation, one can also be heart and soul a Jew
by religion. But by religion only. The
mere race is unimportant ; it has no influence
upon action. An Englishman may be proud
of his Huguenot descent, but that makes no
difference to his feelings and actions. A
" French " Canadian is a Briton. I may be
proud of my Jewish race (though what Jew
knows whether his race is pure ?), but it
makes no difference to my action. In all
tastes, feelings, and ideas — apart from religion
— I have far more in common with a Christian
Englishman than with a Bulgarian Jew. If
it were not for religion, there would not, from
my point of view, be the smallest objection to

206 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
intermarriage. On the contrary, there would
be very much indeed in its favour.
But quite different from all race reasons is
the reason of religion. There is nothing racial
or national about the Roman Catholic objec
tion to intermarriage. It is purely a question
of religion. The Roman Catholic authorities
object to the diminution of their numbers
which unrestricted intermarriage might bring
about. In England, at any rate, where they
are in a minority, they now make a condition
that such marriages can only be allowed if the
children are brought up as Catholics. Surely,
if Roman Catholics, whose Church is so
powerful and numerous, have these appre
hensions, it is not unreasonable that Jews,
who are everywhere in a minute minority,
should have them as well. If the Synagogue
were not officially so tied down to the letter
of a hard and fast law, and so unable to meet
new contingencies as they arise, it might per
haps be desirable to sanction mixed marriages
on the same terms as they are sanctioned by
Roman Catholics. But there would be two
very obvious dangers in doing so. First,
there could be no effective guarantees and
securities that the engagements would be
satisfactorily carried out ; and, secondly, the
children, even if brought up as Jews, would
be themselves extremely likely to contract
intermarriages without any safeguarding con-

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 207
ditions. The tendency to revert to the
dominating religion of the overwhelming
majority must necessarily be of enormous
strength. It may indeed be said, Why should a Jew
not marry a Unitarian or a Theist ? The
answer is, Because of the children. If the
Unitarian or Theist is willing to join our
ranks, then the children are likely to be
brought up as Jews and to marry Jews. If
the marriage is "mixed," they may marry
anybody, and are as likely as not to be
merged in the general mass. The Jews must
possess and must cultivate a sense of a re
ligious mission not yet completed. We may
welcome others to our camp ; we dare not
ourselves abandon it. In the present religious
condition of the world our responsibility to
the Theistic cause is enormous. Every Jew
who, with the utmost humility, feels that he
has at all events some religious aspirations,
some desire for the religious life, some living
belief in God, should regard himself as a
consecrated servant of Deity, and in spite of
all difficulties remain faithful to his charge.
Till the religious desirability of our dissolution
is clearly apparent, let us not ourselves break
the only bond which can hold a small and
scattered religious organisation together.
And how can the religious desirability
of our dissolution be proved ? For what

208 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
religious advantage can liberal Jews gain to
themselves, to their children, or to mankind
by deserting their own historic faith for any
other creed ? It would seem more rational
to ask others to join them than themselves to
join others. What dogma does liberal Judaism
hold which they do not ? What dogma do
they hold which liberal Judaism does not ?
What expansion do they desire to which
Judaism cannot attain ?
On the theoretical side we have seen that
liberal Judaism does not offer an uncritical
non possumus to any complementary truth
which the New Testament has to offer us.
Nor is it bound to any hard and fast doctrine
of inspiration, presenting as it does a free
and unfettered attitude towards questions of
criticism or of miracle. Therefore, on the
theoretical side, what has a liberal to gain by
desertion ?
On the side of practice and embodiment
we have seen that the festivals are capable of
a large and spiritual interpretation. They
are vehicles and advantages for our religious
life, not hindrances or obstacles. It is true that
there are difficulties in language, in liturgy
and in other outward details, but these diffi
culties it is partly within our power to lessen
and remove, and partly they should be toler
ated for the sake of a greater and more
permanent good. It is true that we are at

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 209
present more likely to hear free and fearless
discussion of religious and philosophical ques
tions in Theistic and Unitarian churches than
in synagogues, but the remedy for this, too,
lies partly in our own hands. Thus, if the
difficulties and objections are partly imaginary,
partly soluble and partly temporary, how can
any liberal Jew be justified in abandoning
Judaism ? How can he even justify a mere
listless and nominal adherence to his own
conscience ?
Because the doctrines of liberal Judaism
are broad, capable of being held by others
than those of the Jewish race, they are none
the less Jewish. Because they are even now
held by others, they are none the less ours.
If, in addition, we hold that the Jews are
divinely chosen to cherish and diffuse them,
how can any one deny us the right to call our
religion by its historic name ? All the talk
of an eviscerated, denationalised Judaism does
very well for loose controversy and party
polemics : it does not bear the white light of
dispassionate reason and inquiry. It comes
from our opponents. Liberals should not be
deceived by it.
We need not neglect the immense advant
ages of an historic religion because our own
chosen form of Judaism answers to our modern
beliefs and aspirations. Religion to us cannot
be merely national : we can only belong to
p

210 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
a religion which in doctrine is catholic and
universalist. But national and historic are
not the same. Christianity and Buddhism
are universal religions, but none the less they
are historic. The continuity, the emotions,
the ties, the stimulus of history and of a
historic faith can be appropriated by orthodox
and liberals alike. All depends on whether
we do or do not believe that God rules the
world, and that the great spiritual forces of
history have arisen by his will. All depends
on whether we do or do not believe that the
Jews were " chosen " by God for a religious
work, which was not concluded at the rise of
Christianity, and which is not concluded now.
If any one born a Jew can deliberately and
honestly say that he believes the religious
work of the Jews and of Judaism to be over,
then he has honestly ceased to be a Jew by
faith, and he may with a good conscience aver
that Judaism has no claim or call upon his
conduct and his aims. But if the man born
a Jew yet believes in the Jewish " mission,"
how can that mission be best fulfilled by his
indifference, neglect and desertion ? The
Jews will do an ill turn to Theism and to
the cause of liberal religion by abandoning
their historic faith and their historic name.
Who, moreover, makes the suggestion ?
A few discontented and disaffected individuals
from our own camp. It is no question of

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 211
practical politics. And what could be worse
for our religion than that the liberal elements
should be removed from it ? Let us not be
deceived. It is for us to remain where we
are and to reform from within. We have to
prove the reality of liberal Judaism by the
ardour of our attachment, and by the zeal
and activity of our religious life. There
must be an inward religious life of feeling,
aspiration and prayer ; there must be an
outward religious life of family and public
worship, and of Sabbath and festival observance.
A large number of arguments all converge
to the same issue, namely, that it is the duty
of liberal Jews to remain within the limits of
Judaism. Even the philosopher, who tries
to put himself above all religions so that he
may understand them more impartially, might
urge that a variety of Theistic creeds is an
advantage to humanity and to religion.
Jewish and Christian Unitarianism each
possess their peculiar characteristics, and for
all Jews to join the Christian wing, or for
all Christians to join the Jewish wing, would
lessen the richness and colour of religious
life. Each branch may contain some special
nuance of truth, may emphasise and express
one aspect of it more clearly and fully than
the other. I am at a loss to conceive what
good the liberal Jew will do to religion by
abandoning Judaism. For the sake of

212 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
dubious and temporary advantages he will
betray a trust and forfeit the benefits of
history. Let him rather develop what he has ;
let him purify and expand it ; but do not let
him allow (so far as he is concerned) a
religious history and a religious martyrdom
of centuries to end in impotence and futility.
A more impassioned appeal may rightly
be made to the merely lax and indifferent
Jew. For the Jew who, from a religious
motive, attends Unitarian or "Theistic"
churches, and brings up his children as Uni
tarians or " Theists," acts honourably if he
acts mistakenly. His children will not get
all the religious force which they might
get ; he is robbing them of their spiritual
heritage ; yet his motive is clean. But the
Jew who, through laxness and indifference,
gives up his public and private religious
life without joining any other religious
organisation, is in a far worse condition of
mind. He is a far greater evil to himself,
to his children, to Judaism and to religion.
It is because this laxity and indifference often
begin nowadays in doubt and hesitation
that this book has been written. Theoreti
cally such persons vaguely believe that Judaism
is discredited, that the Old Testament is no
longer thought "true." Practically they
find nothing to stimulate or attract them in
the Synagogue services ; the " embodiment "

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 213
of Judaism is inconvenient and unpleasing.
Hence they gradually become more and
more detached. Occasional lapses harden
into absolute nonconformity.
The purpose of this book is to show to
such persons what liberal Judaism really is,
and what are the doctrines which it implies.
I have tried to show that it still has a
"message" and a "mission" — a distinct
place in the religious economy of the world.
It is not obsolete or obsolescent ; it is still
capable of progress, purification and develop
ment. Like other religious creeds it is not
without its difficulties, but these difficulties
are not insuperable. Some must be borne for
the sake of a greater good ; some vanish on
closer inspection ; some can be removed.
The future of liberal Judaism lies partly
in our own hands. Under the grace and
will of God, it is for us to develop and
improve it. If we skulk away and im-
potently whine and whimper, no wonder
that the cause of liberal religion is given
wholly to other hands.
Now, if the arguments here advanced seem
of any truth and validity to such doubtful and
puzzled persons as may chance to read this
book, it is not illegitimate to make to them
a more emotional appeal. If to their reason
Judaism should no longer seem an outworn
and impossible creed, may one not then speak

214 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.
to the feeling and the will ? If Judaism —
in its liberal form — is a reasonable creed, then
the question of duty emphatically comes in.
Unless you reject Judaism by your reason,
it has a claim upon your allegiance. Unless
your aloofness is justified to your mind, that
aloofness is a crime. You are guilty of
betrayal, of desertion. Judaism cannot dis
pense with any one of us, little as any one
of us can do. We must all hold on to
the work, which demands the whole-hearted
service of every unit, however small and
insignificant he be.
More especially is there a duty laid upon
liberals. For we have to show that the
combination of Liberalism and Judaism is
a working and living reality. We have to
rise above the difficulties on the one hand,
to lessen them upon the other. We have
to use the environment which now exists, but
also gradually to transform it. Such is our
task. The task needs fidelity, keenness,
intelligence and combination. But given the
allegiance of the mind, it is a task from
which none must falter or quail, to which
none must be indifferent or aloof.
Such is the appeal I would make for the
sake of liberal Judaism, and through liberal
Judaism for the sake of religion. But there
is another appeal still — an appeal which is
also for the sake of religion and humanity —

xi LIBERAL JUDAISM 215
but also more intimate and personal. The
indifferent and the lax are not only doing
a wrong to Judaism, but to their children
and to themselves.
Can they do without religion ? I think
not. Nor let it be urged that the average
man or the average child can do without a
religious name, that he can dispense with
public or family worship, that he does not
require any rites or reminders or ceremonies.
" Religion is inward, spiritual : the true
religion is above all its manifestations. It
lies behind Christianity and behind Judaism.
Because of religion I will belong to no
religion." The argument may serve for
angels ; it does not answer for children and
men.Eagles boast of pinions — let them soar !
I may put forth angel's plumage, once unmanned, but
not before.
Human nature needs a definite religion,
not only religion. He who never prays with
his fellows may lose the habit of praying
alone. Children who observe no forms
may lose the thought of God altogether.
These and other kindred arguments apply
with special force to Jews. Christians have
many associations and environments which
are of religious efficacy and value. These
are necessarily wanting to Jews. We largely
depend upon our synagogues and still more

216 LIBERAL JUDAISM chap, xi
upon our homes. We must create our own
religious atmosphere and environment : they
will not come to us ready-made. Jews are
often said to have materialistic tendencies.
The charge is possibly true in this sense that
the non-religious Jew is perhaps a more
material creature than the non - religious
Gentile. If this be so, it serves my turn.
For our children's sake how can we dare to
be lax and indifferent any longer? Should
we not give them a force and a sword with
which they may battle against temptation,
with which they may keep themselves clean
and pure, filled with high aims and holy
thoughts ? Is it not hard to be pure ? God
can help us whether we ask for his help or
no. But by the very law of his being, so far
as man can apprehend it, those who seek
him most shall find him most ; those who
most earnestly yearn for his strength shall
most fully receive it. Judaism and religion
summon us with the same appeal. For our
own and for our children's sake, let us answer
to their call.

the end

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