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Title: The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915" ***
THE MENORAH JOURNAL
[Illustration]
VOLUME I
NO. 1
JANUARY
1915
Greetings: From Dr. CYRUS ADLER, LOUIS D. BRANDEIS,
Professor RICHARD GOTTHEIL, Dr. JOSEPH JACOBS, Dr.
KAUFMAN KOHLER, Justice IRVING LEHMAN, Judge JULIAN W.
MACK, Dr. J. L. MAGNES, Dr. MARTIN A. MEYER, Dr. DAVID
PHILIPSON, Dr. SOLOMON SCHECHTER, JACOB H. SCHIFF, and
Dr. STEPHEN S. WISE
A Call to the Educated Jew LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
Menorah: A Poem WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD
The Jews in the War JOSEPH JACOBS
Jewish Students in European Universities HARRY WOLFSON
The Twilight of Hebraic Culture MAX L. MARGOLIS
Days of Disillusionment SAMUEL STRAUSS
Three University Addresses--President ARTHUR T. HADLEY of
Yale University, Chancellor ELMER E. BROWN of New York
University, President CHARLES W. DABNEY of the University
of Cincinnati
The Menorah Movement HENRY HURWITZ
From College and University: Reports from Menorah Societies
PUBLISHED BY THE INTERCOLLEGIATE MENORAH ASSOCIATION
600 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK -:- -:- -:- 25 CTS. A COPY
INTERCOLLEGIATE MENORAH
ASSOCIATION
For the Study and Advancement of
Jewish Culture and Ideals
OFFICERS
Chancellor
HENRY HURWITZ
600 Madison Avenue, New York
President
I. LEO SHARFMAN
University of Michigan
First Vice-President
MOSES BARRON
University of Minnesota
Second Vice-President
LEON J. ROSENTHAL
Cornell University
Secretary
ISADOR BECKER
University of Michigan
Treasurer
J. K. MILLER
Penn State College
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL
Composed of Representatives, one each, from every constituent Menorah
Society (The Representatives for 1915 will be announced in the next
issue of The Menorah Journal)
There are Menorah Societies now at the following Colleges and
Universities:
Boston University
Brown University
Clark University
College of City of New York
Columbia University
Cornell University
Harvard University
Hunter College
Johns Hopkins University
New York University
Ohio State University
Penn State College
Radcliffe College
Rutgers College
Tufts College
University of California
University of Chicago
University of Cincinnati
University of Colorado
University of Denver
University of Illinois
University of Maine
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of Missouri
University of North Carolina
University of Omaha
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh
University of Texas
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin
Valparaiso University
Western Reserve University
Yale University
Office of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
600 Madison Avenue, New York
THE MENORAH JOURNAL
VOLUME I JANUARY, 1915 NUMBER 1
An Editorial Statement
THE MENORAH JOURNAL, in its efforts to carry forward the aims and
aspirations of the Menorah movement, will necessarily be far more than
merely an "official organ" for the Menorah Societies. That function,
indeed, becomes increasingly important as the Menorah Societies
multiply in number and influence throughout the country. In this
special appeal to Menorah members, however, the Journal will be more
than a news medium; it will supply important material for study and
discussion, and stimulate thinking and active effort in behalf of
Menorah ideals. And inasmuch as the furtherance of Menorah ideals
means the advancement of American Jewry and the spread of Hebraic
culture, the Journal should appeal to every one in America who
sympathises with these purposes. The Journal will be conducted with
this general appeal always in mind--with the desire, indeed, to make
it a model publication dealing with Jewish life and thought. To
publish a periodical that shall measure up to this high standard, with
its accompanying influence and power, is one of the aspirations of the
Menorah movement; and the Menorah auspices and conditions are so
peculiarly favorable to the achievement of this ambition as to lend
every encouragement to the effort that will be put forth to make the
Journal a genuinely significant publication for the whole of American
Jewry.
For conceived as it is and nurtured as it must continue to be in the
spirit that gave birth to the Menorah idea, the Menorah Journal is
under compulsion to be absolutely non-partisan, an expression of all
that is best in Judaism and not merely of some particular sect or
school or locality or group of special interests; fearless in telling
the truth; promoting constructive thought rather than aimless
controversy; animated with the vitality and enthusiasm of youth;
harking back to the past that we may deal more wisely with the present
and the future; recording and appreciating Jewish achievement, not to
brag, but to bestir ourselves to emulation and to deepen the
consciousness of _noblesse oblige_; striving always to be sane and
level-headed; offering no opinions of its own, but providing an
orderly platform for the discussion of mooted questions that really
matter; dedicated first and foremost to the fostering of the Jewish
"humanities" and the furthering of their influence as a spur to human
service.
It will undoubtedly prove necessary on more than one occasion in the
future to emphasize again the fact that the Journal is an
unqualifiedly non-partisan forum for the discussion of Jewish
problems; and that accordingly neither the Menorah Journal nor the
Menorah Societies are to be regarded as standing sponsor for the views
expressed in these columns by contributors. Nor will the Journal have
any editorials expressing the views of its editors or of the Menorah
organization,--particularly since the Menorah organization takes no
official stand on mooted subjects. The editorial policy will be one of
fairness in giving equal hospitality to opposing views; and space will
gladly be given to reasonable letters or articles that take exception
to statements or opinions published in these pages.
The Journal is singularly fortunate in having enlisted the
co-operation of the distinguished leaders of Jewish life and thought
who comprise its Board of Consulting Editors. The assurances already
in hand of important articles to come from our Consulting Editors and
from other notable men and women, both Jewish and non-Jewish, lend
strength to the editorial confidence that succeeding issues will more
and more repay the public interest. As an incidental but none the less
vital aim, the Journal hopes to be instrumental in encouraging our
young men and women, particularly in the Menorah membership, to devote
themselves to Jewish subjects as worthy of their best literary
effort,--with publication in the Menorah Journal as a prize to be
eagerly sought for. The Menorah hopes through the incentive of the
Journal to develop a "new school" of writers on Jewish topics that
shall be distinguished by the thoroughness and clarity of the
university-trained mind and inspired by the youthful, searching,
unfearing spirit of the Menorah movement.
With these aims and these aspirations, the Menorah Journal bids for
the favor of the public. Scholarly when scholarship will be in order,
but always endeavoring to be timely, vivacious, readable; keen in the
pursuit of truth wherever its source and whatever the consequences; a
Jewish forum open to all sides; devoted first and last to bringing out
the values of Jewish culture and ideals, of Hebraism and of Judaism,
and striving for their advancement--the Menorah Journal hopes not
merely to entertain, but to enlighten, in a time when knowledge,
thought, and vision are more than ever imperative in Jewish life.
Greetings
_From Dr. Cyrus Adler_
_President of the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning,
Philadelphia_
[Illustration]
I AM very glad to be able through this first number of your Journal to
send a word of greeting to the Menorah men throughout the United
States. An Association which has as its object the promotion in
American colleges and universities of the study of Jewish history,
culture and problems, and the advancement of Jewish ideals, cannot but
fail to command my personal and official interest and support.
The Jewish people have a long and honorable record of literary
activity. Our Holy Scriptures, our Rabbinical Literature, our
contributions to philosophy, to ethics, to law, our poetry, sacred and
secular, our share in the world's history, all become part of the
program which you have laid out for yourselves as a means of
cultivation. In their due proportion they should (although they do
not) form a part of the outfit of every educated man. That they should
be especially cultivated by Jewish young people is self-evident, and,
for several thousand years, they have been.
You Menorah men have taken the modern form of association for the
purpose of carrying on these studies, of cherishing your Jewish ideals
along with your general culture or with your chosen profession, and it
was high time that you should do so. You already count thousands of
young people, and as time goes on you will gradually increase in
number. From among your group will come the future leaders of the
Jewish people in America, and your main body will form our
intellectual backbone. It is my hope and belief that your movement
will gradually tend toward the maintenance and promotion of Judaism in
this land.
We are now a population of nearly three million souls. That such a
vast body should be lost to Judaism or should maintain a Judaism
ignorant of its language, its literature or its traditions, is almost
unthinkable. Conditions abroad may shift the center of gravity of
Judaism and of Jewish learning to the American continent. Your
movement is one which will aid in training the group that may be
expected to measure up to our new responsibilities.
It has been a source of great personal pleasure to me to meet with
your Association in your annual convention and to have the privilege
of coming in personal contact with some of your Societies,--at
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Boston Universities. I hope
to have the pleasure of meeting more of you and to derive more of the
stimulus which your enthusiasm gives me in my work. Speaking not only
in my own name but in behalf of my colleagues on the Board of
Governors and the Faculty of The Dropsie College for Hebrew and
Cognate Learning, I wish your Association and your Journal success in
all of your endeavors.
[Illustration: Signature: Cyrus Adler]
_From Louis D. Brandeis_
_Chairman of the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist
Affairs_
[Illustration]
THE formation at Harvard University on October 25, 1906, of the first
Menorah Society is a landmark in the Jewish Renaissance. That
Renaissance, in which the Society is certain to be a significant
factor, is of no less importance to America than to its Jews.
America offers to man his greatest opportunity--liberty amidst peace
and large natural resources. But the noble purpose to which America is
dedicated cannot be attained unless this high opportunity is fully
utilized; and to this end each of the many peoples which she has
welcomed to her hospitable shores must contribute the best of which it
is capable. To America the contribution of the Jews can be peculiarly
large. America's fundamental law seeks to make real the brotherhood of
man. That brotherhood became the Jews' fundamental law more than
twenty-five hundred years ago. America's twentieth century demand is
for social justice. That has been the Jews' striving ages-long. Their
religion and their afflictions have prepared them for effective
democracy. Persecution made the Jews' law of brotherhood
self-enforcing. It taught them the seriousness of life; it broadened
their sympathies; it deepened the passion for righteousness; it
trained them in patient endurance, in persistence, in self-control,
and in self-sacrifice. Furthermore, the widespread study of Jewish law
developed the intellect, and made them less subject to preconceptions
and more open to reason.
America requires in her sons and daughters these qualities and
attainments, which are our natural heritage. Patriotism to America, as
well as loyalty to our past, imposes upon us the obligation of
claiming this heritage of the Jewish spirit and of carrying forward
noble ideals and traditions through lives and deeds worthy of our
ancestors. To this end each new generation should be trained in the
knowledge and appreciation of their own great past; and the
opportunity should be afforded for the further development of Jewish
character and culture.
The Menorah Societies and their Journal deserve most generous support
in their efforts to perform this noble task.
[Illustration: Signature: Louis D. Brandeis]
_From Dr. Richard Gottheil_
_Professor of Rabbinical Literature and the Semitic Languages,
Columbia University_
[Illustration]
I HAVE been asked to say a word of greeting to the readers of the
Menorah Journal. I do so with pleasure; indeed with much satisfaction.
The Menorah students at our colleges and universities will now be
bound together by a new bond, one that will give them a more unified
direction and converge their efforts toward the goal which the Menorah
has set for itself.
I should like to think that it is not entirely fortuitous that this
added impulse is given to our work just at this time. We all feel that
the present is a moment when the very foundations of our ethical
life--both as individuals and as groups--have received a rude shock.
At such a time--more than ever--we need to understand and to bear in
mind the great teachings which Jewish sages have given to the world,
as their and our contribution to the moral foundations of society.
Such teachings were, in most cases, not decked out in the tawdry
trappings of a recondite and far-fetched philosophy, nor garnished
with the decorations of superlogical terminology, nor even put forth
with lusty rhetoric. They were simple and to the point, because they
were founded upon deep religious convictions.
One of these teachings occurs to me as I write these lines: "The moral
condition of the world depends upon three things--truth, justice and
peace." Have we outgrown such teaching? Have the astounding advances
made during the last one hundred years in the science of physical
living brought us any nearer to the true inwardness of moral living
than the ethical principles put forth by these early teachers? As our
hearts are rent by the sufferings of those who are caught in the
meshes of the terrible war now raging, and as our intellects are
befogged by the various excuses advanced in justification of carnage
and wholesale destruction, do not the simple words of the old Hebrew
sage appear to us as a beacon-light in the surrounding darkness?
"Truth, Justice, Peace!"
Many similar lessons are awaiting those who will show some little
willingness to learn and to know. They are a part of the patrimony
that is ours, and which for the most part we refuse to claim. A voice
is crying to us out of our own midst. We do not hear; for our ears are
sealed as with wax. The Menorah Societies, which now are to be found
in most of our institutions of higher learning, have set themselves
the task of bringing our Jewish students to a consciousness of their
own past, to a knowledge of their history as members of a great
historic people, and to a just appreciation of the teachings of their
religion. It is only the knowledge of what we have tried to be that
will make us realize fully what we are and will enable us to see what
our future may be. The Menorah Journal is intended to bring this
knowledge to our young men, to harden their Jewish resolve and to
point the way along which lies the consummation of our Jewish hopes.
It sends its greeting to every Jewish student, whether or not he be a
member of a Menorah Society. We of an older generation look to our
university and college men as the Jewish leaders of the future. Let
them gather around the Menorah Journal in order to make it a true
expression of Jewish ideals, a powerful incentive to join the ranks of
those who are active in our cause. The word of the Prophet comes to me
again: "Be ye strong, therefore, and let not your hands be weak; for
your work shall be rewarded."
[Illustration: Signature: Richard Gottheil]
_From Joseph Jacobs_
_Editor of The American Hebrew, New York_
[Illustration]
I GREET the appearance of the official organ of the Menorah Societies
something in the spirit of Ibsen's Master-Builder, who hears the
coming generation knocking at the door. I have long been of the
opinion that the future of American Israel lies with the academic Jews
of the American universities. The organ that represents them should
be, from this point of view, the voice of Israel's future in America.
If you can live up to that ideal, you have indeed a great future
before you.
[Illustration: Signature: Joseph Jacobs]
_From Dr. Kaufman Kohler_
_President of Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati_
[Illustration]
AS you wander through the ruins of the _Forum Romanum_ and are within
sight of the _Via Appia_ at the other end, your attention is riveted
by an exquisite white marble arch wonderfully preserved. It is the
Arch of Titus erected in memory of Rome's triumph over _Judæa Capta_.
As you look closer at the trophies chiseled on this famous monument,
you find there standing out most conspicuously the seven-armed
candlestick carried by the Jewish captives, the _Menorah_, regarded,
no doubt, by the proud victor as the most characteristic feature of
the destroyed Jewish temple. Yet how strange! It seems to be almost a
foreboding of the future dominion of the vanquished over the
vanquisher. Israel's state, with its temple, Israel's nationality was
trampled under foot by the Roman legions--Israel's religion remained
unconquered, the light of its truth remained undimmed; nay, it grew
brighter and stronger until the world was filled with its splendor.
Little did the Emperor Vespasian dream, when he granted Rabbi Johanan
ben Zakkai, the Jewish maker of learning, the privilege of building a
schoolhouse at Jamnia as a substitute for the hall of the judiciary in
the temple at Jerusalem, that this sanctuary of the Jewish law and
what it represents would by far eclipse all the power and greatness
of the Roman civilization. Yet this was symbolized by the Menorah.
Whether originally intended or not, it was the emblem of Israel's
mission of light. It indicated the task of the Jew, when scattered
over the wide globe, to be a light to the nations, the religious
luminary to the world. And if we be permitted to give a special
meaning to the seven arms of light of the Golden Candlestick, we might
find therein a suggestion of the lights of truth, justice and purity,
or holiness, on the one side, and the lights of law, literature, and
art, or wisdom, on the other, while the light in the center stands for
religion, from which all the other lights emanated and for which the
Jew throughout the centuries lived, suffered, and died, to preserve
intact as mankind's highest treasure to the very end of history.
These ideas I would offer as greeting to the editors and readers of
the Menorah Journal. The name "Menorah" was aptly chosen by the
founders of the pioneer Menorah Society with a view to the two-fold
task of the light-bearer, to enlighten a surrounding world, and to
foster self-respect in the hearts of the Jewish students by spreading
the light of Jewish knowledge among them. Now, if I understand
correctly the purpose of starting a Journal as the organ of the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association, it is to give to these endeavors
a more permanent and classical literary form, and thus successfully
defend the cause of Judaism. Wishing this enterprise all success and
Godspeed, I venture to express the hope that true to its name Menorah,
the Journal will become a real banner-bearer of light not only
dispelling clouds of doubt and of prejudice within and outside of our
camp, but also aiming to spread the truth of Judaism in all its
spiritual force and grandeur. Not nationalism, which in these days of
a cruel world-war with its barbarism puts our much-vaunted modern
civilization to everlasting shame and which has split the Jewish
people also into warring camps, but Judaism as a religion, which
notwithstanding the differences of its various wings as to form is in
its essentials and fundamentals one, should be the watchword, for it
is the light of the Torah that is both law and learning, religion and
culture, which is to unify and consolidate all the forces of American
Israel.
[Illustration: Signature: Dr. K. Kohler]
_From Irving Lehman_
_Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York_
[Illustration]
I CONGRATULATE the members of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
upon the fact that in their Journal they are obtaining a new
instrument to carry forward their work of bringing to the Jewish youth
knowledge of the old ideals and lessons of the Jewish past. During
these dreadful days, the Jewish students of almost every country
except America have been called from study, and preparation for a life
of usefulness, into pitiless war and useless destruction. The
oppressed in Russia, the student in Germany, and the free Englishman,
all have answered the call to arms of the country in which they live,
and each is fighting, firm in the belief that he is defending his
Fatherland against foreign aggression. The loyalty shown by our
brethren even in those countries where their treatment might well have
furnished at least an explanation for disloyalty, is a new
demonstration of the ancient spirit of devotion to their ideals which,
I believe, has always been the true spirit of the Jews. But the ideal
of national physical strength is not the ideal which we Jews had when
we were a nation and which we must strive to make the ideal of the
modern nations in which we live. Dark though these present days are,
yet humanity must progress into the light of a permanent peace, and
though the Jews are doing their full share of the fighting in this war
brought on by their rulers, we must do more than our share in bringing
to its fruition the ancient prophecy: "For the law shall go forth from
Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge many
people and rebuke strong nations, and they shall beat their swords
into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more."
The voice of this Journal may be only a weak, small voice, but if that
voice speaks in the spirit of the prophet and brings home to us the
worth of the prophetic ideals, it may well prove an important factor
in enabling Israel to fulfill its mission as a messenger of peace to
all the nations.
[Illustration: Signature: Irving Lehman]
_From Julian W. Mack_
_Judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals_
[Illustration]
MY hopes are high that the Menorah Journal may prove a valuable means
not only of linking together the Menorah Societies of the country but
also of bringing to the individual members a clearer conception of the
culture, ideals and traditions of the Jews, thereby increasing their
interest in all things Jewish.
This would inevitably tend to strengthen the religious faith of the
Jewish members and to awaken in all of the members a keener and a more
intelligent appreciation of the contribution which Jews and Judaism
have made to human progress.
[Illustration: Signature: Julian W. Mack]
_From Dr. J. L. Magnes_
_Chairman of Executive Committee, Jewish Community (Kehillah) of New
York_
[Illustration]
I SEND hearty greetings to the members of the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association upon the publication of the Journal. If the Journal can be
put upon a sound business basis assuring its permanence, its
publication will mark an important event in the development of Judaism
in America. What we need above all things is sound thinking on Jewish
affairs. I have no doubt that proper action will result from sound
thinking. The Menorah Journal ought to become the medium for
publishing the best thought modern Jewry is capable of. The present
catastrophe overwhelming Europe has conferred upon the Jews in America
the leadership of Jewry. We can assume this historic obligation only
if our theories be clear cut and well thought out.
[Illustration: Signature: J. L. Magnes]
_From Dr. Martin A. Meyer_
_Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco_
[Illustration]
IT is a pleasure to know that a journal is being launched in America
for the benefit of thinking Jews, which will stand between the
technical journal of the "Quarterly" type and outside of the purlieus
of our numerous "Weekly" gossip sheets.
Jewish journalism in America has done little, if anything, to justify
the numerous calls which it makes upon the people for support. On the
other hand, there is sad need for a journal representative of our best
thought, which will be readable and which will represent rather than
misrepresent us.
The field of Jewish culture and ideals surely has not been exhausted
by our European brethren. No matter what they may have contributed to
the exploitation of this field there surely remains ample ground for
the American Jew to express himself in the light of the old standards
of Jewish conduct and belief.
It goes without saying that your Journal will make its primary appeal
to the college man and woman. If successful, it will have saved for
Jewry its most valuable elements and enable us to build in the future
on a better and broader basis than the purely financial and commercial
leadership of the past.
From the far West we join hands with you in the far East and unite in
fervent hopes that the new Menorah Journal may grow from strength to
strength.
[Illustration: Signature: Martin A. Meyer]
_From Dr. David Philipson_
_Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati_
[Illustration]
SOME seventy years ago the celebrated Jewish scholar, Abraham Geiger,
charged the Jewish _intelligenzia_ of his day with indifference
towards Judaism and Jewish interests. This accusation of Geiger's has
since been repeated frequently. But a rift is appearing in the cloud.
To-day as never before our _intelligenzia_ as defined by university
training and education is identifying itself more and more with Jewish
life and aspiration in our country. And I feel that due credit should
be given the Menorah movement in our colleges for this change of
attitude of Jewish students and professors. This movement, still
young, has accomplished much in bringing together the young men and
women who form our intellectual elite into associations for the study
of Jewish history and the consideration of Jewish problems. It has
awakened an interest in Jewish matters in many who have been lukewarm
and indifferent. It has brought as lecturers to our colleges Jewish
men of light and leading from many communities, who have voiced their
messages and given food for thought to the future leaders now sitting
on university benches.
The call of the ages sounds to the intellectual nobility of our day
and generation. Learning has been extolled among Jews from earliest
times, and the wise man has been the accredited leader, so that it was
declared that "the wise man is greater than the prophet." I would have
the learned classes come again into their own. I would have our
university men in coming years the staunchest Jews in the community
through their intelligent interest in everything that makes for its
highest welfare.
To achieve this is the task of our university men. The possibility of
this achievement I see in such significant signs as the Menorah
movement, the institution of student congregations, and the launching
of this magazine by the Intercollegiate Menorah Association. What has
been called the "Jewish consciousness," a term which has done yeoman's
service during the past decade, is being aroused through these
agencies to an even greater degree. This aroused Jewish feeling will,
I am sure, be translated into active service more and more as the
years pass and the present generation of college men carve out their
careers in our communities throughout the country. This is the great
Jewish opportunity of the present generation; in this will they
reverse, such is my hope and my belief, that condition and that
attitude of the Jewish _intelligenzia_ in the past (and still largely
in the present) which evoked the statement of Abraham Geiger. May this
new undertaking prosper so that the young generation whom this
magazine represents may be helped toward a realization of its ideals,
and become an inspiration to all Jewry throughout the length and
breadth of the land.
[Illustration: Signature: David Philipson]
_From Dr. Solomon Schechter_
_President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America_
[Illustration]
I WISH to send my hearty congratulations to the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association upon their undertaking the publication of the
Menorah Journal, which I have no doubt will prove greatly helpful in
promoting the knowledge of Judaism among the Jewish college youth. In
a liberal country like ours, with the eagerness of our people for
acquiring knowledge, there never was a lack of Jews in our Colleges
and Universities. But what the Menorah Association will accomplish
with the aid of the Journal is, I hope, to have Judaism also
represented in our seats of learning.
[Illustration: Signature: S. Schechter]
_From Jacob H. Schiff_
[Illustration]
IT is with much satisfaction that I learn of the launching of the
Menorah Journal, to provide an opportunity for a more general spread
of the high ideals of the Menorah Societies among our college youth.
When I received some time ago a copy of the publication entitled "The
Menorah Movement," I noted with particular pleasure the progress the
Menorah Societies had already made. After an attentive perusal of the
contents of this publication, I felt as if a copy ought to be placed
in the hands of every Jewish college and university student, and I
myself distributed a number of copies for propaganda purposes. The
Menorah Societies are to be congratulated upon their new venture in
issuing the Journal, upon which I wish them every success. It is to be
hoped that the Menorah Journal will help the Jewish student to
understand what Judaism means and what as Jews we should strive for to
become useful and worthy citizens of this country. We shall have to
face increasing problems because of the deplorable war in Europe,
which so tragically affects our co-religionists there, and it will
require much devotion and understanding on our part to properly deal
with the conditions which will necessarily arise. The Menorah Journal
should freely discuss these conditions, so as to inspire its readers
with the desire to aid and the courage needed in the situation which
is facing us. Thus, by "spreading light," the Journal can greatly
assist the Menorah movement, and render efficient service in and
outside of the university. Let me wish Godspeed to your new
publication and its managers.
[Illustration: Signature: Jacob H. Schiff]
_From Dr. Stephen S. Wise_
_Rabbi of the Free Synagogue, New York_
[Illustration]
I REJOICE to learn of the establishment of an organ by the Menorah
Association. The Menorah Journal will, I take it, serve the threefold
purpose of keeping the various groups of the Menorah throughout the
universities of the land in constant touch with one another, of
interpreting the ideals of the Menorah to widening circles of the
Jewish youth, and of confirming anew, from time to time, the loyalty
of the Menorah men to the Menorah ideal.
A truly great Jew said about fifteen years ago that a high
self-reverence had transformed _arme Judenjungen_ into _stolze junge
Juden_. I believe that the Menorah movement in this land is in part
the cause and in other part the token of a transformation among young
American Jews to-day parallel to that cited by Theodor Herzl. It marks
a sea-change from the self pitying Jewish youth, immeasurably "sorry
for himself" because of his exclusion from certain dominantly
unfraternal groups, to the Jewish youth self-regarding, in the highest
sense of the term, self-knowing, self-revering. That the
self-respecting young Jew command the respect of the world without is
of minor importance by the side of the outstanding fact that he has
ceased to measure himself by the values which he imagined the
unfriendly elements of the world without had set upon him.
The Menorah movement is welcome as a proof of a new order in the life
of the young college Jew. He has come to see at last that it is comic,
in large part, to be shut out from the Greek letter fraternities of
the Hellenes and the Barbarians, but that it is tragic, in large part,
to shut himself out from the life of his own people. For it is from
his own people that he must draw his vision and spiritual sustenance
if he is to live a life of self-mastery rather than the life of a
contemptible parasite rooted nowhere and chameleonizing everywhere.
Time was when their fellow-Jews half excused the college men, who
drifted away from the life of Israel, as if the burden of the Jewish
bond were too much for the untried and unrobust shoulders of our
Jewish college men, as if their intellectual and moral squeamishness
led to inevitable revolt against association with their much-despised
and wholly misunderstood Jewish fellows. Now we see, and our younger
brothers of the Menorah fellowship have caught the vision, that no Jew
can be truly cultured who Jewishly uproots himself, that the man who
rejects the birthright of inheritance of the traditions of the
earliest and virilest of the cultured peoples of earth is
impoverishing his very being. The Jew who is a "little Jew" is less of
a man.
The Menorah lights the path for the fellowship of young Israel, finely
self-reverencing. Long be that rekindled light undimmed!
[Illustration: Signature: Stephen S. Wise]
A Call to the Educated Jew
BY LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
[Illustration: _Louis D. Brandeis (born in Louisville, Ky., in 1856),
lawyer and publicist, is a distinguished leader in the voluntary
profession of "public servant." His extraordinary record of unselfish,
genuine achievement in behalf of the public interest--for shorter
hours of labor, savings bank insurance, protection against monopoly,
against increase in railroad rates, etc.,--gives peculiar aptness to
the appeal for community service made in this article, which Mr.
Brandeis has prepared from a recent Menorah address. From the
beginning Mr. Brandeis has taken a keen interest in the Menorah
movement as a promotive force for the ideals he has at heart._]
WHILE I was in Cleveland a few weeks ago, a young man who has won
distinction on the bench told me this incident from his early life. He
was born in a little village of Western Russia where the opportunities
for schooling were meagre. When he was thirteen his parents sent him
to the nearest city in search of an education. There--in
Bialystok--were good secondary schools and good high schools; but the
Russian law, which limits the percentage of Jewish pupils in any
school, barred his admission. The boy's parents lacked the means to
pay for private tuition. He had neither relative nor friend in the
city. But soon three men were found who volunteered to give him
instruction. None of them was a teacher by profession. One was a
newspaper man; another was a chemist; the third, I believe, was a
tradesman; all were educated men. And throughout five long years these
three men took from their leisure the time necessary to give a
stranger an education.
The three men of Bialystok realized that education was not a thing of
one's own to do with as one pleases--not a personal privilege to be
merely enjoyed by the possessor--but a precious treasure transmitted
upon a sacred trust to be held, used and enjoyed, and if possible
strengthened--then passed on to others upon the same trust. Yet the
treasure which these three men held and the boy received in trust was
much more than an education. It included that combination of qualities
which enabled and impelled these three men to give and the boy to seek
and to acquire an education. These qualities embrace: first,
_intellectual capacity_; second, _an appreciation of the value of
education_; third, _indomitable will_; fourth, _capacity for hard
work_. It was these qualities which enabled the lad not only to
acquire but to so utilize an education that, coming to America,
ignorant of our language and of our institutions, he attained in
comparatively few years the important office he has so honorably
filled.
Now whence comes this combination of qualities of mind, body and
character? These are qualities with which every one is familiar,
singly and in combination; which you find in friends and relatives,
and which others doubtless discover in you. They are qualities
possessed by most Jews who have attained distinction or other success;
and in combination they may properly be called Jewish qualities. For
they have not come to us by accident; they were developed by three
thousand years of civilization, and nearly two thousand years of
persecution; developed through our religion and spiritual life;
through our traditions; and through the social and political
conditions under which our ancestors lived. They are, in short, the
product of Jewish life.
_The Fruit of Three Thousand Years of Civilization_
OUR intellectual capacity was developed by the almost continuous
training of the mind throughout twenty-five centuries. The Torah led
the "People of the Book" to intellectual pursuits at times when most
of the Aryan peoples were illiterate. And religion imposed the use of
the mind upon the Jews, indirectly as well as directly, and demanded
of the Jew not merely the love, but the understanding of God. This
necessarily involved a study of the Laws. And the conditions under
which the Jews were compelled to live during the last two thousand
years also promoted study in a people among whom there was already
considerable intellectual attainment. Throughout the centuries of
persecution practically the only life open to the Jew which could give
satisfaction was the intellectual and spiritual life. Other fields of
activity and of distinction which divert men from intellectual
pursuits were closed to the Jews. Thus they were protected by their
privations from the temptations of material things and worldly
ambitions. Driven by circumstances to intellectual pursuits, their
mental capacity gradually developed. And as men delight in that which
they do well, there was an ever widening appreciation of things
intellectual.
Is not the Jews' indomitable will--the power which enables them to
resist temptation and, fully utilizing their mental capacity, to
overcome obstacles--is not that quality also the result of the
conditions under which they lived so long? To live a Jew during the
centuries of persecution was to lead a constant struggle for
existence. That struggle was so severe that only the fittest could
survive. Survival was not possible except where there was strong
will--a will both to live and to live a Jew. The weaker ones passed
either out of Judaism or out of existence.
And finally, the Jewish capacity for hard work is also the product of
Jewish life--a life characterized by temperate, moral living continued
throughout the ages, and protected by those marvellous sanitary
regulations which were enforced through the religious sanctions.
Remember, too, that amidst the hardship to which our ancestors were
exposed it was only those with endurance who survived.
So let us not imagine that what we call our achievements are wholly or
even largely our own. The phrase "self-made man" is most misleading.
We have power to mar; but we alone cannot make. The relatively large
success achieved by Jews wherever the door of opportunity is opened to
them is due, in the main, to this product of Jewish life--to this
treasure which we have acquired by inheritance--and which we are in
duty bound to transmit unimpaired, if not augmented, to coming
generations.
But our inheritance comprises far more than this combination of
qualities making for effectiveness. These are but means by which man
may earn a living or achieve other success. Our Jewish trust comprises
also that which makes the living worthy and success of value. It
brings us that body of moral and intellectual perceptions, the point
of view and the ideals, which are expressed in the term Jewish spirit;
and therein lies our richest inheritance.
_The Kinship of Jewish and American Ideals_
IS it not a striking fact that a people coming from Russia, the most
autocratic of countries, to America, the most democratic of countries,
comes here, not as to a strange land, but as to a home? The ability of
the Russian Jew to adjust himself to America's essentially democratic
conditions is not to be explained by Jewish adaptability. The
explanation lies mainly in the fact that the twentieth century ideals
of America have been the ideals of the Jew for more than twenty
centuries. We have inherited these ideals of democracy and of social
justice as we have the qualities of mind, body and character to which
I referred. We have inherited also that fundamental longing for truth
on which all science--and so largely the civilization of the twentieth
century--rests; although the servility incident to persistent
oppression has in some countries obscured its manifestation.
Among the Jews democracy was not an ideal merely. It was a practice--a
practice made possible by the existence among them of certain
conditions essential to successful democracy, namely:
First: _An all-pervading sense of the duty in the citizen._ Democratic
ideals cannot be attained through emphasis merely upon the rights of
man. Even a recognition that every right has a correlative duty will
not meet the needs of democracy. Duty must be accepted as the dominant
conception in life. Such were the conditions in the early days of the
colonies and states of New England, when American democracy reached
there its fullest expression; for the Puritans were trained in
implicit obedience to stern duty by constant study of the Prophets.
Second: _Relatively high intellectual attainments._ Democratic ideals
cannot be attained by the mentally undeveloped. In a government where
everyone is part sovereign, everyone should be competent, if not to
govern, at least to understand the problems of government; and to this
end education is an essential. The early New Englanders appreciated
fully that education is an essential of potential equality. The
founding of their common school system was coincident with the
founding of the colonies; and even the establishment of institutions
for higher education did not lag far behind. Harvard College was
founded but six years after the first settlement of Boston.
Third: _Submission to leadership as distinguished from authority._
Democratic ideals can be attained only where those who govern exercise
their power not by alleged divine right or inheritance, but by force
of character and intelligence. Such a condition implies the attainment
by citizens generally of relatively high moral and intellectual
standards; and such a condition actually existed among the Jews. These
men who were habitually denied rights, and whose province it has been
for centuries "to suffer and to think," learned not only to sympathize
with their fellows (which is the essence of democracy and social
justice), but also to accept voluntarily the leadership of those
highly endowed morally and intellectually.
Fourth: _A developed community sense._ The sense of duty to which I
have referred was particularly effective in promoting democratic
ideals among the Jews, because of their deep-seated community feeling.
To describe the Jew as an individualist is to state a most misleading
half-truth. He has to a rare degree merged his individuality and his
interests in the community of which he forms a part. This is evidenced
among other things by his attitude toward immortality. Nearly every
other people has reconciled this world of suffering with the idea of a
beneficent providence by conceiving of immortality for the individual.
The individual sufferer bore present ills by regarding this world as
merely the preparation for another, in which those living righteously
here would find individual reward hereafter. Of all the nations,
Israel "takes precedence in suffering"; but, despite our national
tragedy, the doctrine of individual immortality found relatively
slight lodgment among us. As Ahad Ha-'Am so beautifully said: "Judaism
did not turn heavenward and create in Heaven an eternal habitation of
souls. It found 'eternal life' on earth, by strengthening the social
feeling in the individual; by making him regard himself not as an
isolated being with an existence bounded by birth and death, but as
part of a larger whole, as a limb of the social body. This conception
shifts the center of gravity not from the flesh to the spirit, but
from the individual to the community; and concurrently with this
shifting, the problem of life becomes a problem not of individual, but
of social life. I live for the sake of the perpetuation and happiness
of the community of which I am a member; I die to make room for new
individuals, who will mould the community afresh and not allow it to
stagnate and remain forever in one position. When the individual thus
values the community as his own life, and strives after its happiness
as though it were his individual well-being, he finds satisfaction,
and no longer feels so keenly the bitterness of his individual
existence, because he sees the end for which he lives and suffers." Is
not that the very essence of the truly triumphant twentieth-century
democracy?
_The Two-fold Command of Noblesse Oblige_
SUCH is our inheritance; such the estate which we hold in trust. And
what are the terms of that trust; what the obligations imposed? The
short answer is _noblesse oblige_; and its command is two-fold. It
imposes duties upon us in respect to our own conduct as individuals;
it imposes no less important duties upon us as part of the Jewish
community or race. Self-respect demands that each of us lead
individually a life worthy of our great inheritance and of the
glorious traditions of the race. But this is demanded also by respect
for the rights of others. The Jews have not only been ever known as a
"peculiar people"; they were and remain a distinctive and minority
people. Now it is one of the necessary incidents of a distinctive and
minority people that the act of any one is in some degree attributed
to the whole group. A single though inconspicuous instance of
dishonorable conduct on the part of a Jew in any trade or profession
has far-reaching evil effects extending to the many innocent members
of the race. Large as this country is, no Jew can behave badly without
injuring each of us in the end. Thus the Rosenthal and the white-slave
traffic cases, though local to New York, did incalculable harm to the
standing of the Jews throughout the country. The prejudice created may
be most unjust, but we may not disregard the fact that such is the
result. Since the act of each becomes thus the concern of all, we are
perforce our brothers' keepers. Each, as co-trustee for all, must
exact even from the lowliest the avoidance of things dishonorable; and
we may properly brand the guilty as traitor to the race.
But from the educated Jew far more should be exacted. In view of our
inheritance and our present opportunities, self-respect demands that
we live not only honorably but worthily; and worthily implies nobly.
The educated descendants of a people which in its infancy cast aside
the Golden Calf and put its faith in the invisible God cannot worthily
in its maturity worship worldly distinction and things material. "Two
men he honors and no third," says Carlyle--"the toil-worn craftsman
who conquers the earth and him who is seen toiling for the spiritually
indispensable."
And yet, though the Jew make his individual life the loftiest, that
alone will not fulfill the obligations of his trust. We are bound not
only to use worthily our great inheritance, but to preserve and, if
possible, augment it; and then transmit it to coming generations. The
fruit of three thousand years of civilization and a hundred
generations of suffering may not be sacrificed by us. It will be
sacrificed if dissipated. Assimilation is national suicide. And
assimilation can be prevented only by preserving national
characteristics and life as other peoples, large and small, are
preserving and developing their national life. Shall we with our
inheritance do less than the Irish, the Servians, or the Bulgars? And
must we not, like them, have a land where the Jewish life may be
naturally led, the Jewish language spoken, and the Jewish spirit
prevail? Surely we must, and that land is our fathers' land: it is
Palestine.
_A Land Where the Jewish Spirit May Prevail_
THE undying longing for Zion is a fact of deepest significance--a
manifestation in the struggle for existence. Zionism is, of course,
not a movement to remove all the Jews of the world compulsorily to
Palestine. In the first place, there are in the world about 14,000,000
Jews, and Palestine would not accommodate more than one-fifth of that
number. In the second place, this is not a movement to compel anyone
to go to Palestine. It is essentially a movement to give to the Jew
more, not less, freedom--a movement to enable the Jews to exercise the
same right now exercised by practically every other people in the
world--to live at their option either in the land of their fathers or
in some other country; a right which members of small nations as well
as of large--which Irish, Greek, Bulgarian, Servian or Belgian, as
well as German or English--may now exercise.
Furthermore, Zionism is not a movement to wrest from the Turk the
sovereignty of Palestine. Zionism seeks merely to establish in
Palestine for such Jews as choose to go and remain there, and for
their descendants, a legally secured home, where they may live
together and lead a Jewish life; where they may expect ultimately to
constitute a majority of the population, and may look forward to what
we should call home rule.
The establishment of the legally secured Jewish home is no longer a
dream. For more than a generation brave pioneers have been building
the foundations of our new old home. It remains for us to build the
superstructure. The Ghetto walls are now falling, Jewish life cannot
be preserved and developed, assimilation cannot be averted, unless
there be reëstablished in the fatherland a center from which the
Jewish spirit may radiate and give to the Jews scattered throughout
the world that inspiration which springs from the memories of a great
past and the hope of a great future. To accomplish this it is not
necessary that the Jewish population of Palestine be large as compared
with the whole number of Jews in the world. Throughout centuries when
the Jewish influence was great, and it was working out its own, and in
large part the world's, destiny during the Persian, the Greek, and
the Roman Empires, only a relatively small part of the Jews lived in
Palestine; and only a small part of the Jews returned from Babylon
when the Temple was rebuilt.
The glorious past can really live only if it becomes the mirror of a
glorious future; and to this end the Jewish home in Palestine is
essential. We Jews of prosperous America above all need its
inspiration. And the Menorah men should be its builders.
[Illustration: Signature: Louis D. Brandeis]
_THERE are two things necessary in the Jewish life of
this country. The one is an heroic attempt to organize
the Jews of the country for Jewish things. That can be
done, I believe, primarily through the organization of
self-conscious Jewish communities throughout the
country. The other thing necessary is, that we have
vigorous Jewish thinking. We need a theory, a
substantial theory, for our Jewish life, just as much
as we need Jewish organization. We need to have our
college men think their problems through without fear,
courageously, by whatever name their theories may be
known, be these theories called Zionism or
anti-Zionism, Reform Judaism or Orthodox Judaism. We
need some vigorous Jewish thinking._--_From a Menorah
Address by Dr. J. L. Magnes._
Menorah
By WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD
[Illustration: _WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD (born in New Jersey in 1876),
Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, is the
author of several volumes of verse and literary criticism which have
won high praise,--notably "Sonnets and Poems," "Byron and Byronism in
America," and "The Vaunt of Man."_]
WE'VE read in legends of the books of old
How deft Bezalel, wisest in his trade,
At the command of veilèd Moses made
The seven-branched candlestick of beaten gold--
The base, the shaft, the cups, the knops, the flowers,
Like almond blossoms--and the lamps were seven.
We know at least that on the templed rock
Of Zion hill, with earth's revolving hours
Under the changing centuries of heaven,
It stood upon the solemn altar block,
By every Gentile who had heard abhorred--
The holy light of Israel of the Lord;
Until that Titus and the legions came
And battered the walls with catapult and fire,
And bore the priests and candlestick away,
And, as memorial of fulfilled desire,
Bade carve upon the arch that bears his name
The stone procession ye may see today
Beyond the Forum on the Sacred Way,
Lifting the golden candlestick of fame.
The city fell, the temple was a heap;
And little children, who had else grown strong
And in their manhood venged the Roman wrong,
Strewed step and chamber, in eternal sleep.
But the great vision of the sevenfold flames
Outlasted the cups wherein at first it sprung.
The Greeks might teach the arts, the Romans law;
The heathen hordes might shout for bread and games;
Still Israel, exalted in the realms of awe,
Guarded the Light in many an alien air,
Along the borders of the midland sea
In hostile cities, spending praise and prayer
And pondering on the larger things to be--
Down through the ages when the Cross uprose
Among the northern Gentiles to oppose:
Then huddled in the ghettos, barred at night,
In lands of unknown trees and fiercer snows,
They watched forevermore the Light, the Light.
The main seas opened to the west. The Nations
Covered new continents with generations
That had their work to do, their thought to say;
And Israel's hosts from bloody towns afar
In the dominions of the ermined Czar,
Seared with the iron, scarred with many a stroke,
Crowded the hollow ships but yesterday
And came to us who are tomorrow's folk.
And the pure Light, however some might doubt
Who mocked their dirt and rags, had not gone out.
The holy Light of Israel hath unfurled
Its tongues of mystic flame around the world.
Empires and Kings and Parliaments have passed;
Rivers and mountain chains from age to age
Become new boundaries for man's politics.
The navies run new ensigns up the mast,
The temples try new creeds, new equipage;
The schools new sciences beyond the six.
And through the lands where many a song hath rung
The people speak no more their fathers' tongue.
Yet in the shifting energies of man
The Light of Israel remains her Light.
And gathered to a splendid caravan
From the four corners of the day and night,
The chosen people--so the prophets hold--
Shall yet return unto the homes of old
Under the hills of Judah. Be it so.
Only the stars and moon and sun can show
A permanence of light to hers akin.
What is that Light? Who is there that shall tell
The purport of the tribe of Israel?--
In the wild welter of races on that earth
Which spins in space where thousand other spin--
The casual offspring of the Cosmic Mirth
Perhaps--what is there any man can win,
Or any nation? Ultimates aside,
Men have their aims, and Israel her pride.
She stands among the rest, austere, aloof,
Still the peculiar people, armed in proof
Of Selfhood, whilst the others merge or die.
She stands among the rest and answers: "I,
Above ye all, must ever gauge success
By ideal types, and know the more and less
Of things as being in the end defined,
For this our human life by righteousness.
And if I base this in Eternal Mind--
Our fathers' God in victory or distress--
I cannot argue for my hardihood,
Save that the thought is in my flesh and blood,
And made me what I was in olden time,
And keeps me what I am today in every clime."
[Illustration: Signature: William Ellery Leonard]
The Jews in the War
BY JOSEPH JACOBS
[Illustration: _JOSEPH JACOBS (born in New South Wales in 1854), noted
author and editor, was one of England's well-known scholars and men of
letters when he was called to America to become managing editor of the
Jewish Encyclopedia. He has held the chair of English literature at
the Jewish Theological Seminary, and is now editor of the American
Hebrew. He is the author of many authoritative books, including "Jews
of Angevin England," "Studies in Jewish Statistics," "Jewish Ideals,"
and "Literary Studies."_]
IT is of course difficult to conjecture what will be the ultimate
effect of such a world-cataclysm as the present European war on the
fate of the Jews of the world. The chief center of interest naturally
lies in the eastern field of the war which happens to rage within the
confines of Old Poland. This kingdom, founded by the Jagellons,
brought together Roman Catholic Poland and Greek Catholic Lithuania
and could not, therefore, apply in full rigor the mediaeval principle
that only those could belong to the State who belonged to the State
Church. Hence a certain amount of toleration of religious differences,
which led to Poland forming the chief asylum of the Jews evicted from
Western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As a
consequence here lies the most crowded seat of Jewish population in
the world. From it comes the vast majority of the third of a million
Jews in the prime of life who are fighting for their native countries
and often against their fellow-Jews. Probably three hundred thousand
Jewish soldiers are under arms in this district. Besides the
inevitable loss by death of many of these and the distress caused by
the removal of so many others for an indefinite period from
breadwinning for their families, there must be ineffable woe caused by
the fact that this district is the scene of strenuous conflicts, which
lead to the wholesale destruction of the Jewish homes in a literal
sense. When one reflects that one out of every six of the inhabitants
of Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Poland is a Jew, the extent of the
misery thus caused may be imagined. One meets friends whose
birth-place changes nationality from week to week, according as the
different armies take possession. The Jewish inhabitants of Suwalki,
for example, must be doubtful whether they are Germans or Russians,
according as Uhlan or Cossack holds control of their city. But
whichever wins, for the time being, the non-combatants suffer by the
demolition of their houses, the requisition of their property, and
above all by the dislocation of their trade. The mass of misery caused
by the present war in this way to the Jews of Russian, Prussian, and
Austrian Poland is incalculable.
Nor is this direct loss and misery compensated for by any hope of
improved conditions after the war is concluded. One may dismiss at
once the rumor that the Czar has promised his Jewish soldiers any
alleviation of their lot, on account of their loyalty and bravery.
Such rumors are always spread about when the Russian autocracy needs
Jewish blood or money. Besides, we all know the value of the plighted
word of the crowned head of the Russian Church; the emasculation of
the Duma is sufficient evidence of this. And even if the Czar carries
out his promise of giving autonomy to Poland, including any sections
of Prussian and Austrian territory which he may acquire by the present
war, the Jewish lot will not be ameliorated in the slightest. For,
unfortunately, Poles have of recent years turned round on their Jewish
fellow sufferers from Russian tyranny somewhat on the principle of the
boy at school who "passes on" the blow which he has received from a
bigger boy to one smaller yet.
_The Probable Strengthening of Anti-Semitic Influences_
BUT the chief evil which will result from the present war, whatever
its outcome, will be the increased influence of just those circles
from whom the anti-Semitic movement has emanated throughout Europe for
the past forty years. It is, in my opinion, absurd to think that
militarism will be killed or even scotched by the present war;
militarism cannot cast out militarism. Even if Germany is defeated, it
is impossible to imagine that she will rest content with her defeat,
and practically the only change in the situation will be that "La
Revanche" will be translated into "Die Rache"; and in Russia, the
defeat of Germany will simply increase the prestige and influence of
the grand-ducal circles from which the persecution of the Jews has
mainly emanated.
In the contrary case, if Germany gets the upper hand, the influence of
the Junkers in Germany, with their anti-Semitic tendencies, would be
raised to intolerable limits, while the Reaction in Russia, even if it
loses prestige, will yet be granted more power in order to carry out
the projected revenge.
_Diminished Chances of Emigration_
ANOTHER unfortunate result for Jews from the present war will be the
decreased stream of emigration from Russia and Galicia to this
country, so that the escape from the House of Bondage would be still
more limited. Many will be so impoverished by the war that they will
not be able to afford the minimum sum needed for migration. Death on
the battle-field or in the military hospitals will remove many
energetic young fellows who would otherwise have come to this country
and afterwards have brought their relatives with them. Conditions here
too, in the immediate future, are likely to be less attractive for the
immigrant from the economic point of view owing to the dislocation of
trade caused by the current conflict.
Altogether, as will have been seen from the above enumeration, I am
strongly of opinion that the Jews will suffer even more than most
peoples concerned in the present war. They have nothing to gain by it;
they are sure to lose by it.
[Illustration: Signature: Joseph Jacobs]
_SURELY a law, the essence of which is mercy and
justice to one's fellow men, is not a narrow rule of
life, to be discarded by us today on any plea that we
have outgrown it; surely a history of thousands of
years' devotion to spiritual ideals is not a history
to be forgotten. America is a land of divers races and
divers religions. Each race and each religion owes to
it the duty of bringing to its service all its
strength; it derives no added strength from a race
which has forgotten the lessons it has learnt in the
past, a race which deliberately discards the spiritual
strength which it has obtained by devotion to its
ideals._--_From a Menorah Address by Justice Irving
Lehman._
Jewish Students in European Universities
BY HARRY WOLFSON
[Illustration: _HARRY WOLFSON (Harvard A. B. and A. M. 1912), a member
of the Harvard Menorah Society since 1908, was the Hebrew poet at the
annual Harvard Menorah dinners for four years, and won the Harvard
Menorah prize in 1911 for an essay on "Maimonides and Halevi: A Study
in Typical Jewish Attitudes Toward Greek Philosophy in the Middle
Ages." On graduating from Harvard he received honors in Semitics and
Philosophy, and was appointed to a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. As
Sheldon Fellow he spent two years abroad, studying in the University
of Berlin and doing research work in the libraries of Munich, Paris,
the Vatican, Parma, the British Museum, Oxford and Cambridge. The
present article is based upon the impressions he gathered during this
period. He is now pursuing graduate studies in Semitics and Philosophy
at Harvard._]
THE Jewish student is no longer a _déraciné_. Deeply rooted to the
soil of Jewish reality, he is like the best of the academic youth of
other nations responsive to the needs of his own people. If in spots
he is still groping in the dark, he is no longer a lone, stray
wanderer, but is seeking his way out to light in the company of
kindred souls. A comprehensive and exhaustive study of native Jewish
student bodies in countries like England, Germany, Austria, France and
Italy, as well as of the Russian Jewish student colonies strewn all
over Western Europe, would bring out, in the most striking manner,
contrasting tendencies in modern Jewry. But that is far from the
direct purpose of this brief paper. As a student and traveler in
various European countries during the years 1912-1914 I had the
opportunity of observing Jewish student life and Jewish conditions in
general abroad, and it is merely a few random impressions of certain
aspects of these European conditions that I have here gathered
together for the readers of the Menorah Journal.
_In England_
JUDAISM in England, though of recent origin, is completely
domesticated. The Jewish gentleman is becoming as standardized as the
type of English gentleman. But more insular than the island itself,
Anglo-Jewry, as a whole, prefers to remain within its natural
boundaries, and is disinclined to become the bearer of the white Jew's
burden. Two of her great Jews, indeed, had embarked upon a scheme of
Jewish empire building. The attempts of both of them, however, ended
in a fizzle, for one was an unimaginative philanthropic squire, and
the other is an interpreter of the dreamers, himself too wide-awake to
become a master of dreams.
Yet within its own narrow limits, Anglo-Jewry is active enough to keep
in perfect condition. Over-exertion, however, is avoided. Cricket
Judaism is played according to the rules of the game, and the players
are quite comfortable in their flannels. The established synagogue of
Mulberry Street is as staid and sober as the Church of England, the
liberalism preached in Berkeley Street as gentle and unscandalizing as
the nonconformity of the City Temple, and the orthodoxy of the United
Synagogue as innocuously papish as the last phases of the Oxford
movement.
In England it is quite fashionable to admit Judaism into the parlor.
Parlor Judaism, to be sure, is not more vital a force nor more
creative than kitchen Judaism, but it seems to be more vital than the
Judaism restricted to the Temple. At least it is voluntary and
personal, and, what is more important, it is engaging. So engrossed in
the subject of his discussion was once my host at tea, that while
administering the sugar he asked me quite absent-mindedly: "Would you
have one or two lumps in your Judaism?" "Thank you, none at all," was
my reply. "But I am wont to take my Judaism somewhat stronger, if you
please."
_Jewish Student Groups at Oxford and Cambridge_
AS compared with ourselves, English Jews have a long tradition behind
them, in which they glory. That tradition does not at present seem to
stand any imminent danger of being interrupted. The younger generation
follow in the footprints of the older. Nowhere is there so narrow a
rift between Jewish fathers and sons as in England. Hence you do not
find there any prominent organization of the young. Last winter an
anonymous appeal for the organization of the Jewish students in
England ran for several weeks in the _Jewish Chronicle_, but it seems
to have resulted in nothing.
Independent local organizations of Jewish students, however, are to be
found in almost every university in England. In Oxford and Cambridge
they are organized in congregations, having Synagogues of their own,
in which the students assemble for prayer on every Friday night and
Saturday morning. In Cambridge they hold two services, an orthodox and
a liberal, both well attended. In Oxford they have recently published
a special prayer book of their own, suitable for the needs of all
kinds of students, it being a medley of orthodoxy and liberalism,
which if rather indiscriminate in its theology is, on the whole, made
up with good common sense. English liberal Judaism, it should be
observed, is markedly different from its corresponding cults in
Germany and in the United States. In Germany, reformed Judaism has its
nascence in free thought, and it aims to appeal to the intellectual.
With us liberalism is stimulated by our pragmatic evaluation of
religion, and is held out as a bait to the indifferent. In England it
arises from the growing admiration on the part of a certain class of
Jews for what they consider the inwardness and the superior morality
of Christianity, and is concocted as a cure to those who are so
affected. As a result, English liberal Judaism is more truly religious
than the German, and more sincerely pious than the American. In a
sermon delivered before the Oxford congregation, a young layman of the
Liberal Synagogue of London apostrophized liberal Judaism as the
safeguard of the modern Jews from the attractiveness of the superior
teachings of Christ.
_Social Service Work of Jewish Students_
ENGLAND is the classic home of old-fashioned begging and of
old-fashioned giving. You are stopped for a penny everywhere and by
everybody, from the tramp who asks you to buy him a cup of tea, to the
hospital which solicits a contribution to its maintenance "for one
second." Pavement artists abound in Paris as much as in London, but in
Paris it is a Bohemian-looking denizen of the "Quartier" posing as a
pinched genius forced to sell his crayon masterpieces for a couple of
sous, whereas in London it is always a crippled ex-soldier trying to
arouse your pity in chalked words for a "poor man's talent." But
England is also the classic home of modern social service of every
description. The Salvation Army had its origin in London, where also
Toynbee Hall, the first University settlement of its kind, came into
existence. Likewise among the Jews, there are, on the one hand, the
firmly established old-fashioned charitable institutions to help the
"alien" brethren of the East End, and on the other hand, there are
also the equally well organized boys' clubs for the "uplifting" of the
"alien" little brethren of the same East End.
The Jewish University men in England take an active interest in both
these branches of philanthropy. It was a fortunate coincidence that
when I came to Oxford the Jewish students there had among them a
social worker of the latter type, who had come to make arrangements
for the reception of a squad of Whitechapel boys who were under his
tutelage. When I afterwards went to Cambridge I found there a delegate
of some charitable board of the London Jewish community, seeking to
enlist the aid of the Jewish students in his work.
_What the Bulletin Boards Told at Berlin_
AT the University of Berlin I did not have to go far to find traces of
the presence of Jewish students. With their far-famed efficiency the
Germans have contrived to turn the large university hall into a medium
of information more adequate than our University Bulletins and
Registers combined. The bulletin boards covering every vacant spot on
the walls told me the story of all the phases of Jewish activities in
the University, professional, social, vocational and, if you please,
also gastronomical, more fully than the frescoed walls of Dido's
temple told their story to pious Æneas. In the announcement of courses
by the various faculties, well-known Jewish names stand out quite
prominently,--none of them above the rank of Honorar-Professor, to be
sure, but in popularity and achievement they are among the foremost.
Among the long rows of the variegated Wappen of the Korporationen, the
Borussias, Teutonias and Germanias, there hang the insignia of the
Jewish students' societies, the yellow and white of the Sprevia and
the black and gold of the Hasmonea, both announcing the dates of their
Kneipe held in their respective places in the students' quarters
around Linienstrasse and Charlottenburg. In another nook of the hall,
from the midst of a jumble of little slips of paper enumerating in
minute detail in microscopic German script what dishes are offered at
the paltry sum of so many pfennig in the various "Privat-Mittagtische"
and "bürgerliche-Küche" there looms up unblushingly, proud in the
clearness of its square characters, the Hebrew word כשר over the
notice of a Lebanon restaurant run by a Palestinian Jew. Still further
on the wall, students of unmistakably Jewish names offer instruction
in almost all the languages spoken, while a German young lady wants to
exchange lessons in Russian with an _orthodox Christian_ and one who
hails from the mendacious little country, cautiously states, as an
inducement to a prospective pupil in the Roumanian tongue, that the
would-be instructor is a _true_ Roumanian. Here you have a picture of
Jewish life in the Berlin University, in its outer paraphernalia, in
its cosmopolitan character, in its relation to the rest of the student
body, in its freedom and restriction, as portrayed in the unjaundiced
tales of bulletin boards.
_The Opposing Views of Student Societies at Berlin_
OF the two Jewish organizations mentioned above, the Hasmonea is a
branch of the inter-varsity K. Z. V. (Kartell Zionistischer
Verbindungen), whereas the Sprevia belongs to the K.-C.
(Kartell-Convent der Tendenzverbindungen deutscher Studenten jüdischen
Glaubens). The former, as the name implies, is Zionistic; the latter
is opposed to Zionism. Their relation to each other, however, is not
like that between the Menorah and the Zionist societies in American
colleges. The Hasmonea and the Sprevia are mutually exclusive, rather
than complementary to each other. The German Jewish student does not
come to the university with a mind open and free as to Judaism. He
comes there with definite views on the subject which have already been
crystallized under the influence of early training. Judaism, of
whatever shade it may happen to be, is more potent a factor in the
domestic life of German Jews and in the bringing up of the young than
it is with us here. Jewish boys there evince a keener interest in
Judaism than do Jewish boys in America. Their intelligent
understanding of Judaism is therefore not necessarily preceded by a
period of indifference and lack of knowledge. It steadily grows and
develops with them from their early youth. And so by the time they
enter the university, at an age somewhat older than that of our
average freshman, their Jewish consciousness is mature and fixed. They
are able to judge whether they can work for or against Zionism, for to
them Zionism is the only vital question in present-day Judaism, a
question which they are willing to face squarely and once for all
determine their position towards it; and it is on this question of
Zionism and the future destiny of the Jews as a nation that the two
leading student organizations radically differ.
There is another quite as notable distinction between our Menorah and
the Jewish students' organizations in Germany. With us the Menorah is
primarily an undergraduate society. When graduate Menorah Societies
arise, they may be confederated with the undergraduate organization,
but they will of course retain their separate character. In Germany
this distinction between undergraduate and graduate does not exist.
Matriculation in the University, not the taking of a degree in it,
introduces one into the society of the educated with its appellative
"intellectual" corresponding to our "high-brow" rather than to our
"college grad." Joining the membership of a student organization marks
the entrance into that large class of "intellectuals." And once you
join such an organization you are a member ever after. In Germany, in
fact, nobody graduates from a university in the same sense that we do.
There the taking of a degree is merely an episode. If you take it, you
will thenceforth be addressed as "Herr Doktor"; if you do not take it,
you will keep on printing on your visiting card "Kandidat Philosophie"
all the rest of your lifetime, and be addressed by the uninitiate as
"Herr Doktor" just the same. Thus the achievements generally ascribed
to Jewish students' organizations in Germany are in reality the
collective work of all the Jewish men of academic training, and not
necessarily of students actually engaged in university studies. Read
over the names of contributors to publications issued by what are
known as "student organizations," and you will notice how loosely that
term is used.
_Intellectual Problems of the German Jewish Youth_
THE Jewish university men in Germany, whom we commonly call Jewish
students, take more interest in Jewish life than do our university men
in this country. This is chiefly due to the peculiar position of the
modern Jews in Germany. German Jewry, by the total disappearance of
its laboring class during recent times, has ceased to be a people by
itself and has become a part of the middle class of the general German
population. Among the native Jews of Germany, if Berlin is to be
taken as a typical example of Jewish communities in large cities,
there is no organic social body, complete in itself, consisting of
various classes, following all imaginable trades, ranging from the
chimney-sweep and the cobbler to the merchant prince. Such
communities, forming organic wholes in themselves, you may find in
Russia, Galicia, Roumania, and in the newer Jewish settlements of
England and America. You do not find them in Germany. Higher up in the
social scale, Jews are represented everywhere, but lower down you
cannot find any native Jew below a shop clerk or master tailor. Being
thus interspersed among the middle class of the general population,
that part of the population which more than any other sends its
children to universities, the number of academically trained men
engaged in liberal professions among the German Jews is exceedingly
large. These professional Jews encounter greater difficulties in their
careers than those engaged in commerce. While the latter are given
free range for the development of the native Jewish talents, the
former find their road toward recognition blockaded. Consequently they
are hurled back upon their Judaism, and their energies not finding
vent elsewhere turn into Jewish channels.
The activities of Jewish university men in Germany are chiefly
literary and intellectual, for the problem with which they are faced
is quite different from that of ours. With us the problem of
Americanism and Judaism is in its ultimate analysis the possible
conflict between two sets of social duties, in themselves not
necessarily contradictory, which can be easily reconciled by a working
program adjusting the practical demands of both without curtailing the
scope and efficiency of either. For Americanism in the abstract has no
existence. The American mind is as yet unknown in its essence; it is
only manifest by its functions, of which Jewish activities may form a
complementary part. In Germany it is quite different. If Germanism
stand for Aryanism and Occidentalism, Judaism must inevitably stand
for Semitism and Orientalism,--and can the twain ever meet? That the
Jew manifests in his works and actions good practical patriotism does
not radically solve the problem; that the Jews are capable of being
good patriots is no longer questioned, but can they be genuine ones?
Will not the Jews always remain the carriers of an alien culture,
unabsorbable and unassimilable, despite their conversion and
intermarriage? It is this problem that confronts the Jewish
intellectuals in Germany, in the over-hanging shadow of which the
"Sorrows of the Jewish Werther" was written, and the martyrdom of Otto
Weininger, self-inflicted, was made possible. Hence the great
introspective literary activity of the German Jewish youth.
There is, on the one hand, the great, ever-increasing inrush of the
Jews into the inmost sanctum of German cultural life, where their
Germanic protestations are more vociferous than those of the native
Teuton,--and they sometimes have, too, as must be admitted, a false
ring. Ludwig Fulda openly proclaims that as to his relation with
Judaism there is none: Goethe is his Moses and the German war of
liberation is his Exodus; and Jewish "Gymnasium" seniors inundate the
columns of the _Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums_ with introspective
analyses of their Teutonic souls. On the other hand, there are those
who, while quite as good Germans as the others, so far as practical
patriotism is concerned, do not renounce the intellectual and
spiritual heritage which is their own. Their self-imposed task is
therefore the cultivation, enrichment, and modernization of Jewish
thought and tradition. Hence the great output of highly meritorious
literary works on purely Jewish subjects which, if not as scholarly as
those of the German Jewish scientists of the past generation, are far
more stimulating and of greater educational value.
(_To be concluded_)
_IT may interest you to know that in this country,
during the early years of our leading universities,
Hebrew not only formed, a subject of instruction, but
also appeared upon the Commencement programs. Upon
such grandiloquent occasions you will find that side
by side with a poem in Greek there figured a speech in
Hebrew. What the Hebrew was like that was poured out
there I have difficulty in imagining. But that the
instruction was of much use to the student, I have
grave reasons to doubt. Will you allow me to read to
you a note written in regard to that famous professor
of Hebrew at Yale towards the end of the eighteenth
century--Ezra Stiles. Stiles was a very learned
Christian Hebraist. One of his pupils wrote about him:
"For Hebrew he possessed a high veneration. He said
one of the Psalms he tried to teach us would be the
first we should hear sung in Heaven, and that he
should be ashamed that any one of his pupils should be
entirely ignorant of that holy language."_--_From a
Menorah Address by Professor Richard Gottheil._
The Twilight of Hebraic Culture
_The Transition from Hebraism to Judaism_
BY MAX L. MARGOLIS
[Illustration: _MAX L. MARGOLIS (born in Merecz, Russia, in 1866), one
of the leading Biblical scholars of America, received his education in
Russia, Germany, and the United States (Columbia Ph.D. 1891). He has
held important professorships of Semitics and Biblical Exegesis at the
Hebrew Union College and the University of California,--and since 1909
has filled the chair of Biblical Philology in The Dropsie College for
Hebrew and Cognate learning. He has been engaged also, as
Editor-in-Chief, in the monumental task of the new English translation
of the Bible by American Jewish scholars. He is the author of numerous
learned papers and books on Biblical lore and theology._]
SO long as Jewish psalms are sung in the cathedrals of Christendom and
Jewish visions are rehearsed by Christian catechumens, the Synagogue
will continue to hold in veneration the chest where reposes its
chiefest glory. Surely a book which thrills the religious emotions of
civilized mankind cannot but be an object of pride to the people that
produced it. Stupendous as the literary output of the Jewish people
has been in post-biblical times, the Scriptures stand on a footing of
their own. Throughout the era of the dispersion they have held their
unique position and have exercised a most potent influence on the
Jewish soul. And the modern man taught by Lowth and Herder, and the
modern Jew under the spell of Mendelssohn and the Haskalah, have their
minds open to the æsthetic side of the "Bible as literature."
To the Jew, however, the Scriptures are possessed of an interest
beyond the religious and literary. They are the record of his
achievements in the past when his foot rested firm and steady on
native soil, of a long history full of vicissitudes from the time when
the invaders battled against the kings of Canaan to the days when the
last visionary steeled the nation's endurance in its struggle with the
heathen. They are the charter of Jewish nobility, linking those of the
present to the wanderer from Ur of the Chaldees.
As a finished product the Hebrew Scriptures came after the period of
national independence. When canon-making was in its last stage,
Jerusalem was a heap of ruins. The canon was the supreme effort of
Judæa--throttled by the legions of Rome--withdrawing to its inner
defences. The sword was sheathed and deliverance was looked for from
the clouds. The Scriptures were to teach the Jew conduct and prayer,
and the chidings of the prophets were listened to in a penitential
mood, but also joyfully because of the consolations to which they led.
The canon-makers had an eye to the steadying of a vanquished people
against the enemy without and the foe within. For there arose teachers
who proclaimed that the mission of the Jew was fulfilled: free from
the fetters of a narrow nationalism, of a religion bound up with the
soil, he was now ready to merge his individuality with the large world
when once it accepted that measure of his teaching suited to a wider
humanity. The temple that was made with hands was destroyed, and
another made without hands was building where men might worship in
spirit and truth. The dream was fascinating, the danger of absorption
was acute, because it was dressed up with the trappings of an ideal to
which many believed the Scriptures themselves pointed.
There was a much larger range of writings in Palestine and a still
larger in Egypt. The list included historical works carrying on the
story of the people's fortunes beyond Alexander the Great; novelistic
tales like that of the heroic Judith luring the enemy of her people to
destruction, or that exquisite tale of Jewish family life as
exemplified by the pious Israelite captive Tobit; books like the wise
sayings of Jesus, son of Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, or the Psalms
of Solomon, all modelled after patterns in the canon; midrashic
expositions of the law, like the Little Genesis; apocalyptic visions
going by the name of Enoch and the Twelve Patriarchs and Moses and
Isaiah and Esdras, whose prototype may be sought in the canonical
Daniel. Over and above the three parts which the Synagogue accepted
there were a fourth and fifth; but by an act of exclusion the canon
was concentrated upon the three and the others were cast overboard.
The canon was the creation of the Pharisaic doctors, who drew a line
at a point of their own choosing, and decreed that writings "from that
time onward" did not defile the hands.
_The Making of the Canon by the Pharisees_
THE Pharisee held the ground when the nation had politically
abdicated. The war with Rome had been brought on by the intransigent
hotspurs of Galilee and the commune of Jerusalem. John, son of Zakkai,
parleyed with the enemy that Jamnia with its House of Study might go
unscathed. There the process began which culminated in the gigantic
storehouse of legal lore which was to dominate Jewish life and Jewish
literature for centuries, commentary being piled upon commentary and
code upon code. For in the sum total of Scriptures the Torah was
admittedly to be the chief corner-stone, albeit prophecy and wisdom
had not lost their appeal; and in moments of relaxation or when
addressing their congregations worn out with the strife of the
present, the scholars of the wise brought out of the ancient stock
many a legend and quaint saying and even apocalyptic vision,
transporting the mourners for Zion into the ecstasies of the future
redemption. While official Judaism was committed to the dialectics of
the Halakah, in the unofficial Haggadah mysticism exercised a potent
influence by underground channels, as it were, issuing in later days
in Kabbalah and offsetting the rational philosophies borrowed from
Hellas. For the time being, however, the dominant note was legistic,
Pharisean.
The Pharisees had been lifted by the national catastrophe into the
leading position. They had previously been a party among many parties,
and their Judaism one of the many varieties. The Sadducees, their
chief opponents, had a literature of their own: the day upon which
their "Book of Decrees" was consigned to destruction was made a legal
holiday upon which fasting was prohibited. But even writings which
were lightly touched by the Sadduccee spirit were frowned upon: the
Siracide was barely tolerated on the outside because he made light of
individual immortality, and believed in the eternity of Israel and the
Zadokite priesthood. The Pharisees had been on the opposition during
the latter period of the Maccabeans: so with partisan ruthlessness
they excluded from the canon the writings commemorative of the
valorous deeds of those priest-warriors who freed the people from
foreign overlordship and restored the Davidic boundaries of the realm.
Because the apocalyptic visions inclined to teachings not acceptable
to the dominant opinion, they were declared not only heterodox,
heretical, but worthy of destruction. Had the stricter view prevailed,
the sceptical Preacher--now, to quote Renan, lost in the canon like a
volume of Voltaire among the folios of a theological library--would
have shared the fate of Sirach and Wisdom and the other writings which
Egypt cherished after Palestine had discarded them. And there were
mutterings heard even against the Song, that beautiful remnant of the
Anacreontic muse of Judæa. It was then that Akiba stepped into the
breach and by bold allegory saved that precious piece of what may be
called the secular literature of the ancient Hebrews.
The process concluded by the Pharisees had begun long before. The
Pharisee consummated what the scribe before him had commenced, and the
scribe in turn had carried to fruition the work inaugurated by the
prophet. Just as the Pharisee decreed what limits were to be imposed
upon the third part of the Scriptures, the scribe in his day gave
sanction to the second, and at a still earlier period the prophet to
the wide range of literature current in his days. Sobered by national
disaster, the scribe addressed himself to the task of safeguarding the
remnant of Judæa in the land of the fathers. There were schisms in the
ranks, and all kinds of heresies, chief among which stood the
Samaritan. The nation's history was recast in a spirit showing how
through the entire past faithful adherence to Mosaism brought in its
wake national stability, and conversely a swaying from legitimacy and
law was responsible for disaster. With the Torah as a guide, prophecy
was forced into the channels of orthodoxy. Heterodox prophets, the
"false prophets," were consigned to oblivion. Their opponents alone
were given a hearing. Secular history there was to be none; there was
room only for the sacred. We may take it for granted that the
"prophets of Baal," as their adversaries triumphantly nicknamed them,
had their disciples who collected their writings and recorded the
deeds of _their_ spirit. But they were one and all suppressed. The
political achievements of mighty dynasts had been recorded by
annalists; the pious narrators in the so-called historical books of
the canon brush them aside, gloss over them with a scant hint or
reference; what is of absorbing interest to them is the activity of an
Elijah or an Elisha, or the particular pattern of the altar in the
Jerusalem sanctuary. In their iconoclastic warfare upon the
abomination of Samaria, the prophets gave a partisanly distorted view
of conditions in the North which for a long time had been the scene of
Hebrew tradition and Hebrew life.
_The Death-blow to the Old Hebraic Culture_
WHAT these upheavals meant in the history of Hebrew literature and
culture can only approximately be gauged. One thing is certain: they
all and one dealt the death-blow to the old Hebraic culture. When the
excavator sinks his spade beneath the ground of a sleepy Palestinian
village, he lays bare to view from under the overlaid strata, Roman
and Greek and Jewish and Israelitish, the Canaanite foundation with
its mighty walls and marvellous tunnels, its stelæ and statuettes, its
entombed infants sacrificed to the abominable Moloch. Similarly if we
dig below the surface of the Scriptures, we uncover glimpses of the
civilization of the Amorite strong and mighty, which generations of
prophets and lawmakers succeeded in destroying root and branch. On the
ruins of the Canaanite-Amorite culture rose in the latter days Judaism
triumphant; the struggle--prolonged and of varying success--marked the
ascendancy of the Hebraic culture which was a midway station between
the indigenous Canaanite civilization on the one hand and that mighty
spiritual leaven, Mosaism in its beginnings and Judaism in its
consummation, on the other. The Hebraic culture was a compromise. It
began by absorbing the native civilization. The danger of succumbing
to it was there, but it was averted by those whom their adversaries
called the disturbers of Israel. And even to the last, when the sway
of Judaism was undisputed, the Hebraic culture could not be severed
from the soil in which it was rooted. It was part of a world-culture
just as it contributed itself thereto.
Whether living in amity or in warfare, nations influence each other to
a marked degree. They exchange the products of their soils and their
industry--they also give and take spiritual possessions. Culture is a
compound product. The factors that are contributory to its make-up are
the soil and the racial endowment recoiling against the domination
from without which, though not wholly overcome, is resisted with might
and main. Cultures are national amidst an international culture. They
express themselves in a variety of ways, chiefly in language and
literature. For while blood is thicker than water, the pen is mightier
than the sword. Out of a mass of myth and legend and worldly wisdom
the Hebrews constructed, in accordance with their own bent of mind,
their cosmogonies and ballads and collections of proverbs. At every
shrine the priests narrated to the throngs of worshippers the
marvelous stories of local or national interest.
_The Difference Between Hebraic Culture and Judaism_
THE chief feature of the Hebraic culture was that it was joyous. The
somber seriousness of latter-day Judaism had not yet penetrated it.
Israel rejoiced like the nations. The young men and maidens danced and
wooed in the precincts of the sanctuaries which dotted the country
from Dan to Beersheba. The festivals were seasons of joy, the
festivals of the harvest and of the vintage. The prophets called them
carousals and dubbed the gentlemen of Samaria drunkards. Probably
there were excesses. But life was enjoyed so long as the heavens
withdrew not the moisture which the husbandman was in need of. The
wars which the Kings waged were the wars of the Lord, and the exploits
of the warriors were rehearsed throughout the land--they were spoken
of as the Lord's righteous acts. National victories strengthened the
national consciousness. Taunt songs were scattered on broadsides. The
enemy was lampooned. At the height of national prosperity, when Israel
dwelt in safety in a land of corn and wine moistened with the dew of
the heavens, the pride of the nation expressed itself in the pæan,
"Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, a people victorious
through the Lord, the shield of thy help, and that is the Sword of thy
excellency!" Excellency then meant national independence and welfare.
It was the period of the Omrides whose exploits are merely hinted at
in our sources, whose sway marked the nascent struggle between
Hebraism and Judaism. For the time being, Hebraic culture was on the
ascendant, successor to the indigenous Canaanite civilization which it
had absorbed, remodelled, developed.
The chief difference between the Hebraic culture and Judaism which
supplanted it consists in the fact that, whereas the latter was
bookish, transforming its votaries into the "people of the book," the
former was the sum total of all that goes to make up the concern of a
nation living upon its own soil. Bookishness, literature, has a place
in the affairs of a nation, but it contributes only a side in its
manifold activities. The spoken word precedes the written. The writer
has an eye to aftertimes. He lives in the future. The speaking voice
addresses itself to the present and its varied needs. Saints are
canonized after death. The act of canonization means the verdict of
the survivors who from a distance are able to gauge the merits of past
deeds. When a literature is pronounced canonical or classical, it is
no more. In its dying moments it is reduced to rule, and its range
becomes norm. But normalization is an act of choosing, of accepting
and excising. A living literature is far from being normalized. Much
that is written serves a temporary purpose, but is none the less
effective while it has vogue. However, it is only a part of the
national activities, mirroring them and commenting upon them. So is
religion another part of the national life. Government policy and
legal procedure and the arts and the crafts occupy a nation's living
interests. The Hebraic culture meant all that. It is now a thing of
the distant past. It speaks to us from beneath the Hebrew Scriptures
by which it is overlaid, themselves the remnant of what in times gone
by stirred the nation's spirit. A revival of that culture may come,
but when it comes it will be tempered by Judaism. And the Hebrew
Scriptures which constitute the bridge between them both will act as
the peacemaker.
[Illustration: Signature: Max L. Margolis]
_JEWISH knowledge to me is valuable in the sense in
which the word "knowledge" is employed in Hebrew. For
"to know" in Hebrew_ (yada) _does not merely mean to
conceive intellectually, but expresses at the same
time the deepest emotions of the human soul; it also
means to care, to cherish, to love. It is remarkable
indeed that the only Hebrew expression which in any
way approaches what in modern languages we call
religion is_ daath elohim, the knowledge of God. _It
is no less remarkable that the fundamental concept
formulated by one of the greatest thinkers who
proceeded from Jewish loins, by Baruch Spinoza, is_
amor Dei intellectualis, _"the intellectual love of
God," that is, the mental and yet emotional conception
of the Supreme Power that rules the universe. If I
were to wish for anything, it would be for an_ amor
Judaismus intellectualis, "_an intellectual love of
Judaism," not shallow love and hollow self-complacency
that cover every sin. We want to be frank about our
Judaism, we want to be clear about our faults, we want
to remedy our faults whenever we can, but at the same
time we want to have the sympathy that goes with
knowledge._--_From a Menorah Address by Professor Israel
Friedlaender._
Days of Disillusionment
BY SAMUEL STRAUSS
[Illustration: _SAMUEL STRAUSS (born in Des Moines, Ia., in 1870), was
publisher of the Des Moines Leader from 1895 to 1904, and became
publisher of the New York Globe in 1904. Since 1912 he has been
associated with the management of the New York Times. Mr. Strauss has
taken an active and effective interest in many worthy movements for
Jewish betterment. He is a member of the Graduate Advisory Menorah
Committee and of the Menorah College of Lecturers. His impressive and
stimulating talks have given him marked popularity with the Menorah
Societies._]
WE are at present witnessing an instance of the truth that a great
crisis is always a test for genuineness. Since August 1st a number of
things seemingly vital have come tumbling to the ground as mere
inflated delusions or comparative trifles formerly viewed out of all
perspective. Men are beginning to realize that they have been
deceiving themselves, and the immediate effect is disappointment.
What profit will be derived from it all is as yet merely a matter for
speculation. Not yet have men been able to think of the conflict in
other than negative terms, to see in it other than despair, crippled
industry, a fall from civilization, all that belongs on the debit side
of the ledger. But there is also a credit side: and to realize that
the effects of war are positive as well as negative is by no means to
condone war, but only to accept it as a fact.
History teaches us to expect that the positive result of this struggle
will be in the nature of a physic--a dissolving away of delusions, and
simultaneously a bringing into relief of some essential facts. This
clearing of the ground will not wait until the war is over; it has
already begun, though men are yet but half-conscious of it, and then
only in the guise of profitless disillusionment. This state of mind is
understandable enough. The spectacle of thousands going out by
trainload to settle differences through slaughter has been a terrible
shock. Individuals, having progressed beyond that stage, had assumed
that collectively, too, men must share the same aversion to so
illogical a method as murder for the solution of differences. This
assumption has had root in a justifiable belief in the world's
attainment to a higher plane of civilization. The quality of to-day's
culture may not be so fine as that of Judæa, of Greece, or Rome, or of
the Renaissance, but surely in no period of history has its extent
been so great. Never had the entire world been nearer denationalization,
never had the economic interdependence of nations been more complete.
Jingoism has seemed obsolete, cosmopolitanism had seemed the ideal, as
the horizon of an increasing number of individuals broadened out, and
prejudice gave way before enlightenment. But now this assumption is
suddenly discovered to be mere delusion, and at once much scorn is
heaped upon "our alleged civilization." How much justification there
is for disappointment over the failure of culture to influence action
is difficult to determine. There is much confusion of thought on this
point. To conclude that because nations go to war, individuals have
therefore made practically no advance from the original state of
barbarism is absurd. What should be clear is the danger of
generalizations from the individual to groups of the individual--two
psychologically different entities. It may be that even as communities
we have progressed more than we believe, as some future reaction to
this war may indicate, but what is brought to the surface now is the
old fact that the progress of groups of men is at snail's pace,
however men may forge ahead as individuals.
This refreshed realization is by no means of negative value. It is
rather a positive benefit, and should be fixed in the minds of all men
who are striving collectively for various ends. For political parties,
socialists, suffragists, all and sundry reformers, this realization
should be the starting point from which to readjust programs when the
cataclysm is over.
For the Jewish people this realization is peculiarly significant.
Though the outlines of the general situation the world over are as yet
indistinct, some problems of the Jews have already been brought out
into sharp relief. Like the rest of mankind, the Jew has had his eyes
cruelly opened, and the clear boundary between truth and delusion
which this war has made should be stamped upon his memory, to remain
vivid after negative feelings of wrongs and disappointments have been
forgotten.
_The Delusion of Assimilation_
IN the past hundred years, the Jew has had more reason than at any
time since the dispersal to consider himself assimilated in all save
the Slav countries. Not that anti-Semitism had disappeared; but it had
seemed to be, and indeed is, so much less important when viewed
against the background of the Jew's positive advance to light and
freedom. Explained more recently as a survival of many prejudices
which do not die overnight, including the old religious differences,
physical and mental antipathies, economic jealousies--the force of
anti-Semitism was not only weakened by the increasing breadth of
vision, the cosmopolitanism on which the world has plumed itself, but
dwarfed by the achievement of the Jew himself. He has come out of his
Ghetto; softened by a more liberal attitude on the part of his
individual neighbor, he has largely laid aside his resentment and his
hostility. There was a feeling that adaptation and assimilation had
advanced so far that the Jew, by his own progress and with the consent
of his neighbor, had become a citizen of his community, differentiated
from the rest, if at all, only by what he chose to keep of his
religious belief. Those who have most zealously argued for
assimilation as the sole solution of the Jewish problem have had
little need of late to push their gospel further; the process seemed
to be taking excellent care of itself. But after all, it was not real.
A drastic crisis like the present one was required to brand it as
delusion. The attitude of the occasional individual was construed as
the attitude of the entire community. This has been a double-edged
delusion. The Jew has not judged himself as a community in relation to
his neighbor, and he has misjudged his individual neighbor as a
community in relation to himself.
It takes two sides always to make up the full truth, but from both
sides, from the Jew and from his neighbor, there is circumstantial
evidence in the events of the past five months that gives abundant
support to this conclusion.
In this time of crisis the world has thrown aside its pretense, honest
and well-intentioned pretense though it may have been, and revealed
its underlying feeling toward the Jewish people. Suddenly, without any
absolute change in their status, the Jews are singled out and set
apart. Special inducements are held out for their support. The Czar,
though this was reported upon dubious authority, addresses his
"beloved Jews;" a non-commissioned Jewish officer is recommended for
the Order of St. George; Dreyfus is decorated in France, his son made
Lieutenant; Austria issues a special appeal to the Jews of Poland; an
English Jew voices England's hope of their loyalty; in Germany
anti-Semitic newspapers suddenly announce their discontinuance.
_The Test of Jewish Patriotism_
IT is not a new story. Doubt of the Jew's place in time of war has
been continuous. Through the centuries there has been report that he
has dodged his war tax wherever he could, that he bought soldiers to
fill his place in the ranks, that as financier he offered his gold
without scruple to the bitterest foes of his own fatherland. How much
of this is based on blind prejudice is beside the point. What is
important is the effect that this doubting attitude has had on the
Jew's normal impulse to render patriotic service. The Jew to-day who
feels most keenly the cause of Germany, or of France, or of England in
this war, who most unreservedly throws in his lot with his
compatriots, glorying in a privilege long withheld, moved to an
intense fervor of patriotism, cannot but be disheartened at the
spectacle of his neighbors as in one way or another they give evidence
of their lack of faith in him.
Why this feeling of distrust? How has it been engendered, what are
its roots? Again the answer is to be found both with the Jew himself
and with his neighbor.
As far as the present situation is concerned, the Gentile world has
had lying dormant in its subconscious mind the notion that the Jew was
inferior, and by its own action it has kept this subconscious notion
alive. For while the world has admitted the Jew to its political life,
while it has modified much its religious and its economic prejudices
and jealousies, it has not broken down every barrier. Without fully
realizing its attitude, it has still held the Jew to be different and
of lower quality. The Jew's neighbors have had an honest sort of
delusion about their attitude toward the Semite; because they had
discovered the individual Jew, and taken him, as it were, into the
arms of their community life, they have fancied that all prejudice,
even toward the Jew as a class, had become obsolete. Here again there
is evidence of the fact that feeling toward Jews as individuals has
been mistaken for feeling toward the Jews as a race group.
This delusion has its base in something more fundamental, to which may
be accredited perhaps the distrust against which the Jews have been
battling for centuries. It is not the stranger who inspires continued
suspicion, for he soon ceases to be a stranger, but it is the wanderer
and the gypsy. There is imbedded in human nature a distrust of
shifting things and a respect for what is long established in any one
place, and it is in the wandering class that the Jew is placed in
spite of all talk of assimilation. He has had no point of departure
and hence no place of arrival. The French have crossed over the
Channel and become Englishmen; one would hardly know that the Romans
still live on in the Tyrol; but the Jew has always remained Jew, for
he has no established place from which to come and whither to return.
_"A People Without A Home"_
NOT only have the Jews been looked upon by others as a people without
a home; subconsciously they have always regarded themselves as such.
To-day a gigantic fund is proposed for the relief of the Jews affected
by the present war, by the very ones who have argued most persistently
for adaptation and assimilation. Yet this is a relief fund not for
Belgian Jews, nor French Jews, nor German Jews, but for all Jews
irrespective of the side on which they fight. The Jews are not
thinking of themselves in terms of citizens or subjects of this or
that country, but only as members of the Jewish race, who have no
unity save as members of that race. It is the surest indication that
beneath all self-delusion the Jews have subconsciously realized
themselves as a homeless people, men without a country. Is it strange
that the rest of the world should regard the Jew as alien when he
cannot but hold himself as such?
It would seem that this argument leads along a straight path towards
Zionism as its conclusion. But practical Zionism, like all other
programs of reconstruction, must await a time which will admit of
reconstruction, and that is not the present. It may be that when this
war is concluded, world conditions will have so completely changed
that Zionism and its geographic program will no longer be the answer
to the problem of Jewry. All that is certain of it now is its
uncertainty. But the spirit of which Zionism is the expression, and
which has made of it more than a mere experiment in colonization,
still remains, emphasized by the self-realization to which the Jews
have been brought in the present conflict.
_The Persistence of the Jewish Faith_
IN every crisis, even in those which have swept whole nations from
existence, the Jew has always found himself with one inalienable
possession--his faith. There is something mystifying about the
persistence through so many vicissitudes of a religion which commands
respect from neighbors who see in it a powerful inspiration, while the
Jew himself, especially the Jew more fortunately placed in the general
community, endeavors so often to cast it off as outworn and
impracticable. It is the Jew himself who has misled the rest of the
world into a delusion. He has seemed to consider himself, and the
faith with which he is bound up, inferior. In his endeavor to take on
the color of his environment, he has sought to lay aside all that was
old, and of this the religion of his fathers was a part. But a faith
as strong and as far-reaching as Judaism cannot be dropped out of the
life into which it has been ingrained, and hence the Jew has been hard
put to cover it up, to hide it, or to attempt its modification to fit
the fashion in religions. The inevitable reaction on the non-Jewish
part of the community has been a feeling of mystification, and,
following on that, suspicion and distrust.
It is this which has undermined confidence in the Jews as a
people--their negation of that which is their valuable heritage. For
Judaism is not merely tradition, a thing to be reverenced as a relic;
it is a thing to be put to everyday use. This practical and vitalized
Judaism is the real salvation for which the Jews have been groping,
all the while under the delusion that it was anywhere but near at
hand. Such a rejuvenated faith would mean an end of that homelessness
which is accountable for much of the Jew's displacement in the world's
life. And though the remedy has been intimate to him these many years
he has failed to make positive use of it. It is true that the Zionists
have been striving for a geographical base for Judaism. But a
geographical base is never more than an outward expression of a
people's unity; it is an excellent starting point, but as an end in
itself it is nothing. The Jews had a geographical base for their
start; thereby they were enabled to build up a unified result, the
Jewish spirit. It is this which, if recognized as a positive fact,
will take from the Jew his feeling of homelessness, and from his
neighbor the notion that the Jew is a member of a tribe forever
unestablished and purposeless. It is around a spiritual core that the
Jews as a people must build, around that central force which has thus
far held them intact.
_The Spiritual Service of the Jew_
AND never has there been a time, it would seem, when not only the Jews
themselves but the world at large were so ready for this
reconstruction. If in the very near future, as seems probable, the
Jews are again to play a prominent rôle in history, it will be more
largely through the pressure exerted by the world outside than through
their own initiative. Men are coming more and more to need what the
Jewish people, under certain conditions, are peculiarly qualified to
bestow. The period of materialism now undoubtedly coming to a close
has brought with it a heavy burden of discontent, and there has been a
turning from tangible comforts, a reaching out for spiritual
consolation. Under the rule of enlightenment religion has gone away,
and the world begins to feel its lack. One may not prophesy that
religion is soon to return, but the suggestion of its coming is in the
air. What the Jew will then be able to furnish may now be an open
question, but the great fact of his religion is undeniable. It should
be remembered that only in things spiritual has the Jew been able to
render world service; in material progress he has been able to do
little more than march with the rank and file. Should the Jew again
lead in the world, it must be in a time when the things of the spirit
are paramount in men's desires. With the hope that such a time is near
at hand, the Jew should retrim his lamp, in the faith that it may help
to illuminate much that had fallen into darkness.
[Illustration: Signature: Samuel Strauss]
Three University Addresses
I
PRESIDENT ARTHUR T. HADLEY _of Yale University_
_Before the Yale Menorah Society, October 14, 1914_
[Illustration]
IT is a great pleasure for me to speak to the Menorah Society, and a
double pleasure when I see beside me the Menorah emblem, the emblem of
light, "the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual
grace." Jewish history is embodied in a great literature, and a
literature which is worthy of deep and earnest study. It is the common
heritage of all mankind, and should be studied by every man who lays
claim to culture and education.
By studying the literature of the Jewish race, men at Yale and
elsewhere can do a great work for the learning and for the inspiration
of our country; especially can this Society do a noble and inspiring
work. History is in large measure made by the study of the literatures
of ancient races. What was it that waked Europe during the dark ages
from her apathy and ignorance but the discovery and the revival of the
Greek and Latin classics by enthusiastic scholars? In the various
centres of learning at the end of what we call the "dark ages," we
find groups of earnest young men devoting themselves to this study,
and in these groups we find the influence which roused Europe from her
period of intellectual torpor.
Classics are the literatures which thus make history; which serve the
needs of all peoples, voicing truths of universal application. And
though it is to the Greek and Latin that the name classics has been
often confined, yet the Hebrew classics are being recognized more and
more as worthy of a place beside if not above them. Interest in the
Jewish classics never utterly perished. Throughout all ages the
theologian kept alive his interest in those writings; but there is
something of more than mere professional interest in these studies,
something which closely touches every man's development and
experience.
It is not for me to attempt to say what these writings mean to
humanity. Biblical writings are far above any individual praise. But I
may with propriety say the reading of the Hebrew writings in English
has meant much to me personally. As a boy I read fewer books than do
youngsters of the present day, and among them the Bible was one of
extraordinary interest. I read the Psalms and Isaiah as wonderful
poetry, and turned to the Bible as to a storehouse of historical
literature.
Hebrew history has been of great importance in the early history of
our country. The early settlement in America was due to the same
causes as the settlement of Canaan by the Hebrews. To the Pilgrim
Fathers the Old Testament was a supporting hand and a guide for them
in all matters. They took the Jewish theocracy as their model of
government and, in the measure that they patterned after a good model,
they achieved good results. So largely are the early history and
institutions of the United States a copy of Jewish institutions that
the spirit of the American people both before and after the Revolution
cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of Hebrew literature.
These early settlers were imbued with spirit and desire for the best
in life by reading the Bible. It was their one book, and "a man of one
book makes a strong man." And perhaps it is the Old Testament rather
than the New Testament the knowledge of which is of greater
consequence for the best understanding of the peculiar conditions of
the early American people.
Therefore I welcome your Society first because it represents something
which has done much for learning in our great centres of learning, the
universities; and second, because as Americans, Jewish history means
much to us in understanding the early development of our own country.
II
CHANCELLOR ELMER E. BROWN _of New York University_
_Before the Menorah Society of New York University, May 12, 1914_
[Illustration]
IT seems to me that it is not only of value to the Jewish students,
but to the whole university, that there should be a body here devoted
to the study of Jewish tradition, Jewish literature and Jewish
history. You are emphasizing something that is of permanent value to
your associates here in the University who are not of the Jewish race
and the Jewish faith. The Christian Church finds in the Jewish
Scriptures some of the finest and most precious of the things it
cherishes from the religious point of view. Our civilization in these
occidental countries is deeply indebted to the history and the
literature of the Jewish race. From time to time that indebtedness
comes to stronger expression, and we may expect that in the future the
sense of that indebtedness of our whole people to that which is the
immediate concern of the Menorah Society will be more keenly felt.
If you go back in the history of this country you will find a time
when our New Englanders were especially indebted to what they as
Christians called the Old Testament. There was a time in Colonial
days when the earlier portions of this literature exercised a mighty
influence over these new commonwealths. As you read the history of New
England you cannot help being profoundly impressed by the influence of
the Hebrew literature upon the life of the seventeenth century. The
names and references to the Jewish people are all interwoven with New
England history. I was thinking of a curious illustration of this fact
only a short time ago. You know the old poem of "Darius Green and His
Flying Machine" that has come into astonishingly new popularity in
modern times. It contains, you will recall, an enumeration of the
brothers of Darius, and four of the five names are taken from Hebrew
history. The appearance of these Jewish names in such large numbers is
coincident with a reappearance of Hebrew spirit in our Colonial times,
all modified of course by Christian tradition, but presenting a most
important and essential ingredient of the time. This apparently
trivial illustration simply shows that which is to be found in our
whole culture. It is profoundly significant in regard to our American
culture.
So it seems to me that the Menorah Society has work of two kinds--to
bring together our Jewish students on a higher plane of sentiment, and
at the same time to put new emphasis, in all parts of the University,
on the invaluable things which the Jewish race has contributed to the
civilization of the world. So I feel that I may look to you of this
organization to bring to New York University a new emphasis upon these
great things which are the common heritage of our scholastic society.
I trust that you will feel that there is a genuine warmth and a
genuine interest in the welcome that I extend to you,--not a welcome
to the University alone, but a welcome to this new service in this
University, in which every movement such as this has work to do for
the good of all.
III
PRESIDENT CHARLES W. DABNEY _of the University of Cincinnati_
_Before the Cincinnati Menorah Society, November 19, 1914_
STANDING as it does for the study of the history and culture of the
Jewish people, and for the advancement of their ideals, the Menorah
Society is welcomed to the University of Cincinnati. This University,
of all institutions, should welcome every such organization. The
University of Cincinnati claims to represent the idea of the democracy
of the higher education, the equality of opportunity for the highest
culture in its latest form. The American idea is that the university
should be as free to all cultures as our country is free to all races.
Standing for this idea more distinctly than any other type of
institution among us, the American state university has been called
the characteristic institution of the republic. But the municipal
university is destined to democratize the higher education even more
completely than the state university. The state university makes the
higher education free to all who can come to it, but the municipal
university takes it to the poorest citizen at his home.
For these reasons, if for no other, we should welcome the Menorah
Society into our midst. As I was just informed that the national
convention of the Intercollegiate Association is about to take place,
let me, on behalf of this University, say to you, Mr. Chancellor, as
the representative of the national organization, that we are glad to
extend an invitation to your convention to meet in our halls.
There are special reasons, too, why we should welcome the Menorah
Association here. We believe that the University and its members need
this Society for several reasons. In the first place, a great
democratic institution like this can grow only when all the races
bring into it their peculiar customs and ideals. I believe the
non-Jews need it as well as the Jews. It takes varied elements to make
up the democracy, and America, and Cincinnati, and its University all
need the spiritual resources of the Jew. I am impressed with the
statement of the purposes of the Menorah Society as explained by the
Chancellor in the address to which we have just listened.
He tells us first of all that its object is to promote the study of
the history of the Jewish race. Your ancient books are the sources of
all history; in fact, I cannot conceive of the study of history unless
it begins with, or takes up very early, these great historic books of
the Bible. They furnish the Ariadne's thread for the wanderer through
all history; they are the fountain head also of the philosophy of
history. The old Jewish historians always took the teleological view
of the world and looked from the effect back to the cause,
interpreting human events in the terms of God, the designer, the
creator, and the governor of the world. In fact, their great
contribution to history was this doctrine of God's hand in human
events.
The Jew had also, it seems to me, throughout his whole history, a
special talent for theistic truth, for those verities that are
eternal. With an insight and a power almost surpassing all other men,
he discovered truths which have ever been, and always will be,
essential factors in all religion. The first of these ideas is his
conception of Jahveh, not only as a sovereign, powerful, and terrible
Being, but as a personal, holy, righteous, and good Father, "who
pitieth his children." Your Bible, however, nowhere tries to prove the
existence of a God; it everywhere assumes it. "It is the fool who says
in his heart there is no God," declares the Psalmist.
For the same reason, your great books are the world's text book of
comparative religion. I cannot conceive of any one studying religions
without going to them, for above all others the Jewish religion is
original. For these and many more reasons, we hold that the history,
religion and philosophy of the Hebrews is fundamental and
indispensable for the student of these subjects--in fact, for all
students of the humanities.
It was the Jew who discovered conscience, also, and produced in due
time an order of men who made themselves the conscience of their
nation. Moses first formed a law declaring the word of God and
teaching men their relations to God and to each other. Other nations
have had priests and augurs who received the oblations of the people
and gave them advice about their affairs, but the Jewish nation was
the first to produce real prophets who dared to denounce the sins of
the people and remind them of their duty as men and nations. What the
world needs today is another line of such prophets.
To the young men assembled here tonight, I would say, therefore, it is
your duty to study the history, philosophy and theology presented in
these ancient Scriptures, and thus inform yourselves how to instruct
this great democratic people. Be prophets like the prophets of old to
guide the people into the truth!
The Jews were the first people to uphold the sacred character of
patriotism, the patriotism of principle, not of mere power, the
patriotism that teaches that it is not might that makes right, but
right which makes might. How sadly the European powers need to learn
this lesson today! Only "righteousness exalteth the nation" and gives
it the power and the right to lead in the world. If nations would seek
righteousness as a means of winning leadership, they would never need
to go to war, and the exercise of might would never be necessary.
Because this Society proposes to study the great history and
literature which teaches these things, we give it a welcome tonight,
and pray that the light held up by the Menorah may shine not only for
the people of Cincinnati, but for the people of America, and the
world, that all the nations may be guided into that righteousness
which leads to Peace.
The Menorah Movement
BY HENRY HURWITZ
_Chancellor of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association_
I
THE MENORAH MOVEMENT is now in its ninth year. Starting at Harvard
University, where the first Menorah Society was organized in October,
1906, the idea spread to other colleges and universities in various
parts of the country. Societies arose at Columbia, College of the City
of New York, Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, Minnesota, Michigan,
Chicago, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri. Before long a common
desire was felt for closer relationship and co-operation. This led to
the holding of two intercollegiate conferences early in 1912: one, an
eastern conference, at Columbia University, in January, with delegates
from six Menorah Societies, and another, a western conference, at the
University of Chicago, in April, where also six Societies were
represented. As a result of these preliminary gatherings, the first
national convention of Menorah Societies was called at the University
of Chicago, in January, 1913. Delegates of twelve Menorah Societies
from universities in both the East and the West came together, and
seven other Societies were heard from. At this national convention,
the Intercollegiate Menorah Association was formed.
In a period of less than two years since this first convention, the
number of Societies has grown from nineteen to thirty-five. There are
Societies now at the following colleges and universities: Boston
University, Brown, California, Chicago, Cincinnati, College of the
City of New York, Clark, Colorado, Columbia, Cornell, Denver, Harvard,
Hunter, Illinois, Johns Hopkins, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri,
New York University, North Carolina, Ohio State, Omaha, Pennsylvania,
Penn State, Pittsburgh, Radcliffe, Rutgers, Texas, Tufts, Valparaiso,
Washington, Western Reserve, Wisconsin, and Yale. New Societies are in
the process of formation at several other universities.
This development of the Menorah movement has from the very beginning
been a natural, unforced growth. The Intercollegiate Menorah
Association makes no effort to organize new Menorah Societies; its
policy is rather to encourage and assist the efforts of students who,
wishing to join in the movement, have undertaken on their own
initiative to organize Menorah Societies at their colleges and
universities. Hence every Menorah Society is the result of a
spontaneous desire among students to organize for Menorah purposes.
The first Menorah Society started with sixteen members. Now the total
membership of Menorah Societies approximates 3,000. The Menorah idea
is firmly implanted in leading colleges and universities throughout
the country, from Massachusetts to California.
II
EVERY Menorah Society is organized to promote at its college or
university the study of Jewish history and culture and contemporary
Jewish problems. First of all, the Menorah Societies aim to spread a
knowledge of the Jewish humanities--Jewish literature, religion, and
ideals--and of their influence upon civilization. In other words, the
Societies aim to promote a true appreciation of the spirit and
achievements of the Jewish people, from ancient to modern times.
Particular study is made of contemporary conditions and problems, and
of the ways in which Jewish culture may not only be conserved but
advanced. To this end, the Menorah Societies strive to inspire the
Jewish student with an intelligent and spirited devotion to Jewish
ideals, and with the desire to develop and contribute to the community
what is best in his Jewish character and endowment.
Thus, in endeavoring to promote knowledge, culture, idealism, the
Menorah Societies are in keeping with the university spirit which has
helped to call them into existence. The Societies are an expression of
the liberality and freedom of American universities. Membership is
open to all students and instructors. College and university
authorities have heartily welcomed the Menorah Societies, have aided
them in carrying out their objects, have enhanced their influence
among the students at large, and have been most generous in
recognizing the definite contribution which the Societies make to the
intellectual and idealistic life of their universities.
Not only the university authorities, but the graduates, too, and other
public-spirited men and women outside of the universities, have warmly
welcomed the Menorah Movement. They see in it the expression of a
spontaneous and earnest desire on the part of growing numbers of
Jewish students for Jewish knowledge and idealism, for a realization
of the Jewish _noblesse oblige_; they see, too, that this movement is
bound at the same time to help bring about a more just and liberal
attitude on the part of university men and women in general toward the
character and ideals of their Jewish fellow-citizens.
Through the encouragement and generous support provided by a Graduate
Advisory Menorah Committee, under the chairmanship of Justice Irving
Lehman of New York, the Intercollegiate Menorah Association is being
helped materially in carrying out its objects.
III
WHILE the purposes of all the Menorah Societies are identical, they
are free to carry out these purposes in any ways they choose, along
lines that best suit their local conditions and are in keeping with
the academic and liberal character of the organization. Certain
activities, however, are followed in common by most of the Societies.
To begin with, it may be stated that all of the Menorah Societies
strongly encourage their members to take the regular courses in Jewish
history and literature wherever such courses are a part of the
curriculum and are devoted not so much to technical learning as to a
liberal and humane study of Jewish culture. Where such courses are not
offered--and it is unfortunately true that many institutions are
deficient in this regard--the Menorah students are creating a demand
which, it is hoped, will be met in time by the offer of appropriate
courses. It is even hoped that a number of the leading universities
will eventually have special Chairs in Jewish history and culture.
Meanwhile, however, whether to supplement or to take the place of
regular courses, the Menorah Society enables its members--or, rather,
all the members of the university who so desire--to pursue their
interest in Jewish studies in less formal manner. Thus, the Societies
have lectures on Jewish subjects by members of the faculties, or by
men from outside their universities. In this connection, the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association has been of considerable service
to the various Societies. The Association has established the Menorah
College of Lecturers, consisting of a number of Jewish scholars,
publicists, and religious leaders, who have undertaken to lecture (for
love) before the Societies. Their lectures, which are generally
followed by informal discussions, are, as a rule, open to the whole
university, and are often held not merely under the auspices of the
Menorah Society, but also in conjunction with some department of the
university, or with some other student organization. At times, the
Menorah lecturers are invited by the university authorities to address
the whole student body at assemblies and convocations.
At other Menorah meetings, the members themselves present papers and
carry on discussions upon Jewish topics of historic and literary as
well as current interest.
Not content, however, with such lectures, papers, and discussions,
most of the Societies provide their members with opportunities for
intensive and systematic study. Study groups are formed, under the
leadership of older students or of competent men from outside the
universities, for the purpose of regular study in Jewish history,
religion and literature, or contemporary Jewish conditions and
problems, or the Hebrew language, or any other special field of
interest. The work of these groups is carried on along the lines of a
regular class or seminar, though, of course, with less rigor and
formality.
IV
AS an incentive to original investigation on the part of the students,
several Menorah Societies have been enabled to offer prizes to their
universities for the best essays on Jewish subjects. Thus, at Harvard,
since 1907, through the generosity of Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, of New
York, the Menorah Society has offered an annual prize of $100 for the
best essay written by any undergraduate on some approved Jewish
subject; and similarly, at the Universities of Wisconsin and Michigan,
through the generosity of Mr. Julius Rosenwald, of Chicago, the
Menorah Societies are enabled to offer prizes of $100 each to their
Universities upon the same terms. (Menorah Prize Essays will be
printed from time to time in this Journal.) One or two other Societies
have been enabled to offer smaller prizes. All of the Societies are
anxious to be of similar service to their universities, and it is
hoped that the Intercollegiate Menorah Association may be enabled next
year to offer prizes open to the undergraduates of all American
colleges and universities. This should help materially to stimulate
Jewish study among students throughout the country.
Perhaps the most essential requirement for carrying on Jewish study is
an adequate supply of books. Except at the larger institutions, there
has been a notable lack of Jewish books at American colleges and
universities, mainly, no doubt, because Jewish studies as a whole have
been neglected. The Intercollegiate Menorah Association has
fortunately been able to remedy these conditions to some extent at the
institutions where Menorah Societies exist. With the assistance of the
Jewish Publication Society and a number of individuals, the
Association has sent Menorah Libraries of Jewish books to the various
Menorah Societies. These books are for the use not only of Menorah
Societies, but of all the students in their universities. That the
Menorah Libraries have helped the work of the Societies, and have
added appreciably to the library facilities at the various
institutions, is abundantly shown by the gratitude expressed both by
students and authorities.
Yet the work of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association has only
begun. Its field is almost unlimited; and with constantly growing
membership, both of undergraduates and of graduates, with the
increasing encouragement and support from men and women in all parts
of the country, the Association is gathering strength for enterprises
that must prove beneficial not to universities alone, but to the
community in general. Thus, the Menorah Journal is launched this year
in response to a desire not only on the part of the students, but of
men and women throughout the country who have been wanting such a
Review of Jewish life and literature in America. Other literary
enterprises are contemplated for the future. Besides syllabi for the
study groups, pamphlet essays, and similar facilities designed
especially for students, one large scheme in mind may appropriately
be mentioned here as of interest to all the readers of the Journal,
namely, the plan for the Menorah Classics. These are to be the
selected treasures of the literature of the Jewish people, from the
Bible to Bialik, printed in attractively handy form, with translations
and notes designed for the general reader as well as for students. In
this way, it is hoped to place the gems of the great store of Jewish
literature within the reach of all.
V
THE work of the Menorah Societies is not designed to make Jewish
scholars of the members. It is meant to gratify their desire to
understand their heritage, to stimulate them still further to study
that heritage, to help them realize the honor and the responsibility
they share as the heirs and trustees of Jewish tradition. And though
the earnest work of Menorah Societies partakes largely of the spirit
of the class-room and the lecture-hall, the pursuit of Menorah aims
expresses itself incidentally in sociable ways as well. Smokers,
dinners, pageants, literary and dramatic evenings, testify to the
pleasure which the members find in their association together for
Menorah purposes.
Menorah Societies, however, do not assume the character of social
organizations. Menorah Societies are all-inclusive, not exclusive;
they promote democracy, mutual respect, and understanding between
different types of Jewish students who have often in the past retained
toward one another the prejudices of their elders. The Menorah
fellowship expresses and promotes the common sentiment of all students
who have come to appreciate Jewish knowledge and ideals, who accept
their common Jewish heritage and Jewish hopes. In other words, where
in the past snobbery and spinelessness were not lacking among Jewish
students at our universities, there has grown up now a spirit of
democracy and of manly frankness, which has not escaped the
observation of older men, both within and without the universities.
But these qualities in the Jewish students of to-day have merely been
revealed by the Menorah movement. The movement has definite moral
purposes of its own. The Menorah idea embraces not merely the study
but the enhancement of the Jewish heritage. And this requires not
moral enthusiasm alone, but vision and action. To accomplish their
full purposes, the Menorah Societies endeavor to inspire their members
with the will to throw themselves into the heart of Jewish life, to
join hands with other men in the active effort to advance its
interests and solve its problems.
While this participation in Jewish life must be the personal outcome
of Menorah enthusiasm and activity--as indeed has been proven already
among students and graduates--the Menorah organization, as such,
maintains its non-partisan character. A Menorah Society is neither
orthodox nor reform, neither Zionist nor anti-Zionist, but rather an
open forum for presenting and discussing every point of view, a forum
hospitable in true academic spirit to the open-minded pursuit of
truth.
VI
IN sum, the Menorah movement represents an organization and an idea.
If the organization has grown in extent and importance beyond the
fondest expectations, it is because the idea, conceived by students
and carried out by them, has found a welcome home in the American
university. And one of the reasons why the Menorah idea has seized
upon the imagination and caught the heart of the university man is
because it appeals both to his independence of mind and his pride. A
Menorah Society imposes no dogma, no ceremony; the independence of
thought so dear to the bosom of youth is given full scope. A Menorah
Society aims, first of all, to satisfy an aroused intellectual
curiosity with respect to the past and present and possible future of
the Jewish race.
But the real source of Menorah strength lies far deeper. Consciously
or unconsciously, from the very beginning of his affiliation with a
Menorah Society, the Jewish student responds to a call within himself
of _noblesse oblige_. It is pride of race--not vanity or brag, but a
pride conscious of its human obligation--that animates Menorah men and
women throughout the country. Knowledge and service, which may be
regarded as the very cornerstones of Jewish idealism, constitute the
twin motives of the Menorah movement.
The Menorah movement is the answer of the Jewish academic youth to the
challenge of American democracy. American institutions give us the
opportunity to develop all our capacities in freedom. The endeavor of
Menorah men is to preserve and enhance, for America and for mankind,
the best in us that may flourish in freedom, our Jewish heritage and
endowment.
From College and University
_Reports from Menorah Societies_
[_It is not planned to have reports from all the Menorah Societies in
any single issue of the Journal. A complete list of Menorah Societies
may be found on the inside of the front cover._]
=University of California=
THE California Menorah Society has begun its fourth year under most
promising auspices.
The first meeting of the year, on Monday evening, August 31, was the
finest ever held by the Society. It had been announced before the
entire student body at the University meeting in Harmon Gymnasium, and
all interested were invited to attend. Eighty men and women of the
University were present. The theme of the meeting was the Menorah
Idea. Mr. Samuel Spring, Harvard, '09, a former member of the Harvard
Menorah Society, spoke on "The Menorah and the Community from a
Graduate's Standpoint;" Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin of Stockton, now a
graduate student in the University, spoke on "The Menorah and the
Rabbinate," and the chief speech of the evening was delivered by Dean
D.B. Barrows on "The University and the Menorah." Professor Barrows
greatly approved of the organization and characterized the California
Menorah Society as the most, useful student organization on the
campus.
The second general meeting of the Society, held on September 28, was
devoted to the topic of Immigration. Professor Ira B. Cross, of the
University Economics Department and of the State Industrial Accident
Commission, delivered an excellent address on "Streams of Immigration,
Past, Present and Future." Mr. R. J. Rosenthal, of the California
State Commission on Immigration and Housing, spoke a few words on the
Jewish side of the question. A selection from Mary Antin's "The
Promised Land" was read. Appropriate literary and musical selections
were rendered. About fifty-five members were present.
On Monday evening, October 12, a Study Circle meeting was held. Rabbi
Edgar F. Magnin conducted a discussion on "Dominant Notes in Jewish
Poetry." Among the poems read were the Song of Deborah, the 23d Psalm,
the Wine Song of Gabirol, selections from Emma Lazarus, and "The
Jewish Soldier" and "The Sweatshop" of Rosenfeld.
At the general meeting of the Society on Monday evening, October 26,
Rabbi Jacob Nieto of San Francisco spoke on "The Modern Viewpoint of
the Bible" to an audience of over sixty, including several non-Jews,
who were so favorably impressed with the meeting that they declared
their intention to be present at future Menorah meetings. Rabbi
Nieto's talk stirred up a great deal of discussion among the members.
The first chapter of Isaiah and the Song of Moses were read, and there
were musical selections.
On Monday evening, November 9, Mr. Harry Hart, Assistant City
Attorney, led a discussion in the Study Circle on "Early Jewish
Philosophers."
The last general meeting was held on Monday evening, November 30.
Professor William Popper gave a most interesting talk on "Jewish
Education," in which he traced the history and methods of Jewish
pedagogy through the Biblical, post-Biblical and Talmudic periods.
Musical and literary numbers were rendered, the "Menorah Quartet"
making its debut at this meeting. The attendance was about sixty, of
whom ten were non-Jews.
The constitution of the club has been revised to meet the expanding
needs of the Society. Three standing committees now exist. The
executive committee, composed of the four elected officers and three
other members elected by the general body, will be the administrative
arm of the club. The club's policy is largely determined by this
committee. They decide what business is to be brought before the club
members, and they set in motion all innovations looking to the
betterment of the club.
The membership committee, composed of a chairman, appointed from the
three elected executive committee members by the President, and nine
other students, selected from the different colleges of the
University, has the duty of increasing the membership roll of the
Society. This committee began active operations in the summer.
California being a State university, its student body is made up
almost entirely of residents of California. Hence through the
assistance of Rabbis in different sections of the State, the committee
has been enabled to get in touch with many of the newcomers to the
University this fall. To them, as well as to the old members of this
Society, a circular letter was sent. The aims of the Menorah were
briefly outlined, and the dates of monthly meetings stated; the office
hours and location of several members of the Society during
registration were named, and all freshmen were advised to consult with
them for any information or aid desired.
In this way the committee has been able to reach newcomers at the
University and impress them with the Menorah idea before the entrant's
viewpoint has been beclouded by any false attitude toward a Jewish
organization on the campus. After the college year has begun, the
committee scours the campus for those Jewish students who have not yet
been enlightened as to the work of the Menorah. The California Society
does not bow down before numbers, but it feels that the benefits of
the Menorah should be enjoyed by the largest possible number of Jewish
students.
Upon the third committee, however, the Social committee, which plans
the programs, rests the major responsibility for the Club's success.
Taking the Harvard plan as a pattern, the California Menorah has
created what is for the present called the Menorah Study Circle. This
meets bi-weekly. On the other hand, a general meeting of the Society
as a whole is held every month. These general meetings are more
popular in nature, for the many elements of the Jewish body must here
be conciliated, as well as those of non-Jewish faith who are
interested in the purposes of the Menorah. Due to the complex and
many-sided character of the Jewish student group, a concession to the
various interests must be made in the form of a cultural-social
program for the evening. Lecturers are secured; informal discussion is
encouraged; musical and literary programs are arranged--all, of
course, in the effort to present in attractive form such cultural
material as the diverse elements in the body of Jewish students can
absorb.
The Study Circle meetings have a different viewpoint. They are of a
more specialized nature. Through them the serious phases of the club's
activity are furthered. The personnel of the Circle is made up of
those who are seriously interested in the distinctly intellectual work
of the Club. The demand for the Study Circle arose spontaneously from
these students. A faculty member, or Rabbi, or outside scholar, is
occasionally asked to present an address. Discussion follows. Jewish
literary, religious, economic and social problems are thus handled.
The recent arrival of the Menorah Library has greatly pleased the
members. The books will be a great aid in the work of the Society. The
attention of all the students in the University is being called to the
Library by a statement in the _Daily Californian_ and by other means.
Efforts are now being made to introduce a Menorah prize for the best
essay on a Jewish subject. LOUIS I. NEWMAN
=University of Cincinnati=
THE University of Cincinnati Menorah Society was organized on April
25, 1914. Our first task was to place the Society in the right light
on the campus, to emphasize the absolutely unsectarian, academic,
cultural nature of a Menorah, and the fact that membership is
"invitingly open to all the members of the University," irrespective
of creed or sex. We accomplished this by continuous announcements in
the _University News_, by the open character of our meetings, and by
the actual composition of our membership.
Though we organized late in the year, we succeeded in having several
large meetings at which addresses were delivered by men who are
authorities in their respective subjects. At the initial meeting,
preliminary to organization, Dr. David Philipson, '83, spoke, and Dean
F. W. Chandler of the College of Liberal Arts cordially welcomed the
Society. The first meeting after our organization was addressed by
Professor Julian Morgenstern of the Hebrew Union College, who spoke on
"The Judaism of the Future." Addresses at subsequent meetings were
delivered by Mr. A. J. Kinsella of the Greek Department of the
University of Cincinnati on "The Greek and the Semite in the World's
Civilization;" by Dr. Edward Mack, Professor of Old Testament at the
Lane Theological Seminary, on "The Influence of Hebrew Literature on
the World's Thought and Literature"; and by Rabbi Louis L. Mann of New
Haven, Conn., on "Christian Science and Judaism." These meetings had
an average attendance of seventy.
Among the meetings held so far this year the most important was on the
evening of November 19th. Chancellor Henry Hurwitz of the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association delivered an address on the
purposes of the Menorah movement, to which President Charles W. Dabney
of the University responded, heartily welcoming the Menorah Society to
the University and extending a cordial invitation to the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association to hold its next annual Convention
at the University. (The address of President Dabney is printed above,
page 47). Dr. David Philipson spoke on the significance of the
Menorah, and lighted a large Menorah on the platform. Music was
rendered by the Girls' Glee Club. Dean F. W. Chandler sent the
following greeting:
"With the modern drift of attention away from the classics and away
from the Bible, it behooves those of us who would count as the friends
of culture to welcome every effort to stimulate interest in either.
The Menorah Societies which are finding a place in our chief
universities have assumed a laudable task. They are striving to hold
before the minds of the youth of this land the fine ideals of the
ancient Hebrew literature. In such efforts they should be encouraged
by Jew and Gentile alike. For we are all heirs of Hebrew tradition; we
are all brothers engaged in a common undertaking. We believe it to be
our duty to learn from the past whatever is best, to the end that we
may enrich with that knowledge the present and the future. We welcome
therefore all that the Menorah Society can give us of inspiration
toward making the most of our heritage. We rejoice that through this
agency we may be kept constantly aware of what a great people has
contributed to our civilization."
The Cincinnati Menorah Society is delighted that the Association has
accepted the invitation of President Dabney to hold the next
Convention at this University. Preparations are now being made for the
Convention and for the entertainment not only of the delegates but of
all Menorah men and women who will come. We ardently hope to welcome a
large number of our fellow-Menorah members.
It will be of interest to relate that, after reading a copy of "The
Menorah Movement," Miss E. McVea, Dean of Women and Assistant
Professor of English, suggested the following three subjects for
twenty-page essays in one of her English classes: "The Contribution of
the Jew to Civilization," "The Integrity of the Jewish Race," and
"Zionism."
Early in the year Mr. Louis D. Brandeis of Boston spoke under the
auspices of the Menorah Society at a meeting open to the whole
University upon "The New Science of Efficiency"--the subject being
chosen at the request of President Dabney. In introducing the speaker
President Dabney expressed the indebtedness of the Faculty to the
Menorah for the pleasure of having Mr. Brandeis at the University.
ABRAHAM J. FELDMAN
=College of the City of New York=
DURING the past year the Menorah Society of the College of the City of
New York has made very important gains. First, in numbers--from 165,
reported at the last Convention, we have increased to 327. There are
still about 500 Jewish students who are not yet members, and these we
intend to gain over. Second, in prestige--from a position of mere
toleration we have gradually risen to the position of the recognized
and accepted exponent of Jewish culture in the College, and as such we
have set the College its standard of a cultural society. Third, in
influence--we have inspired a large number of students, including many
who for some reason or other have not yet become members, with a
lively interest in things Jewish and a serious desire for collegiate
Hebrew instruction. At present the College lacks such instruction; but
we hope before long to report progress in remedying this condition.
Meanwhile we are attracting the favorable attention of a considerable
number of the alumni--men who in their college days would not or could
not join the Menorah Society. This is indeed remarkable; that old
graduates, who never knew the Menorah, should manifest toward it the
highest interest and approbation is a most eloquent sign of the
influence of the Menorah idea.
Our plan for the organization of the graduates as associate members is
the same as Harvard's. But their dues are disposed of in a different
way: out of the two dollars one goes to our Library Fund, and the
other is sent to the Menorah Journal as the associate's subscription,
for we feel that this is the best way to keep him in touch with
Menorah activities. This system has a further advantage in that it
spreads the Journal everywhere.
There were held during the past year thirty regular meetings and
lectures--one each week. At the meetings the average attendance was
36, at the lectures 155. The principal lecturers were: Professor M. M.
Kaplan, "The Menorah Idea"; Professor Richard Gottheil, "Jews in
Various Lands"; Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, "Zionism and Jewish Nationality";
Professor A. Marks, "Persecutions of the Jews in the Middle Ages";
Rev. Dr. David de Sola Pool, "Jewish Education"; Professor Israel
Davidson, "Hebrew Literature"; Rev. Dr. M. A. Hyamson, "The Mishnah";
Rev. Dr. Harry S. Lewis of London, "The Jews and Democracy"; Rev. Dr.
H. P. Mendes, "Traditional Judaism"; Professor Stephen P. Duggan,
"Tradition as a Static and Dynamic Force"; Rev. Dr. Stephen S. Wise,
"What's Wrong with the Jew?"
There were four courses taught. The average attendance at a course was
16. Rabbi Nathan Blechman led the course in "An Extensive Study of the
Bible," Professor M. M. Kaplan taught "Essentials of Judaism," and
Rabbi Samuel Margoshes gave the course in "Jewish Philosophy and
Literature." At the request of a number of students a course in
"Elementary Hebrew" was also given for a time.
Two social meetings were held during the year. The first was a
reception in the vestry rooms of the Temple Beth-el tendered us by the
Menorah Society of Hunter College (formerly Normal), in recognition of
our help in the organization of their Society. The second was a
"smoker" held at the College in the Faculty lunch-room. The guests of
the occasion were Professor Israel Friedlaender of the Jewish
Theological Seminary, Professor A. J. Goldfarb of the College, and
Rev. Dr. D. de Sola Pool.
For the first semester this year, four regular Wednesday evening
meetings have been scheduled, four public lectures, six study circles,
and four courses. The courses--"Modern Movements in Judaism" (one
hour), "Elementary Hebrew" (two hours), "Post-Biblical History" (one
hour), and an "Extensive Study of the Bible" (one hour)--will be
conducted by Rabbis Stephen S. Wise, J. L. Magnes, Max Reichler,
Rudolph Grossman, Maurice Harris, C. H. Levy, H. S. Goldstein, and A.
Robinson. The study circles, which will meet once a week, under the
leadership of Dr. Joseph I. Gorfinkle and Dr. A. Basel, will read the
"Essays of Ahad Ha-'Am," Schechter's "Studies in Judaism," the "Book
of Job," the "Book of Jeremiah," "Pirke Aboth," and the "Five
Scrolls."
With the respect and co-operation of the student body, the faculty,
and the alumni, the prestige of our Menorah bids fair to increase
until, it is hoped, it will not be exceeded by that of any other City
College organization.
GEORGE J. HOROWITZ
=Cornell University=
THE Cornell Menorah Society has this year issued a prospectus which
has met with much favor among undergraduates, graduates and faculty,
and has been very helpful in our work. It contains an explanation of
"The Menorah Idea," accounts of the history and activities of both the
Cornell Society and the Intercollegiate Association, and the address
of President Schurman of November 24, 1913, by which he welcomed the
Menorah Society to the University. There is also included, besides the
general program for the year, the announcement of the Cornell Menorah
prizes. These are three prizes of $25.00 each, offered by the Cornell
Menorah Society to all the undergraduates of the University for (1)
the best essay on any subject relating to the status and problems of
the Jews in any country; (2) the best essay on any subject relating to
Jewish literature in English; and (3) the best essay or poem in
Hebrew.
The first meeting of the year, on October 7, was very successful. It
was attended by more than eighty students and several members of the
faculty. The meeting was devoted to an exposition of the purposes and
ideals of the Menorah movement. Professor W. A. Hurwitz and Professor
Hays spoke very enthusiastically of the accomplishments and the hopes
of the Cornell Menorah Society. About thirty new members were
enrolled, bringing our membership list up to one hundred. This number
includes five members of the faculty and about a score of graduates.
Several men who had come to the meeting to scoff stayed to enroll. The
subsequent meetings have also been well attended. Our organization is
gaining greater and greater prestige on the campus.
In the plans for this year, the work of study circles has been
particularly emphasized. As compared with two circles last year,
meeting more or less irregularly, we have at present six circles
meeting very regularly and doing really splendid work. More than half
of our members are now enrolled in one or several of these circles.
The subjects of study are: (1) Elementary Hebrew, (2) Advanced Hebrew,
(3) The Bible, (4) Jewish History, (5) Sociological Problems of the
Jews, and (6) Zionism. Though we have been feeling very keenly the
need of suitable syllabi and text books, each circle has chosen the
texts considered most suitable and available for its purpose. Most of
the men have bought their own text books, and have subscribed to
various Jewish periodicals. Thus, the beginners in Hebrew are using
Manheimer as a text; the members of the advanced Hebrew circle are
also using the Bible as a text and have each subscribed to the
_Hatoren_ (a Hebrew monthly of New York). The Bible circle is also
using the Bible as its text, and the Hebrew and Bible circles
contemplate procuring jointly several Jewish Commentaries, like those
of Rashi and Kimchi, for general reference in the University Library.
The circle in Zionism is using Professor Gottheil's book, and the
members have each subscribed to _The Maccabæan_. The history circle
has recently decided to use Dubnow's Essay as a text. It may be
mentioned here that the books of the Menorah Library are receiving
very good circulation and the standard reference works, such as
Graetz, Ginsburg, Schechter, and others, have been of great value to
the members of the study circles in their work. It is hoped that a
number of Jewish periodicals may also be made available in the
University Library.
It is planned to hold meetings of the Cornell Menorah Society in
conjunction with one or two other university organizations for several
lecturers whom we expect through the courtesy of the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association. One meeting in particular that is planned for the
future may be noted. Annually, in February, occurs what is known as
Farmers' Week in Ithaca. During the week thousands of farmers from
all over the country visit the College of Agriculture, where a most
elaborate program is arranged for their benefit, consisting of
lectures, demonstrations, exhibits, and addresses on the various
phases of agriculture and country life. Last year, Mr. Joseph M.
Pincus, Editor of _The Jewish Farmer_, addressed a large audience
under the joint auspices of the Menorah Society and the College of
Agriculture on "The Jew as a Farmer." The lecture was illustrated with
a fine selection of lantern slides, and the meeting as a whole was
very successful. In planning for the coming year, we have tried to
emphasize even more strongly than last year our part in the program
for Farmers' Week. Mr. Pincus has kindly consented to come again, and
probably we shall also have Mr. Leonard G. Robinson, General Manager
of the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, who will speak
on "Jewish Agricultural Co-operative Associations."
We are now trying to make arrangements for our Society to take care of
an exhibit which will show by charts, photographs, and other suitable
material, the activities of the various Jewish agricultural
organizations and the progress of Jewish farmers in America within
recent years. It may be of interest to add that as a direct result of
the Menorah meeting last year during Farmers' Week, one of the
students was appointed by the Extension Department of the College of
Agriculture to go out with an "educational train" during the summer
and carry on certain extension work among the Jewish farmers of New
York State.
LEON J. ROSENTHAL
=Harvard University=
THE opening meeting of the ninth year of the Harvard Menorah Society
was held on October 13, 1914. The meeting was the largest in the
history of the Society, over 150 men being present. The purposes of
the Society were explained to the new men by the officers, and Le
Baron Russell Briggs, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences,
extended a welcome in behalf of the University. He said in part: "I
was present at the foundation of the Harvard Menorah Society in 1906,
and was very much impressed by the fine earnestness of the leaders. If
I were a Jew, I would be so proud of the history and traditions of my
race that I would welcome the opportunity that this Society offers.
For this reason I have always taken a great interest in the Menorah
Society."
The plans for this year include as usual a series of fortnightly
lectures by men of learning and prominence. Among the speakers for the
first half year are Dr. Cyrus Adler of Philadelphia, Professor Richard
Gottheil of New York, Mr. Samuel Strauss of New York, Dr. A. A. Neuman
of Philadelphia, Dr. Martin A. Meyer of San Francisco, Dr. D. de Sola
Pool and Dr. S. Benderly of New York. In addition, there are planned
three study circles, each of which will meet every alternate week. One
of these circles is to be devoted to Jewish history, another to the
study of the Hebrew language, and the third to the consideration of
modern Jewish problems.
The prospects for this year are even brighter than ever before. The
enthusiasm is as great as it has ever been, and the membership will
undoubtedly exceed all past records.
It is of interest to note that more and more members of Menorah
Societies at other Universities all over the country continue their
Menorah activities in our Society when they come to study in the
graduate departments of Harvard University.
ISADORE LEVIN
=Hunter College=
THROUGH the influence of the Menorah Society of the College of the
City of New York, a Menorah Society was formed at the Normal College
of New York (for women), with the approval of the Dean, in May, 1913.
Owing to the change of name of the College, it is now known as the
Hunter College Menorah.
During the first year of its existence, under the leadership of its
first President, Miss Selma Blechman, and the hearty support of its
members, the corner-stone for its present greater work was laid. A
program of lectures was planned to be held on the third Friday of
every month. The lectures were to cover the several periods of Jewish
history from ancient to modern times. This was done with great
success.
This year, in addition to the lectures, the Society is planning to
give courses in (1) Hebrew, (2) Jewish History, and (3) the Bible.
This project has met with the hearty approval of both the President
and the Dean, and the Menorah hopes to enter soon upon active work in
these subjects.
A word about the membership of the Hunter Menorah must be said. When
the Society started it had a membership of one hundred, of whom ninety
were active members. It now has about twice that number, with an
active membership of one hundred.
The Society has acquired such repute that students who are not members
attend the lectures and are very enthusiastic about them. Indeed, the
Hunter College Menorah sees before it a very rosy future.
At the recent Bazaar given by the College Athletic Association for the
Red Cross Relief Fund, the Society had a booth and sold appropriate
articles, like brass Menorahs, books and small Hebrew scrolls, objects
of Jewish art, and candy and almonds from Palestine, thus adding a
considerable sum to the Fund. Besides, the members have contributed
over $100 for Jewish relief in Palestine.
JULIA MITCHELL
=University of Michigan=
IN 1910 a group of Jewish students at the University of Michigan
formed a society and assumed the Menorah name. After a rather
checkered course of three years, marked by misunderstood ideals and
activities not always well-considered, the organization suddenly
became more alive to the consideration of the vital problems which had
been the ultimate excuse for its existence. A few men, sacrificing
personal ambition for the common welfare, spurred the Society on to
more serious and genuine work.
The rejuvenated Menorah Society enjoyed this period of prosperity only
for a few months when a new organization for Jewish spiritual
development at the University was formed. It calls itself the Jewish
Student Congregation, and its aim, as distinguished from the Menorah
goal of cultural research, is purely religious. The weekly prayer
meeting, marked by sermon and ceremony, is now offered to the Jewish
students in addition to the weekly study circle of the cultural
society.
However true or untrue may be the oft-repeated statement that the
Menorah has blazed the way for the Congregation, it still remains a
fact that the new organization was not confronted with the difficulty
of gaining a following, such as the parent Jewish society had
experienced. Though the attendance of the Congregation shaded off
quite considerably the last few months of its first year, there were
always enough to show their appreciation by their presence at the
services and to guarantee the continuation of the services in the
future. One noteworthy fact calls for special mention here--a certain
group of students seemed to be more religious than devoted to cultural
interests. Only a few of this class, however, were really inspired by
a religious zeal; for there were some who expressed this preference
because there still rankled in their thoughts the stigma which a few
thoughtless pioneers had allowed to attach itself to the Menorah in
the early days of its formation.
That the Congregation would appeal to a certain number was evident
from the first. The Jewish service was fraught with that sociable
spirit which became more lacking in the Menorah the more it devoted
itself to its primary motives of research and investigation into
Jewish history, culture and ideals. Though there unquestionably exists
a strong feeling of fellowship in the Menorah, it cannot compare with
the atmosphere of fraternalism in a religious meeting.
Moreover, the student can come to the Congregation to relax. He can
sit back passively and draw inspiration from the service. But a
Menorah meeting is virtually a class-room lacking a few formalities.
There the student must actively discuss the problems placed before
him; he must earnestly dig for the Pierian waters before he can hope
to quench his thirst.
The average Jewish student comes to Michigan wofully ignorant of
matters pertaining to Judaism. Many of them have been reared in small
towns, where the efforts of parents to train their children in Jewish
ways, if tried at all, barely passes the first two or three pages of
the "Siddur"; while those who have been raised in the city are
generally the victims of the lax system of Jewish training prevalent
there. At the most they have only a superficial knowledge of Jewish
culture, of the great Jewish movements of the past and present. The
Synagogue or Temple represents to the mind of the average Jewish
student all that there is in Jewry; and so, while he will readily and
voluntarily support a movement for the establishment of the Jewish
church, he will have to be persuaded to help or join an organization
devoted to Jewish culture. For in the latter case he must first be
made to understand that there are other vital forces in Israel than
the Jewish church as it stands to-day in its conventional form.
The Menorah at Michigan faces the problem of attracting that element,
forming the big majority of the student body, which, though it proudly
upholds the high scholastic standard generally credited to the Jewish
student, still has its eyes closed and its brains dulled to many of
the vital Jewish problems which press for solution. With the
co-operation of the Intercollegiate Menorah office, the Society is
gradually molding the sentiment of the individual student toward a
more intelligent and favorable attitude. That the Menorah is already a
vital force on the campus may be seen from the work being done, the
zeal and enthusiasm displayed by the officers and members, many of
them among the University leaders. Those who formerly scorned or stood
aloof, including some who were in the position to mold student
sentiment, have begun to show a sympathetic interest, bordering in
many instances on actual participation.
The Jewish Student Congregation does not conflict in any way with the
Menorah Society. There is room for both on the campus. Each has its
own purpose. Menorah members participate in the conduct and the
services of the Congregation.
JACOB LEVIN
=University of Minnesota=
JUDGING from the interest and enthusiasm displayed at the opening "get
together" meeting, arranged especially for the benefit of new arrivals
at the University, the Minnesota Menorah seems certain to make this
year the most successful in its history. The meeting, which follows an
established custom at Minnesota, was well attended by both students
and alumni, and enabled both elements to become better acquainted. The
early part of the evening was devoted to a general reception; this was
followed by a short entertainment, and then a very interesting
discussion of Menorah ideals and duties by various members of the
faculty and alumni.
The plans of the Society this year look more than ever before to an
intensive study of Jewish subjects by the students themselves.
Although various outside speakers will be asked to address the
Society, the bulk of the work will rest with the student body.
DAVID LONDON
=New York University=
THE New York University Menorah Society is unique in its make-up and
in the form of its administration. The Society is really two
organizations within the one university. This dual composition is
necessitated by the division, geographically, of New York University
into colleges in the downtown section of New York City, and into
colleges in the far uptown section of the Bronx, the distance between
these divisions being some twelve miles. It has therefore been found
necessary to organize one Menorah Society at University Heights, the
Bronx section, and another at Washington Square, the downtown
section.
Each of these Societies has its own officers, and each is active in
its own section. The Executive Councils of both Societies meet jointly
as a Board of Governors at least once in two months. This Board
directs Menorah work pertaining to the whole University, at the same
time considering the problems arising in the work of each Society.
The University Heights chapter is the older, having been organized
December 22, 1913. Its membership is about 75 at this time, and an
increase to 100 is expected by the end of the present academic year.
Formed by the zeal of some twenty-five men, and looked upon at its
inception with indifference by the college community, it has made
itself respected at University Heights and has become, young as it is,
an institution in the college life.
Its work during the first half-year was directed chiefly to the
internal strengthening of the Society, the increasing of its
membership and the institution of smooth working machinery of
administration. At the same time, however, the Society offered a
number of valuable lectures which attracted wide interest. Among the
speakers of that half-year may be mentioned Professor Israel
Friedlaender, Dr. Madison C. Peters, and Dr. Theodore F. Jones of the
faculty.
The activities of the University Heights Menorah Society for this year
are extensive. It has arranged a program of lectures, among which may
be mentioned the following: "The Talmud," by Dr. Clifton H. Levy; "The
Jew in English Literature," by Dean Archibald L. Bouton; "The Jews in
Medieval Spain," by Dr. D. de Sola Pool; "Conservative Judaism," by
Dr. Jacob Kohn; "Historical Beginnings of Christianity," by Dr. A. H.
Limouze; "Reform Judaism," by Dr. Isaac Moses. Besides these lectures,
some meetings are devoted to discussions by members of such subjects
as Zangwill's "Melting Pot," "Zionism," and others of current
interest.
The Society does not limit its work to these meetings. It conducts
regularly, every Thursday evening, classes in elementary Hebrew and in
Post-Biblical History, and on Tuesday afternoons a class in Advanced
Hebrew and the reading of Hebrew Literature. The Thursday evening
class in Hebrew is under the direction of Dr. Max Reichler. The course
in History is divided into several periods, and as the course proceeds
to a new period in the history a different instructor takes the class.
Among the men giving the course are Dr. M. H. Harris, Dr. Reichler,
Dr. Moses Hyamson, and Dr. Joseph Gorfinkle. The class in Advanced
Hebrew is conducted by Mr. Max Kadushin of the Jewish Theological
Seminary.
Through the kindness of the Jewish Publication Society of America and
the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, and by its own additions, the
Society has placed a collection of books in the University library,
which, according to the Librarian's statement, is used more frequently
than is any other collection of books placed in the library by a
society.
All these activities have caused favorable interest on the part of the
student body, faculty, and college authorities. Aside from these
academic efforts, the Society has made its members feel something of a
social friendliness toward each other and has brought together men who
might otherwise not have come in contact at all.
The Society at Washington Square promises an exceedingly good future.
At the present writing it is only several weeks old, but it already
has a membership of over one hundred and fifty. Judging from the
strong beginning it has made, it is bound to become a factor in its
section of the University.
CHARLES K. FEINBERG
=Ohio State University=
THE year 1913-14, the fourth year of the Menorah at Ohio State
University, proved to be the most successful in its history. In accord
with the nature and purpose of our organization, we strove to be
academic, sociable and non-sectarian, and accomplished this end, even
beyond the expectations of the more optimistic. During the year the
Society carried on a lecture course in Biblical History, by Professor
Morgenstern, of the Hebrew Union College, in such a creditable manner
as to attract attention even outside the University. The lectures of
Dr. Israel Friedlaender and Dr. H. M. Kallen met with similar success,
and after their lectures at the University they addressed large
audiences at our local Temples.
The new University library opened its doors this year, and we are
greatly indebted to our beloved friend, Mr. Joseph Schonthal, of
Columbus, for placing upon the shelves a set of the Jewish
Encyclopedia; and to the University, the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association, and the Jewish Publication Society for books and
periodicals. The trustees of the University considered our proposition
for the establishment of a chair in Jewish History and Culture, but it
was agreed that conditions were not yet ripe for this move. These
several undertakings, in connection with the entertainments, held the
members steadily interested throughout the year. The bi-monthly
meetings, the programs of which were made up by the members
themselves, were inspiring and beneficial.
A successful close was marked by a "Farewell Banquet" to the seniors,
among whom were several of our best workers--pioneers of our Society.
Of the guests present, only our old friend Dean Orton made an address.
He was greatly impressed with the work of our Society, and assured us
that the faculty is in full sympathy with our aims.
With the passing of a good year we are looking forward to a still
better one, and are predicting a big year for Menorah work. Such men
as Dr. J. Leonard Levy, Dr. Washington Gladden, Dr. Moses J. Gries,
Prof. I. Leo Sharfman, Dr. David Philipson, and Dr. Louis Wolsey are
among the speakers this year.
Our program committee has been working up attractive plans, and expect
to carry out discussions and studies in Jewish history, literature and
problems. The social part of our program is taken care of as the year
progresses, and forms only so much of our work as is justifiable to
keep the members together.
The Ohio State Menorah takes this opportunity of extending its best
wishes to the other Menorah Societies and of expressing its perfect
readiness to co-operate with them. The members will eagerly welcome
the first number of the Menorah Journal, both for its own sake and as
a means of strengthening the bonds with the other Menorahs.
HENRY GREENBERGER
=University of Pennsylvania=
OUR Menorah at Pennsylvania has passed through a crisis which for a
time threatened its welfare, but happily the present internal
condition is healthy and assures the new administration the hearty
support of the entire membership. Despite difficulties our work has
been successful and varied. Last year fourteen regular meetings were
held, some devoted to programs by our own members, others to outside
speakers.
Among those who addressed us last year were Dr. Cyrus Adler, '83,
President of the Dropsie College; Rabbi Henry Berkowitz, Chancellor of
the Jewish Chautauqua Society, on the "New Teaching of Religion"; Dr.
Henry M. Speaker, Principal of Gratz College, on "Jewish Literature";
Rabbi Haas of the Baron de Hirsch School, on "Woodbine, a Jewish
Town"; Dr. Isaac Husik of the Semitic Faculty, on "Philosophic
Movements of Medieval Jewry"; and Dr. Henry Malter of the Dropsie
College, on "The Written and the Oral Law."
In addition to the regular meetings we have been for the past three
years conducting a Jewish Discussion Group, led by Rabbi Marvin Nathan
of this city, which has proved very popular. The group meets at the
noon hour and attracts also non-Menorah men, women students, and
liberal-minded non-Jews. This year in order to accommodate the
students whose schedules prevent their attending this group, we expect
to institute another to be conducted either like the present or in
such a way as to utilize the services of the Rabbis and other
prominent Jews of Philadelphia.
Our policy this year concerning new members differs decidedly from
that of the past. While we are by no means more restrictive or
exclusive than heretofore, we feel that the method of "rushing" men
into membership is psychologically wrong. It cheapens the organization
in the eyes of non-members and thereby defeats its own end. Instead of
attempting to cajole freshmen into joining, we shall endeavor to
attract the serious-minded men on the campus by the quality of our
programs and the variety of our activities. With the strong men in,
the others will follow, and in this way our membership will be one of
both quality and quantity.
Another innovation this year will be the acceptance of women students
as members. The attitude of the University toward mixed membership in
organizations that meet on the campus has been unfavorable and as a
result women students have been admitted only to the Discussion Group
and to public meetings. Their wholesale application for admission into
the Society, however, prompted us to intervene in their behalf, and in
view of the seriousness of our purpose the authorities consented to
make the exception. Hereafter, therefore, we shall be able to offer
membership, on an equal footing, to all students.
Although our attention this year will be directed mainly to intensive
work, the Menorah will continue to act unofficially as the medium
between the Jewish students here and local communal activities. In a
quiet way, also, we intend to exert our influence upon local Jewish
organizations so as to induce them to take a more active interest in
Jewish affairs. They will be invited to attend our public meetings and
assistance will be offered them in arranging programs along Jewish
lines. We shall further offer to furnish them with speakers from among
our members.
A real need of our Menorah, and probably of other Menorahs, is some
extra incentive to induce the writing of Jewish papers. The
establishment here of a Menorah Prize would, we feel confident, work
wonders in stimulating interest in Jewish problems. We look forward to
the early filling of this need.
Of our work this year we are very optimistic. Several papers have
already been prepared by members and others are promised. A number of
notable men, including Provost Edgar F. Smith, of our University, and
Professor David W. Amram, '87, of the Law Faculty, will give us
addresses. We are in addition organizing a Menorah Orchestra with the
idea primarily of presenting to the public the best Jewish music, and
we hope in this way to combine business with pleasure.
JACOB RUBINOFF
=Penn State College=
THE Penn State Menorah was organized on April 27, 1913. Our activities
from the beginning were characterized by a willingness on the part of
the members to devote a great deal of their time to the mapping and
carrying out of our weekly program. The significant fact that the
Society has held forty talks during the past year, most of which were
delivered by its members, is in itself proof of the conscientiousness
and devotion that the men of Penn State bring to the Menorah Society.
As is quite natural, our organization did not at first strike all the
Jewish students as something worth while, but in a comparatively short
time we found that ninety per cent. of the Jewish students of the
College were members, and that our attendance for the past year
averaged thirty-five out of a possible forty.
Our meetings are held every Sunday morning from ten to twelve o'clock.
Our constitution states that any member who absents himself for three
consecutive meetings without a legitimate excuse is automatically
expelled. Thus far no man has been expelled. Members of the Menorah
Society are excused from the chapel by the Dean, provided they attend
all the Menorah meetings.
Our Society has also striven to get desirable lecturers. Owing to our
limited treasury, we must depend upon the Intercollegiate Association
for support, else we can make but very little headway.
The Menorah Library has proved a big boon, for practically every man
is making use of the books for his own reading and in the preparation
of papers for our meetings.
We were very fortunate in having been offered the services of
Professor O. F. Boucke as a lecturer for the Society and as teacher of
a special course of study on the Old Testament. Professor Boucke's
assistance is bound to add materially to the prestige of the Menorah
on the campus. At an early meeting this year we had a most interesting
and inspiring talk by President Sparks, who is taking a deep interest
in the Menorah movement.
It is our belief that the Menorahs in colleges and universities that
are isolated from the large cities (a good example of which is Penn
State) are bound to have by far the greater success, because the
students enjoy more opportunity of being together and doing more
things in common. In our Menorah Society the Jewish students find
their chance not only to study things Jewish in common, but to come
together and exchange their thoughts on all subjects in which they are
interested.
M. TRUMPER
=University of Texas=
THE Menorah Society closed a successful year with a banquet held May
18, 1914, at the Hotel Driskill, Austin. In addition to forty-three
students and faculty members, there were present four honored guests:
Dean W. J. Battle of the University of Texas, Rabbi Henry Cohen of
Galveston, and Messrs. J. Koen and N. Davis of the Austin Jewish
community. The opening address was delivered by the President of the
Society, Mr. L. W. Moses, who traced the growth of the Menorah Society
of Texas from its beginning in 1907 through its affiliation with the
Intercollegiate organization and its consequently renewed vigor. Dean
Battle, as head of the department of Greek in the University, spoke on
"Hellenism and Hebraism," discussing the essential principles of the
two cultures and comparing their influence on modern civilization. Mr.
H. J. Ettlinger of the University Faculty elected as his subject, "The
Menorah in Its Relation to Other Student Activities," and he
elaborated on the many reasons why the Jewish student should select
the Menorah Society as one of his extra-curricular activities. Rabbi
David Rosenbaum of Austin and also of the University faculty, taking
excellent advantage of his position as a representative of both the
University and the community, gave an instructive talk on "What
Judaism Expects of the Student."
Rabbi Henry Cohen, speaking eloquently on "Judaism as a Factor in
Modern Life," took up each one of the Ten Commandments and summarized
their influence on society to-day. A poem written especially for the
occasion was read by Mr. Israel Chasmin, and piano selections were
rendered by Miss Beatrice Burg and Miss Minna Rypinski. The program
closed with the installation of officers for the year 1914-15.
We lost ten members by graduation last June, but our membership has
none the less increased on account of the greater number of Jewish
students at the University this year.
The opening meeting of the year was attended by fifty out of the
fifty-eight Jewish students. In enthusiasm it resembled a football
rally, and the new students caught the spirit of the occasion. Since
then a number of other meetings have been held, with an average
attendance of forty. At the first meeting, Professor L. M. Keasby of
the Department of Institutional History gave an eminently just
interpretation of Jewish history from the point of view of the
economic development of mankind. At the next meeting, Israel Chasmin
reviewed Dubnow's Essay on Jewish History. At the last meeting, Rabbi
J. Bornstein of Houston, Texas, spoke on Jewish Music. We are looking
forward to an illustrated lecture by Professor Gideon of the
Department of Architecture on "The Architecture of the Synagogue, Past
and Present."
Through the fund for local speakers which we are raising and through
the aid of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, we hope to have a
speaker at least every month for the rest of the year.
The Menorah Library which we have received through the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association is greatly appreciated by the University and will
be of much help in the work of the Society.
H. J. ETTLINGER
=University of Washington=
IN the summer of 1913 several Jewish students met and discussed the
feasibility of organizing a Jewish society on the campus. As a result,
a meeting was called at the Y. M. H. A. rooms in the first week of the
1913-14 semester. Cards for the meeting had been sent to all men
students known to be Jews. There was an enthusiastic discussion of the
purposes of the meeting, and it was decided to effect a permanent
organization, which should include the Jewish women students as well,
and to begin active work. Our purposes were then somewhat different
from what they are at present. We felt that if our union could bring
about a better understanding between the various Jewish elements in
the city of Seattle and throughout the State of Washington, we should
be accomplishing something worth while. The fact that the student body
itself was composed of these various elements would aid us, it was
believed, to bring that result about speedily and effectively.
And so members of the Menorah Society joined the Jewish lodges in
Seattle, Jewish synagogues, and the "Modern Hebrew School," so that
they might effect their objects both from within as individual members
and from without as the Menorah Society. Our members volunteered to
teach at the Modern Hebrew School, an orthodox institution, one day in
the week. The offer was accepted gladly and greatly appreciated. At
the same school, a class was conducted by one of our members for the
instruction of Jewish men in the fundamentals of citizenship, and over
twelve of this class passed the examinations and secured their
citizenship papers. Another member organized an athletic club among
Jewish boys, and still another member did much valuable work at the
Settlement House.
At the meetings of the Society, which were held in the quarters of
Jewish organizations downtown and at members' homes, papers bearing on
Jewish questions were read.
During the past summer it was felt that by affiliating with the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association greater impetus would be given to
our Society, and steps have already been taken for admittance into
that body. President Henry Landes of the University has expressed, I
believe, the favorable attitude of the whole University toward the
Society, as shown in the letter quoted below.
This year we shall devote more time to the study of Jewish culture and
ideals. A course of lectures is being arranged which will bring noted
Jewish men of the Pacific Coast to our University. It is hoped also
that we may have the benefit of speakers from the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association. Of course, the work we began last year down town
will be kept up, but it will now be done unofficially.
EIMON L. WIENIR
_From a Letter of Acting President Henry Landes of the University of
Washington to the Chancellor of the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association:_
"In behalf of the University it gives me great
pleasure to endorse this movement and to assure you of
the satisfactory university standing of the students
who are members of the local society. The scholarship
of the students is good, several of the number having
obtained highest grades in most of their studies. I
feel sure that the organization in every way is worthy
of recognition by the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association and that such recognition will be of great
assistance to these and other students in the
formation and conservation of the culture and ideals
of the Jewish people. The University recognizes the
large debt modern culture owes to these ideals and
feels assured that the Menorah organization among us
will be of the greatest assistance in keeping alive a
keener consciousness of this fundamental part of our
civilization.
"The University will be glad to assist the Association
by permitting it to use University rooms for its
meetings, under the usual regulations governing the
use of rooms by student associations.
"Personally I shall be glad to co-operate in any way I
can to make the work of the local Society successful.
"HENRY LANDES,
"_Acting President_"
=University of Wisconsin=
TO have the student members of the Society furnish the largest part of
the program has been the policy of the Wisconsin Menorah for the past
two years. Because of its advantages, the same policy has been adopted
for the current year.
In the past, the programs have been of a diverse nature, many phases
of Hebrew life and letters having been touched upon. The program
committee has put forth special efforts to assign to members those
subjects in which they have special interest.
The work of the past year came to a close with a large banquet, at
which Professor I. Leo Sharfman, Judge Max Pam of Chicago, and
Professor Joseph Jastrow and Dr. H. M. Kallen of the Faculty of the
University of Wisconsin gave short talks.
Although the Wisconsin Menorah may be said to be still in its infancy,
there is no doubt that, with its membership, which includes both men
and women, steadily increasing, it will soon be ranked high among the
Menorah Societies of the Middle West.
FLORENCE J. ELLMAN
=Yale University=
AT a meeting held soon after the college opening, the Yale Menorah
Society inaugurated what bids fair to be a most successful year.
President Arthur T. Hadley addressed the meeting (for the address of
President Hadley see above, page 45), as did also Professor Charles F.
Kent of the Yale School of Religion.
Professor Kent said:--"It is a great pleasure for me to face the work
of the new year with you, and it is a source of congratulation that
the Menorah is no longer an innovation but an established institution
at Yale. It seems a pity that Jews do not inherit Hebrew as a
birthright, but fortunately the study of Hebrew history and ideals
can proceed without this knowledge.
"Men must appropriate old ideas and interpret them into the terms of
modern life and thought, for in the old we find the germ of the new.
It is in Jewish history that we must look for the first true
commonwealth or democracy, where the king was chosen by the people and
where his authority was derived solely from and rested in the people.
This has no ancient parallel, not even in Greece. International peace
was also one of the great fundamental teachings of the prophets of
Israel.
"Religious education is to be traced directly to the Jews,--and this
is one of the great needs of America to-day. Not to the Greeks but to
the prophets do we turn for religious education. Hebrew sages were the
forerunners of the modern religious education movement, for they
devoted their time to developing the moral and spiritual ideals and
character of the individual. And then the great teacher of Nazareth
was a Rabbi, a Jew. The social motif is exceedingly strong throughout
Jewish history and literature. Social justice, social service, and the
universal brotherhood of man are the dominant ideas in the Old
Testament, and they constitute a heritage of priceless value to the
world and to our country to-day.
"All success and joy to you in your work, for the Menorah fills a
large gap in the life of the University."
We hold lecture meetings fortnightly. Among the speakers thus far have
been Professor Richard Gottheil of Columbia University and Mr. Samuel
Strauss of New York. In addition to these regular meetings study
groups have been planned under the direction of Rabbi Louis L. Mann of
the Temple Mishkan Israel of New Haven.
Mr. Norman Winestine who was last spring elected President for this
year has been awarded a fellowship at the Dropsie College of
Philadelphia and has therefore left the University. Mr. Charles Cohen
has been chosen President to take Mr. Winestine's place. R. HORCHOW
Notes
Of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
_Third Annual Convention_
The Third Annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
took place at the University of Cincinnati on Wednesday and Thursday,
December 23 and 24, 1914. A report will be published in the next
number of the Journal.
_Menorah Prize Awards_
The Harvard Menorah Society Prize of $100, established by Mr. Jacob H.
Schiff of New York, was awarded last May to Henry Epstein, '16, for an
essay on "The Jews of Russia." The judges were Professor David Gordon
Lyon of Harvard, chairman; Professor William R. Arnold of Harvard, and
President Solomon Schechter of the Jewish Theological Seminary. This
is the seventh award of the Harvard Menorah Society prize since its
foundation in 1907-8. (For the list of previous awards, see _The
Menorah Movement_, 1914, page 102.)
The Wisconsin Menorah Society Prize of $100, established in 1911-12 by
Mr. Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, was awarded for the first time, in
1912, to Marvin M. Lowenthal (adult special student in Letters and
Science) for an essay on "The Jew in the American Revolution." There
was no competition in 1912-13, but last year the prize was divided
into two equal parts and awarded to Hemendra Kisor Rakshir (senior in
Letters and Science) for an essay on "The Jews and the Interest Rate
in Angevin England," and Percy B. Shostac (senior in Letters and
Science) for an essay on "A Short Survey of the Modern Yiddish Stage."
The prize for 1913-14 was awarded again to Marvin M. Lowenthal for an
essay on "Zionism." The Committee of Award consists of Professor R. E.
N. Dodge, chairman, Professor E. B. McGilvary, and Professor M. S.
Slaughter, of the University of Wisconsin. The chairman has stated
that the Menorah prize is the best prize offered by the University of
Wisconsin.
The Michigan Menorah Society Prize of $100 was established in 1912 by
Mr. Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, but was not awarded the first year.
Last year three prizes of $50 each were awarded, one to Paul
Blanshard, '14, for an essay on "The Approach of Reformed Judaism to
the Unitarian Movement in the United States," one to Miss Judith
Ginsburg, '15, for an essay on "Disintegrating Forces in Contemporary
Jewish Life," and one to Miss Sadie Robinson, '15, for a general
discussion of Jewish problems upon the text of Proverbs 30, 13. The
judges were Professor Robert E. Wenly, chairman, and Professor I. Leo
Sharfman of the University of Michigan, and Rabbi Leo M. Franklin of
Detroit, Mich.
_Cornell Menorah Prizes_
The Cornell Menorah Society offers this year the following prizes to
the undergraduates of the University: a prize of $25 for the best
essay on any subject relating to the status and the problems of the
Jews in any country; a prize of $25 for the best essay on any subject
relating to Jewish literature in English; and a prize of $25 for the
best essay or poem in Hebrew. The judges will be Professor Nathaniel
Schmidt of Cornell University, chairman; Professor M. M. Kaplan of the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Professor I. Leo Sharfman
of the University of Michigan.
_Gift from the Harvard Menorah Society_
The Harvard Menorah Society has made a gift of $50 to the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association. The sum is taken from the
Associate Membership Fund of the Society. This Fund consists of the
dues of associate members (graduates), "which shall be used
exclusively for the substantive work of the Society" (Harvard Menorah
Constitution, Article IV, section 4). The control of this Fund is in
the hands of an advisory committee, consisting of the President of the
Society and two associate members designated by the Executive Council
of the Society.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Page 14, "Ayran" changed to "Aryan" (of the Aryan peoples)
Page 35, "Judea" changed to "Judæa" (muse of Judæa)
Page 44, "ony" changed to "only" (Not only have the)
This text uses both to-day and today.
THE
MENORAH JOURNAL
VOLUME I APRIL, 1915 NUMBER 2
[Illustration]
For Small Mercies
BY ISRAEL ZANGWILL
Thinking of Poland and her tortured Jews,
'Twixt Goth and Cossack hounded, crucified
On either frontier, e'en the Pale denied,
Wand'ring with bloodied staff and broken shoes,
Scarred like their greatest son with stripe and bruise,
Though thrice a hundred thousand fight beside
Their Russian brethren and are glorified
By death for those who flout them and abuse,--
I suddenly was touched to thankful tears.
Not that one wave had ebbed of all this woe,
Not that one heart had softened in "the spheres"[A]
One touch of bureau-malice to forego,
But that amid blind eyes, dumb mouths, deaf ears,
One voice in England[B] said these things were so.
[Illustration: Signature: Israel Zangwill]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Only permissible form of Russian reference to the Tsar and his
Counsellors.
[B] The London _Nation_.
From Across the Seas
_From Dr. Max Nordau_
_Madrid, Spain_
[Illustration]
I hail most cordially the appearing of THE MENORAH JOURNAL with the
noble and impressive program which you develop. It shows your
consciousness of the new duties of the rich, free and powerful
American Jewry, your readiness to assume fully the moral
responsibilities which your privileged position imposes upon you, and
your comprehension of the needs of the present hour. Your journal
seems the promising beginning of that organization in which we are so
sorely wanting and without which we will achieve nothing in the
forthcoming deep transformations of the old world.
[Illustration: Signature: Dr. M. Nordau]
_From Dr. Moses Gaster_
_Chief Rabbi (Haham) Spanish and Portuguese Congregations of the
British Empire_
[Illustration]
I am glad to see that you have brought out again the Menorah from the
corner into which it had been thrust, that you have polished up the
old candlestick, nay, even more, that you have trimmed the wick and
poured the oil into the cup, that you are kindling a light which is to
dissipate the darkness spiritual, more dangerous, more terrible than
darkness physical. What our people really want is to be able to see
that light of truth, that light of hope, of humanity, of knowledge, of
idealism, which has been ours through the ages. We have never allowed
our lamp to be extinguished, whether it burned in a remote corner in
the ghetto, smoky, ill trimmed, even evil smelling; still there was
the light sufficiently strong to illumine the pages of the Torah and
the Talmud, even the pages of the writers of philosophy and science.
It was quite sufficient if one lamp was kept alight. This is the
greatness and the beauty of it,--that from one, one can kindle a
thousand.
There is no limit to which the light cannot reach and there will be no
limit, I hope, to the light which you will now spread. It will reach
the remotest corner of the universities and schools of learning, nay,
even more, it will bring everywhere a measure of knowledge and of
truth, and above all it will illumine and warm. It will reach the eyes
of those who have hitherto refused to see the beauty of their own past
and the greatness of their own future. They may then learn to live in
the present by the teaching of the past and by the hope of the future.
Make both known.
In conclusion, I can only express the wish that you keep steadily and
exclusively to Jewish questions, Jewish problems, Jewish learning.
Make your readers know what they can find in Jewish literature and
make the students of the various universities realize that in the
libraries of Europe and America there are vast treasures accumulated
which await the hand and the heart of the Jewish scholars. There are
great and grave problems which await solution and the field is
unlimited. Let them begin to till the ground of our own field, and
turn the furrows and sow the seed, and the golden harvest is sure to
repay them for their labor in the service of love and truth, and above
all of devotion to Judaism.
[Illustration: Signature: M. Gaster]
_From Norman Bentwich_
_Professor of International Law, School of Law, Cairo, Egypt_
[Illustration]
You are indeed happy in the moment of your appearance. I am not of
those who regard this world war as a terrible catastrophe. I can see
in it with God's grace the preparation of a great uplift of humanity
and especially the coming of redemption for Israel. But the more
glorious the vision of the future the greater the need of light, and
more light, to illuminate the present and to enable the young
generation to advance steadily towards the vision and make it reality.
That is what I believe the function of THE MENORAH JOURNAL to be, and
your first number is an earnest of the sincerity of your aim and the
goodness of your means.
The Jewish people stand on the brink of a new era in which they are to
resume their true function of the spiritual teacher of mankind. And
American Jewry, it is a truism to say, has a vital and a leading part
to play in moulding the destiny of the Jewish people. So we may adapt
the old Rabbinic saying: "He who saves the soul of a single Jewish
student is as though he saved the world." THE MENORAH JOURNAL in
holding up the light of the Jewish spirit to the young men and women
of America is doing the work of humanity.
May I express the hope that the Menorah Societies will direct the gaze
of their members to the land of promise and the land of the prophets,
where the inspiration of Judaism has always come and whither the hopes
of Jewry have always turned. Living as I do, in the reflection of
Palestine as well as in the shadow of the Pyramids, I am very
conscious of the need for a continued Passover from the ideas of the
various Egypts that beset the Jewish people to the message that calls
us, in spirit if not in body, to the land of our fathers. To-day in
Palestine the light has begun to shine brightly again. Judaism has
relit there its prophetic lamp, which in centuries of stress and
darkness has never been permitted to fade away altogether. In our own
time the Menorah has been re-established in the Temple of the land by
a new band of Maccabees. But a single branch, so to say, of the seven
branches as yet shows its clear light. But if the Jewish youth wills
it, the whole Menorah may be lighted and shine full and clear to the
world with fresh lustre. In our day there may be a new Hanukka, a
rededication of the Hebraic light--if only we will it.
[Illustration: Signature: Norman Bentwich]
The Jewish Problem Today
BY JACOB H. SCHIFF
[Illustration: _JACOB HENRY SCHIFF (born in Frankfort-on-the-Main,
Germany, in 1847, came to America in 1865), one of the world's leading
bankers (senior member of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., New York), and a prince of
philanthropists, noted for his personal devotion and munificent gifts
to many causes for human betterment. He was among the first to
encourage and befriend the Menorah movement, founding in 1907 the
annual Menorah Society Prize at Harvard. The present article forms the
approved substance of an interview granted by Mr. Schiff to the
Editors of The Menorah Journal on March 4, 1915. Mr. Schiff's
statement regarding the need for a separate Jewish Relief Fund is
given special significance by the fact that he is Treasurer of the
American Red Cross._]
It is hardly possible to exaggerate the horrors of the Jewish
conditions in the war-stricken countries, especially in the three
Polands. According to the reports we get, conditions in Russian Poland
are such that Belgium's plight is a mere _bagatelle_ in comparison.
The Jewish people there have been outraged in the most terrible
manner, both by the Poles who denounced them to the Russians as
enemies and spies and then by the Russians themselves, who treated
them as such. It is only after the Russian armies are forced to leave
that the Jews are given protection by the Germans. In saying this I do
not want to be misjudged, for it is well known that I am a German
sympathizer. But the fact is that the Russians and the Poles alike
have been inhumane to the Jewish population.
According to the latest reports, the conditions are not being improved
in any way. And the relief so far has been entirely inadequate. It has
never been adequate. We need millions for the immediate relief of our
brethren, and so far only about half a million has been forthcoming
from American Jews. This in spite of the fact that all parties and
factions in Jewry are acting together in the work of relief, except
only one organization, the B'nai B'rith, and for this there is some
reason, because the B'nai B'rith have their own lodges abroad and they
want evidently to apply their relief to their own members first.
"_We Must Have a Jewish Relief Fund of Our Own_"
We must have a Jewish Relief Fund of our own in addition to the Relief
Funds for other people in the war-stricken countries, because the
Jewish problem forms everywhere a problem of its own. It would be
rather hard to say whether, were it not for the specific Jewish Relief
Fund, the Jews would get as much relief as the other suffering people,
but there is very little doubt that the Jews in the war-stricken
districts, especially in Poland, have suffered a great deal more than
the rest of the population. The Jews, therefore, need more relief,
particularly as the civilian population has been against them.
Beyond the immediate measures for relief we can for the present do
nothing. We must act from day to day. As the war goes on we must
simply keep on trying to relieve the distress. As to what is in store
after the war, I am unable to form a picture, at least so far as
Russia is concerned. The hope is expressed that when peace is restored
Russia will do better than heretofore for her large Jewish population.
But we have been disappointed so often by Russia's promises that we
should believe this only when actually done and not before. I have
little confidence at all in the assertion that Russia will mend her
way in the future.
"_There Is Only One Way to Solve the Jewish Problem in Russia_"
There is only one way to solve the Jewish problem in Russia and that
is nothing less than the entire removal of the Pale. We must ever
demand this and accept nothing else. When the Jew can go where he
pleases, and trade where he pleases, and live where he pleases, the
Jewish question in Russia will be solved. It is the government, the
governing classes, in Russia that create the enmity towards the Jews.
I believe there is no people anywhere who have at present or ever had
less anti-Jewish feeling than the mass of Russian people. When once
the pressure brought by the bureaucracy is removed and the Jews are
permitted to have normal relations with the mass of the Russian
population all over the country, the Jewish question will be a thing
of the past.
The situation is different in Poland and Roumania, where the people
themselves are anti-Semitic. It may appear strange at first that there
should be such a difference between the Polish people and the Russian
people in their attitude towards the Jews in their midst. But it may
be easily explained. People who are oppressed generally become narrow
by the oppression. The Poles and the Roumanians have had long to
suffer from oppression to a great extent, the Poles from Russia and
the Roumanians for many years from Turkey, from whose yoke they were
freed only a few decades ago. It is generally a fact that when the
servant becomes a master he makes the most intolerant master. Even if
a Polish autonomous kingdom should be created, it could not be much
worse for the Jewish population than it is now. But the Russian people
have been happy. They have gotten used to their despotic government
and do not feel it in particular, and they have little prejudice
against their still greater oppressed Jewish neighbors.
The great numbers of Jews who have gone into the war and are fighting
heroically will, I have no doubt, make a convincing demonstration of
Jewish patriotism in every country, and that should make for an
improvement of Jewish conditions all over, except possibly in Russia.
"_I Am Afraid England Has Been Contaminated By Her Alliance With
Russia_"
But I am afraid that England too has been contaminated by her alliance
with Russia, because England doesn't want to do anything that is
displeasing to her ally, more through fear to offend her than through
respect for her. So far, at least, it has not come true, as it was
hoped in certain quarters, that England might apply pressure upon
Russia to obtain an improvement in the condition of the Jews. And
unfortunately the conditions in England itself affecting the Jews are
certainly not as good now as they have been formerly. England has
always been our great friend. In England there existed no such thing
as anti-Semitism. But now there are, I fear, signs of a change.
In Germany the Jews do not suffer. They have a high standing and
occupy many high positions. There has, it is true, always been a
certain anti-Semitic tendency in Germany. But I think this war will
crush out most of that, in fact all class differences. I am quite
convinced that anti-Semitism in Germany is a thing of the past.
"_When Peace Negotiations Begin, We Should Take United Action_"
What part America and the American Jews should play in the efforts to
bring about a permanent betterment of Jewish conditions elsewhere, it
is hard to say. America has already gone pretty far by breaking off
commercial treaty relations with Russia. Whether the United States
could or should go further is difficult to judge at this time. It is
certainly clear that the solution of the Jewish problem in Russia
along the lines already suggested would solve the passport problem and
would pave the way for the resumption of regular treaty and commercial
relations between the two countries.
I do not think there is anything to do now for the Jews and for Jewish
bodies in America except to work harmoniously together in the raising
of relief funds. Of course, we must always be on the alert and ready
to take a definite position whenever the proper time arrives. But not
now. When peace negotiations begin to be talked about, I think it will
be well for such bodies as the American Jewish Committee, possibly the
B'nai B'rith and other organizations, to take united action. What
action they should take it is hard to say. It is a very difficult
question to decide at this moment whether or not it would be
advisable to have special Jewish representatives present at the peace
negotiations to look after the specific Jewish interests. Whatever
influence should be brought to bear at the proper time should
originate with the American Jewish Committee, which is the most
suitable unifying Jewish agent in America to-day.
"_Arouse the Jews of America From Their Apathy_"
For the present, however, I repeat, what we need is to raise relief
funds to a much larger extent than we have done so far. There has been
too much apathy among the American Jews. They have done much less than
at the time of the Kishineff massacres, when almost a million and a
half was raised. Now, with conditions infinitely worse, we have thus
far not been able to raise half as much as was readily given then.
Unfortunately we have become used to horrors and they do not touch us
any more as deeply as they should. Moreover, we have weighty and
costly problems of our own at home. We have to expend such enormous
sums for home problems that American Jewry seems unable to bear much
more. But notwithstanding this more must be forthcoming. We Jews must
give until it hurts, until it really becomes self-sacrifice; we must
stir up our people to the terrible condition of our brethren abroad.
And the Menorah Societies, which represent the most intelligent and
idealistic Jewish youth of the land, should do their share in making
known the tragic conditions and in arousing the Jews of America from
their apathy.
[Illustration: Signature: Jacob H. Schiff]
Nationality and the Hyphenated American
BY HORACE M. KALLEN
[Illustration: _HORACE MEYER KALLEN (born in Silesia, Germany, in
1882, came to America in 1887), studied at Harvard (A. B., Ph.D.),
Princeton, Oxford, and Paris. He has been assistant and lecturer in
philosophy at Harvard, instructor in logic at Clark University, and
since 1911 of the faculty of philosophy at the University of
Wisconsin. At the request of the late William James, he edited his
unfinished book on "Some Problems of Modern Philosophy." Besides
contributing to philosophical and general periodicals, Dr. Kallen is
the author of a recently published book on "William James and Henri
Bergson." Dr. Kallen was one of the founders of the Harvard Menorah
Society, and has rendered signal service, both by tongue and pen, to
the Menorah movement._]
The United States of America are at peace with all the world. Our
government is not taking sides in the great war; officially we are the
friends of all the embattled powers. And yet--we have but to take up
any newspaper, anywhere in America, to find violent praise of one
side, violent blame of the other. The sentiment of our country is
divided. On all sides, our diverse populations are emphasizing afresh
their European origins and background. The German in German-American,
the Slav in Slavic-American, the Briton in British-American, have
awakened, have become demonstrative and emphatic. The President,
observing this, has declared his official and personal boredom with
the "hyphenated American," and the conception expressed in this phrase
has become an issue in the written and spoken discourse of our
country.
Why, in an officially neutral country, has this come to pass? When we
look closely to the ground and principle of the division of sentiment
in our population, we discover this significant fact: the division is
not truly determined by the merits of the European issue; it is
determined by the lines of our population's European origin and
ancestral allegiance. The Americans of German and Austrian and Magyar
ancestry are pro-German; those of French or British or Russian
ancestry favor the Allies. Only the Jews seem to be an exception to
this rule. Being mainly from Russia, their favor should go to the
Russians, but their newspapers, almost without exception, favor the
Germans. The case of the Jews, however, is an exception that proves
the rule. Although the majority of them came from Russia, they have
had no part in the Russian polity; they have been oppressed,
persecuted, terrorized, as their brethren still are in Russian
territory. As Americans, what portion and what hope have they in
Russia that they should desire Russian victory? None. But they are not
for this reason in favor of Germany. The headlines of their newspapers
do not celebrate German victories, but Russian defeats. The Ghetto's
partiality to Germany is a consequence of its loyalty to Jewry.
Kinship of blood and race, ancestral allegiance, determine with the
Jewish masses in America also, what side they take in this war.
Although they have no political background in Europe, and their civil
allegiance is absolutely American, they too are hyphenated in
sentiment--Jewish-Americans.
Such is the fact. Its significance lies in what it reveals, and what
it reveals is a force much deeper and more radical, distinctly more
primitive and original, than anything else in the structure of
society. It hyphenates English and Germans and Austrians and Russians
and Turks no less than it hyphenates Americans, and, in the failure of
the external socio-political organization of Europe to give it free
play, it is the chief, almost the only, cause of the present
unendurable European tragedy. Its name is nationality.
_Two Mosaics of Nationalities: A Contrast_
Nationality is not nationhood, although it is the most important
constituent of nationhood. Many nationalities may compose a nation
(such is the case of the British, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and
Turkish Empires, of the Swiss Republic, of our own Union), and then
the relation between the nationalities will determine the strength or
the weakness of the nation. Again, a single nationality may be divided
among many nations (such is the case of the Poles, of the Serbs and
other Slavs, of the Jews), and then the stability of the nations will
be largely determined by their effect on the nationalities divided
among them.
The Swiss Republic, for example, is a nation composed of three
nationalities, two of which belong to powers at war with each other.
These are the French and the German; the third is the Italian. Yet the
nationhood of Switzerland is the most integral and unified in Europe
to-day, because Switzerland is as complete and thorough a democracy as
exists in the civilized world, and the efficacious safeguard of
nationhood is democracy not only of individuals but of nationalities.
The German, French and Italian citizens of the Swiss Republic are
to-day under arms to defend the neutrality of their nation from
possible violation by German, French or Italian belligerents, and in
defending their nation, they are defending also the autonomy of each
other's nationality. In Switzerland, nationhood, being democratic, is
the safeguard and insurance of nationality.
Contrast Swiss nationhood with Austro-Hungarian nationhood.
Austria-Hungary is the immediate and direct occasion of the great war
by reason of the fact that, although she is a mosaic of nationalities
like Switzerland, her government, instead of being a democracy, has
in the long run been directed toward the control and exploitation of
many nationalities by one or two. Hungary contains a population of
seven million Magyars among twelve million Slavs; yet the Hungarians,
having the economic and political upper hand, have sought to Magyarize
by force and trickery this almost doubly greater and culturally equal
population. They have tried to compel Magyar forms and standards in
language, in literature, in history, the arts, the sciences, religion,
law, in every intimate or remote concern of the daily life and
national genius of their Slavic subjects. The result has been the
steady disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian mosaic, the increasing
use of force to hold it together, the corresponding increase of
restlessness among the subject-peoples, plot and counterplot, the
assassination of the Archduke, and the attack on Serbia, which
precipitated the war. In this war Austria has come off worst of all
the combatants, and for the same reason: the attempt to maintain the
unity of a nation of nationalities by the force of one of them instead
of by the democratic coöperation of all. In Austria-Hungary,
nationality, having been exploited and suppressed, has been the enemy
and destroyer of nationhood.
_America A Commonwealth of Nationalities_
In this country the whole spirit of those institutions which
constitute American nationhood makes for the liberation and harmonious
coöperation of nationalities. This spirit is also a part of the
Hebraic spirit, a part of the explicit program of our prophets, those
champions and vindicators of social justice and international
righteousness and peace; and this, significantly, is the spirit that
literally inspired the democracy of our America.
For the democracy of America had its first articulate voicing in the
Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans of New England. These men and women,
devoted to the literature of the Old Testament, and upheld by the
ancestral memories of the Jews, were moved to undertake their great
American adventure by the ideal of nationality. It was not because of
an overwhelming oppression of body and soul that the Pilgrims
adventured to America. It was not "freedom to worship God" that they
sought. They had that in Holland. They sought freedom to be
themselves, to realize their national genius in their own individual
way. Their English manners, English speech, English history, and
English loyalty were, in fact, more important to them than their
Hebrew Bible. They used that as the spiritual pabulum which nourished
their English corporate life. Their Calvinism was a reinterpretation
of its prophetic nationalism expressed in the doctrine of the "chosen
people"; their political institutions were a modification of the ideal
political order it was supposed to reveal. As Cotton Mather narrates,
his grandfather, John Cotton, found, on his arrival in New England,
that the population was much exercised over the framing of a "civil
constitution." They turned to him for help, begging "that he would,
from the laws wherewith God governed his ancient people, form an
abstract of such as were of a moral and lasting equity." So "he
propounded unto them an endeavor after a theocracy, as near as might
be to that which was the glory of Israel." Out of this beginning the
democratic mood of America surges; in such conceptions the ideals
which express the mood have their origins. These ideals are the
conservation of nationality, and the equality of men before the
inconceivable supremacy of their God. Hebraism and English
nationality--these are the spiritual background of the American
commonwealth.
Political freedom in America has tended to generate self-expression of
each national group, and our country is to-day, broadly speaking, a
great coöperative commonwealth of nationalities, British, French,
German, Slavic, Jewish, each freely developing, in so far as it is
self-conscious, its national genius, its language, literature and art
in its own characteristic way as its best contribution to the
civilization of America as a whole,[C] realizing in this way the ideal
of the democracy of nationalities, of international comity and
coöperation which our prophets were the first to formulate.
American nationhood, thus, is in the way of becoming what Swiss
nationhood fully is, the liberator and protector of nationality; its
democracy is its strength, and its democracy is "hyphenation."
"Hyphenation" may, it is true, become perverse. As an expression of
the coöperation of nationality with nationality in the life of the
State, it is inevitable and good; as an attempt to subordinate all
nationalities to one, to use all for the advantage of one, it is
partial, undemocratic, disloyal. Our nation is a democracy of
nationalities having for its aim the equal growth and free development
of all. It can take no sides. To require it to take sides, German or
Anglo-Saxon, Slavic or Jewish, is to be untrue to its spirit and to
pervert its ideal.
_The Renaissance of Nationality in the Past Century_
It is the attempt of one nationality to dominate and to impose its
character, culture and ideals upon others that has been the basis of
all the great wars in Europe, of all international injustice from the
beginning of history.
The movement in modern history which we call progressive has been a
movement toward democracy in both the internal affairs and external
relationships of nations. Men did not realize its entire significance
until the nineteenth century; only then did it come to full
consciousness in fact and idea, urged equally in Greece, in Germany,
in Ireland, in Italy. Its great voice is the Italian thinker and
patriot, Mazzini. In a marvelous essay entitled "Europe, Its Condition
and Its Prospects," he wrote, at a time when the hope of social and
international democracy seemed extinguished: "They struggled, they
still struggle, for country and liberty; for a word inscribed upon a
banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live, think, love and
labor for the benefit of all. They speak the same language, they bear
about them the impress of consanguinity, they kneel beside the same
tombs, they glory in the same tradition; and they demand to associate
freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to
elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their stone also to
the great pyramid of history. It is something moral which they are
seeking; and this moral something is in fact, politically speaking,
the most important question in the present state of things. It is the
organization of the European task. In principle, nationality ought to
be to humanity that which division of labor is in a workshop--the
recognized symbol of association; the assertion of the individuality
of a human group called by its geographical position, its traditions
and its language, to fulfill a special function in the European work
of civilization."
Modern Europe saw the overthrow of the Holy Roman Empire, of the
imperial aspirations of Louis XIV, and of Napoleon before it realized
the natural fact and moral principle which underlay these overthrows,
and which finally so successfully asserted themselves as to unify
Italy and cast off the Austrian dominion, to liberate Greece,
Bulgaria, Roumania and the other Balkan States from the Turk, to unify
and create contemporary Germany. The last quarter of the nineteenth
century saw the renaissance, often in the face of overwhelming
suppression, of the language and cultures of Czechs, Bohemians, Poles,
Irish and Jews. It saw the rise of nationalism in the Oriental
dependencies of Great Britain. It saw the beginning of an
acknowledgment of the full rights of nationalities by both Austria and
Great Britain, the grant of local autonomy to the various
nationalities in the Austrian Empire, of progressive home rule to
India and South Africa and Ireland. The twentieth century seemed to be
moving peacefully toward the fulness of democracy--when came the war.
_The Present War: Nationality vs. Imperialism_
Let no one be deceived into believing that this war is a struggle for
the economic domination of the world, springing from commercial
rivalry and industrial intrigue. No. Nothing is so international as
economic life--we in America know that now to our own cost also--and
if commercial interests and capitalistic counsels had had their say,
there would have been no war. England was Germany's best customer,
France her great creditor, Russia supplied her with unskilled labor.
The socialist international was against war, the peace party was
against it, the intelligence of the world was against it. When it
came, it shattered all these international organizations into national
units, it smashed the solidarity of even science and art, which are
the most international enterprises in the world. And why? Because its
cause was something deeper than economic interest or the other
secondary interests. Here is the question that the war is to decide:
Is the whole of mankind to be dominated in body and in spirit, without
its consent, by a portion of it, and to be compelled "to elaborate and
express the idea" of the portion? or is the whole of mankind to be
self-governed, in a coöperative commonwealth, each part of which, by
elaborating and expressing its own idea, contributes its best to the
whole?
This is the issue between the warring powers and each claims that it
is defending itself against the aggression of its opponents. Each
claims to be fighting for democracy. In the face of these claims,
history has the deciding voice. Now, historically, England, more than
any other power, has stood for the democratic and coöperative idea.
Her colonies have autonomy, her more backward dependencies are
encouraged toward autonomy. Since the Boer war, when imperialism
passed away, she has moved toward the position of Switzerland. Even
Ireland has obtained home rule. "We are a great world-wide,
peace-loving partnership," said Mr. Asquith,[D] has reiterated again
and again the principle for which all the Allies are fighting:
believing that "the preservation of local and national ties, of the
genius of a people which has a history of its own, is not only not
hostile to or inconsistent with, but on the contrary, fosters and
strengthens and stimulates the spirit of a common purpose, of a
corporate brotherhood," the Allies seek to defend public right, to
find and to keep "room for the independent existence and free
development of the smaller nationalities, each with a corporate
consciousness of its own . . . and, perhaps, by a slow and gradual
process, the substitution for force, for the clash of competing
ambitions, for groupings and alliances and a precarious equipoise, of
a real European partnership, based on equal right and enforced by a
common will."[E]
It is hard to believe that Russia can be fighting for such an end.
Fear of Russian barbarism is what brought Germany into the lists, the
Germans declare, to defend western ideals and western democracy. Yet
Russian government is Prussian in its organization, and it is on the
side of the ideal of western democracy that she is explicitly aligned.
The contradiction is striking, and it is still more striking when we
recall that in her armies are over a quarter of a million of Jews, and
that in the other armies there are half as many more. For the Jews the
war is more than civil; it is fratricide. On the face of it they have
no inevitable personal or political stake in the war's fortune.
England has acknowledged their "corporate consciousness" and given
them maximal opportunity for "free self-development"; so has France.
Russia has oppressed and horribly exploited them; Germany, though
infinitely better than Russia, has set them conditions in which "free
development" is synonymous with complete Germanization. Austria and
Turkey have dealt with them somewhat after the manner of England and
France. The contradiction of the Jewish position outdistances that of
the Russian. But both contradictions are resolved in the fact that the
ideal in question concerns not Russia alone, nor England alone, nor
the Jews alone, but the whole of Europe, the whole world. What is at
stake is not something local, personal, political, but a universal
principle, the goal toward which mankind has been so slowly and
deviously crawling from the beginnings of modern history--the
principle of democracy in nationality and nationality in democracy.
It is for this that our brethren in the armies are fighting; it is for
this that they are undergoing crucifixion in the Pale, for this that
our people have suffered and died from the beginnings of our history.
Our whole recorded biography is the narrative of a struggle for social
justice against the exploitation of class by class within our polity,
for nationality against imperialism without. Our statesmen and leaders
were the first to formulate the ideal of the coöperative harmony of
nationality, and the ideal of international peace.[F] Mr. Asquith is
echoing our prophets, and our embattled brethren are engaged in the
defence of a principle which is the constituent of the genius of their
own nationality.
_The Service of Jewish Nationality to Civilization_
The genius of their own nationality! That with all its implications is
an issue in the war not only as a principle but as a fact. The Jewish
people are the great historic incarnation of the _casus belli_. In
fortune and in disaster, through difficult and terrible centuries,
they have cherished their language, their history, their culture, have
sustained their "corporate consciousness" and in terms of it have
served civilization in all the institutions of civilization. Not
freely, not by free development; not because of conditions, but in
spite of them. The Bible, whose moral vision inspires the world, we
gave the world only as we had or yearned for "independent existence"
and "free development." Our best, like the best of every people, has
been a function of this "independent existence and free development."
We also, scattered among the nations, tortured and oppressed by the
mighty and the weak among them, are among "the smaller nationalities"
for whose sake the war is being fought. With Serbia, with Belgium,
with Poland, we claim our public right and our national security, and
we claim it not merely for ourselves, but for the service of all
mankind. For as we have had a rôle "in the organization of the
European task," so we still have a rôle, and in that division of the
labor of civilization in terms of nationality we have our task to
accomplish, our service to render. This task, this service, is the
expression of the Jewish idea, the flowering and fruitage of the
Hebraic spirit, which, rooted in our historic past, planted on our
national soil, shall realize in modern terms, in social organization,
in religion, in the arts and the sciences, a national future that by
its inward excellence will truly make Israel "a light unto the
nations."
The indispensable condition for such a realization is autonomous
nationality; not nationhood, necessarily, but autonomy. This, more
than civil rights among other nationalities, is our stake in this
great war. In the last analysis, the Hebraic culture and ideals which
our Menorah Societies study, can be _advanced_, can be a _living_
force in civilization, only as a national force. Our duty to America,
inspired by the Hebraic tradition,--our service to the world, in
whatever occupation,--both these are conditioned, in so far as we are
Jews, upon the conservation of Jewish nationality. That is the potent
reality in each of us, our selfhood, and service is the giving of the
living self. Let us so serve mankind; as Jews, aware of our great
heritage, through it and in it strong to live and labor for mankind's
good.
[Illustration: Signature: H. M. Kallen]
_I think I see in your Society a recognition of the
real spirit of our country's motto_, e pluribus unum.
_That does not mean a sinking of the differences
between us all into absolute uniformity, but rather
the harmony that can result from the recognition of
these differences and developing our own
individualities so that we shall have variety in
unity.--From an Address before the Yale Menorah
Society by Professor Benjamin W. Bacon of Yale
University._
FOOTNOTES:
[C] For a fuller treatment of this point compare in the New York
_Nation_ for February 18 and 25, 1915, the author's articles on
"Democracy Versus the Melting Pot."
[D] Cardiff Speech, 2d October, 1914.
[E] Dublin Speech, 25th September, 1914.
[F] Cf. Isaiah, II, 2-4; XIX, 23-25; XI, 6-9; LXV, 17-25, etc.
Yankee and Jew
_An After-Dinner Address_
BY G. STANLEY HALL
_President of Clark University_
[Illustration: _G. STANLEY HALL (born in Ashfield, Mass., in 1846),
President of Clark University, is a leading authority on education and
psychology, and author of a number of important books, notably
"Adolescence" (2 vols. 1904). The present address, delivered at a
recent dinner of the Clark Menorah Society, has been revised by Dr.
Hall for publication in The Menorah Journal._]
I feel an unwonted embarrassment in speaking to you to-night, first
because the light After-Dinner View of Life, which is my theme on your
program, is far from being serious enough, and I must totally abandon
my plan and speak entirely extemporaneously, although upon a subject
in which I have an old and strong interest.
Again, I am always embarrassed in talking to members of your race
because I feel a little as Napoleon did when he told his soldiers in
Egypt that forty generations looked down on them from the top of the
Pyramids. You know your ancestry in general back for thousands of
years, and I am rarely fortunate in being able to go back as much as
nine or ten generations to the Puritans of the "Mayflower," but there
I stop and everything before that is a blank. David Starr Jordan tells
us in his book that there is perhaps no man alive who has not kings or
queens in his ancestry, but adds that we all have had murderers among
our predecessors, too.
_There Is Much In Common Between Yankee and Jew_
There is much in common between the Yankees, whom I represent, and the
Jews, and this alone ought to give us a friendly feeling toward one
another. We are both misunderstood and caricatured. The Yankee stands
for a peculiar sort of closeness in money matters and a shrewdness
which has even given its slang name to a neighboring New England
State, the "Nutmeg State." Perhaps we have both done too much in the
past to deserve this reputation for super-cleverness. One of you has
referred to the fact that there are Jews who do not like to
acknowledge their race. In that respect we are alike, for there are
many Yankees who are ashamed of being known as such. Long years ago,
when I was a student in Germany, I was introduced one evening to a
young German countess. She said in her broken English, "I am so glad
to meet an American. I have heard you have many funny people there,
the Dago, the Paddy, the Nigger, and many more; but I have heard that
the lowest people there are what they call the 'damn Yankees.' How I
would like to see one of them!" This, bear in mind, was soon after our
Civil War, and she received her impression of us doubtless from
Confederates. I did not have the courage to acknowledge my nationality
to her, but diverted the topic to some of the other people she had
mentioned.
The old New England Puritan taught sternly. He was a patriarchal head
of his family. In my boyhood, Saturday evening or perhaps better
Thanksgiving Day, when their descendants all gathered together as long
as either of the grandparents lived, we had an illustration of
something very like Heine's touching picture of an old Jewish peddler
who worked hard through the week, but on Friday night put on his long
black coat and his three-cornered hat, lit the seven candles at the
table, and told his children and grandchildren how Jehovah had led His
people through the wilderness, and how the Egyptians and all the other
naughty people who persecuted them were long since dead, while the
chosen race survived. And so happy in his race was this poor peddler
and so proud of his pedigree that, as Heine says, had the great
Rothschild entered at that moment and asked him what favor he could
do, he would reply simply: "Stand out of my light, that I may finish
telling the law to my children."
_The Eugenics of the Jewish Race_
We Puritans were brought up on the Old Testament, the spirit of which,
far more than that of the New, pervaded the life of old New England.
Every day after breakfast, no matter how busy the season or how late
the breakfast, my grandfather read to the assembled family a chapter
from the Old Testament, and perhaps remarked upon certain passages.
After graduating from college and when I became a tutor in a prominent
Hebrew family in New York, and especially when I had to teach the
children their Sunday school lessons and freshen up the small
knowledge of the Hebrew language that I had, I realized very keenly
how closely related were the Jews to the Yankees,--with this
tremendous difference, that you are increasing in numbers while we are
decreasing.
As I read the Old Testament, the substance of the covenant with
Abraham was that if he kept Jehovah's law, his seed would be
multiplied like the stars of Heaven. This placed society and life in
that early day squarely on a eugenic basis, for it makes the number
and success of good children the supreme test of every human
institution, activity, and every kind of culture. This I take it is
one of the chief characteristics of your race, and I hope it may long
be so.
I am going to avail myself of this opportunity to say a few words
about a topic that has for centuries been a point of the very greatest
difference and tension between your people and mine, namely, the
character and work of Jesus. Please do not be shocked till you hear
what I have to say. Such of us psychologists as have recently been
interested in the psychological aspect of Jesus' life and work
understand, as had never been understood before, how purely Jewish he
was. Scholars have lately given to his figure a radically new
interpretation.
"_An Extremely Representative Man of Your Race_"
According to many conceptions the chief trait of Jesus was a strong
and deep enthusiasm for the loftiest things of life. He was a little
ecstatic all the time, illustrating the higher powers of man. His soul
was unconquerable by misfortune and disaster, like that of the Jewish
race itself. He was also organizing victory out of defeat, and his
greatest triumph was over death itself. Some think that his youthful
dreams and ideals were to be an agrarian lord of a manor, or a grand
country gentleman of the Jewish order, making contracts with servants,
leasing out farms and vineyards, giving feasts, and the like, for more
than half the parables pertain directly or indirectly to such a
vocation. But this youthful dream he was unable on account of poverty
and his station in life to realize; so two very natural changes took
place in his soul. He came to hate the rich because they were wasting
their opportunities and never doing anything; but far more important,
he developed from these juvenile reveries his world-transforming ideas
of the kingdom, which created the church, visible and invisible, and
re-made society.
The Jews are never beaten; if checked in their aspirations they, like
the prophets in the days of captivity, strike out in higher and nobler
ways. Thus you ought to be proud of Jesus for, as he is now being
understood, he was an extremely representative man of your race. The
real enemies of the Jews are now claiming that no such man ever lived,
which is the view of Drews and his school, some holding that he was a
deliberate invention of the early decades of the first century, and
others, like Jensen, that he was a revived Babylonian myth. But these
new views show that Jesus was not an Aryan, as a few of the
pan-Germanists have claimed, but a typical Semite. It does look now,
in view of the teachings of such men as Gobineau and various of his
successors, that the Aryans are the highest and best people in the
world and that the Germans are the very best of all the Aryans, that
it is Germany that has come to consider itself the chosen people, the
elite, superior race. But certainly Germany is not very Christian. It
was only converted in the thirteenth century, and Luther soon threw
off the fully developed Christianity of Rome. Since then we have had
the Tübingen School, that resolved everything into myth, and the very
many other negative points of view expressed in Nietzsche's supremest
condemnation of Jesus as a wretched degenerate, while Wagner's
deliberate slogan was, "_Das Deutschtum muss das Christentum siegen_."
_The Rapprochement of Jew and Gentile in America_
I wonder if the time is not near at hand when your people will
reconstruct your conceptions so much as to recognize Jesus as a
typical, golden, Jewish youth, worthy of being an ideal for young men.
We certainly do have in his life as now interpreted exactly what youth
needs above all things,--ambition, enthusiasm, idealism, all of them
absorbing, all of them diverting physical and sensuous energy into the
very highest culture sphere, sublimating desire, and making us
understand that youth is not complete without a great effort at
achievement. The very essence of youth is excitement. There must be
tension, strain, a tiptoe attitude, a strong "Excelsior"-like ambition
to climb, and a corresponding horror of inferiority, _Miderwertigkeit_.
Youth is an age of idealism, and the tension decade of adolescence
needs a regimen and an idealization all its own, to set back-fires to
temptation. Instead of the current altogether too plain talk on sex
hygiene and teaching, we must realize that every enthusiasm or real
interest, be it in the multiplication table or in literature, debate,
athletics, is an alternative. It reduces temptation and stores up
energy as the great reservoirs in the middle west store up the floods
that come down from the mountains, so that they shall irrigate and not
devastate the land. Jesus, in the new interpretation of Holzmann and
Baumann, stands for this kind of enthusiasm.
I cannot but wonder, therefore, whether, in view of these new
conceptions, Jew and Gentile are not going to meet in this country and
even agree about Jesus. It is difficult at least to see which of us
would change most if there were this _rapprochement_. We must neither
of us abandon our birthright. We must be the very best Puritan
Anglo-Saxons we possibly can, and you must be the best Jews possible,
for out of these component elements American citizenship is made up.
This country stands for the dropping of old prejudices, such as those
that are inflaming Europe now with war. If we can satisfy each other's
ideals and meet half way the thing is done, and the melting pot which
America stands for has got in its work. I want the Menorah Society to
feel that it is in the van of this movement.
[Illustration: Signature: G. Stanley Hall]
"Golden Rule" Hillel
BY MOSES HYAMSON
[Illustration: _MOSES HYAMSON (born in Suwalki, Russia, in 1863, came
to England in childhood). Rabbi and jurist; educated at Jews' College
and University College of London; for thirteen years Senior Dayan of
the London Beth-Din (Jewish Court of Arbitration), in which capacity,
because of his erudition in both the Jewish and the common law, he
rendered notable service to the British community. In 1913 he accepted
a call from the Congregation Orach Chayim of New York. Besides being a
contributor to the Jewish Quarterly Review and other learned
publications, Dr. Hyamson has published "The Oral Law and Other
Sermons" (1901), and an annotated edition of the medieval "Collatio
Romanorum et Mosaicarum Legum" (1912)._]
As the students and teachers in the famous school of Shemaya and
Abtalion assembled for worship one wintry Sabbath morning, they were
astonished to find their lecture-hall exceptionally dark. On looking
up they descried what seemed to be a human form lying prone across the
skylight. Willing feet ascended the roof and willing hands swept away
the snow from a young lad's half-frozen form. They brought him down,
and although it was the holy Sabbath, kindled a fire to revive the
chilled body. "Worthy is Hillel," they exclaimed, "that the Sabbath
should be desecrated for his sake!"
So runs the Talmudic tale. The incident happened in Palestine in the
century before the common era. The boy Hillel had come from his
obscure home in Babylon, bent upon study at the most famous school in
Palestine, whose teachers, Shemaya and Abtalion, were heads of the
Synhedrion, the Supreme Court of Jurisdiction. Poor and proud, Hillel
supported himself by manual labor while he was securing his education.
Like Abraham Lincoln, he was a woodchopper. One half of the small
amount he earned daily served for his meals, and the other half he
paid to the porter at the college for his admission in the evening. On
this short Friday in mid-winter he had been able to earn nothing, and
in his keen anxiety not to miss the lecture and discussion, he
clambered to the roof of the college hall, braving snow and cold for
the words of the living God as expounded by his teachers.
Within a few short years Hillel himself had succeeded his teachers as
the head of this famous school, and also as President of the
Synhedrion. Hillel's career is a shining example of the democratic
principle which has always prevailed in Jewish life, of the
opportunity open to all men of talents, however humble their origin,
to achieve position in the republic of Jewish learning. And learning
combined with noble character, as in the case of the great Hillel,
carried authority in Jewish life. It is true that Hillel was not
without letters patent of nobility; though he came from poverty and
obscurity and from an alien land, he was, according to tradition, of
the blood of David. It is not, however, to this accident of birth,
known only later, that Hillel owed his quick rise and supreme eminence
in Jewish life, but to his distinguished attainments, to his profound
learning not only in the Jewish Law but in many secular fields of
knowledge, to his bold and original mind combined with a pious
devotion to tradition, to his indomitable energy and industry, his
nobility of character, his sympathy with the people and his
understanding of their needs.
"_What To Thee Is Hateful Do Not Unto Another_"
It was Hillel who first enunciated the Golden Rule, although in
negative form. The story that is told in the Talmud is one of the most
familiar; yet no repetition can lessen its point and charm. A heathen,
it is related, came to Shammai, the leader of a rival school,
requesting to be received into Judaism and instructed in the whole of
the religion while he stood upon one leg. Shammai, an architect by
profession, threatened the heathen with his builder's measuring rod
and drove him out. The man went to Hillel with the same request.
Hillel, gentle, patient, democratic, received the man hospitably and
answered: "The whole of Judaism can be summarized in one short
sentence: 'What to thee is hateful do not unto another.' That is the
essence of the whole Torah; the rest is commentary."
And in the interpretation of that "commentary" which, together with
the Torah itself, enshrined the spirit of Judaism and made it a
throbbing reality in the life of the nation, Hillel brought out the
humanity of every regulation, the true intent behind it, whenever
literal enforcement would have worked hardship or might have defeated
its true intent because of the changed circumstances since its
enactment. While keeping faithfully within the spirit of Jewish
tradition, Hillel struck out into innovations, new precedents and
legal institutions, which testified at once to the remarkable insight
and boldness of his mind as a jurist and to his tact and sympathy as a
leader of the people. Some of his innovations anticipate in a striking
way the developments under similar circumstances of the common law of
England and the United States many centuries later.
_Hillel As A Jurist: His Sense of Social Justice_
For example, it happened that the first year after Herod's accession
was a Sabbatical year, which, according to the Deuteronomic provision
(Deut. 15, 2), set up a Statute of Limitations and effectively barred
the recovery of all debts. The people, impoverished by the exactions
of the Government and by the failure of the harvest, were compelled to
have recourse to money lenders. But those who were able to accommodate
the needy were reluctant to do so on account of the imminence of the
Sabbatical year and its legal bar to the recovery of past debts.
Hillel's keen mind and sympathetic heart found a way out of this
difficulty. He set up the institution of the Prosbul, by which a
creditor received the right, when making a loan, to register the debt
in court. In this way the great jurist anticipated in a remarkable
manner a principle accepted so many centuries later in the common law
of England and America, namely, that the Statute of Limitations does
not apply to recorded judgments. Such judgments can always be sued on
and recovered. And so the new ordinance established by Hillel removed
the hardship of the Biblical enactment, the purpose of which was
humanitarian. By Hillel's innovation, the true spirit of that law was
maintained, and applied in accordance with its real intent in an age
when the economic conditions were vastly different from the time when
the law itself was established. Our modern lawyers and reformers in
this country may well take a leaf out of this progressive conservatism
of our great democratic teacher Hillel.
Other decisions of Hillel equally significant could be cited. To
lawyers especially, the study of them is fascinating; they are full of
startling relevancy in the present time of unrest and agitation for
legal reform in this country. And not without reason. What we are keen
for now is a greater measure of social justice in a democratic
community. A study of Hillel's jurisprudence--both the theory and the
decisions affecting the workaday life of the people--will give one an
appreciation not only of the beautiful spirituality of the master, his
erudition and his imagination, but the characteristic coalition of
letter and spirit, the emphatic sense of social justice, which has
prevailed in the whole system of Jewish law.
_Hillel's Public Spirit and Humanity_
Thus Hillel, while head of his famous school of instruction, became
the founder of a school in another sense--a school of interpretation
of the Torah. This school, as already indicated, was marked by a
leniency and elasticity of interpretation of the traditional law quite
in contrast to the harshness and rigidity of the contemporary school
of Shammai; it is the school of Hillel, leaning to the spiritual and
the humane, that has prevailed ever since in Jewish law. Hillel made
the people realize the truth of the famous text about the Torah: "It
is a tree of life to them that grasp it, and of them that uphold it,
everyone is rendered happy. Its paths are paths of pleasantness and
all its ways are peace." Those who have mistakenly conceived the
Jewish law as something dour and rigid, unlovable, unspiritual,
should study the decisions and dicta of this great master.
Hillel's character is illustrated by a number of pregnant sayings of
his that have been recorded in the Talmud. "Do not separate yourself
from the community," was one of his characteristic sayings which
genuinely expressed his public spirit. His sense of individual and
social responsibility is summed up in his three famous questions: "If
I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am for myself alone,
what am I? And if not now, when?" His peace-loving nature and humanity
found voice in his counsel: "Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving
peace, pursuing peace, loving God's creatures and bringing them near
to the knowledge of the Law." His disinterestedness, his liberal
pursuit of the Law, that is, of knowledge, made him confidently say:
"He who aggrandizes his name, his name shall perish. He who does not
add to his store of learning and good deeds will suffer diminution. He
who does not teach deserves death. He who uses the crown of the Law
for selfish needs and personal advancement will be destroyed." Who had
a better right than Hillel, graduate of poverty, to warn his
contemporaries: "Do not say I shall learn when I will have leisure;
perhaps you never will have leisure." And in every case, even when the
conduct of a man seems most reprehensible, as when one of his
colleagues Menahem left the Synhedrion to take service under the
tyrant Herod, Hillel holds to this advice: "Judge not thy neighbor
until thou art in his place."
Many a tale is narrated of Hillel's patience, unfailing courtesy and
tact, tolerance and humility, even under the greatest provocation. The
man who bet 400 Zuz that he would break Hillel's patience by silly and
far-fetched questions lost his own temper at the consideration with
which he was treated. And so the proverb became current, "Patience is
worth 400 Zuz." And other tales are told of Hillel's considerate
dealing with heathens who wished to embrace Judaism, in contrast to
the harsh treatment meted out to them by his contemporary Shammai.
_Sage and Saint_
His perfect consideration and charity had in it even something of the
quixotic. When a man came to him for assistance, he was wont to help
him according to his previous position in life. Thus, in one instance
where a man had formerly enjoyed great wealth but had suffered
reverses, Hillel not only provided for him according to his previous
standard of living but, it is related, even hired a horse for the man
to ride on and a footman to run before him. It is added that on one
occasion, when Hillel could not obtain a runner, he himself served in
that capacity.
His wife, we learn, was a fit helpmeet to the sage and saint. Their
domestic life was a perfect harmony. Once on returning from a journey
Hillel heard a sound of quarreling in the neighborhood of his house.
"I am certain," said he, "that this noise does not proceed from my
home." On another occasion Hillel sent his wife a message to prepare a
sumptuous meal for an honored guest. At the appointed hour Hillel and
his guest arrived. But the meal was not ready. "Why so late?" asked
Hillel. "I prepared a banquet," the wife replied, "according to your
desire. But I learned that a couple were to be wedded to-day and they
were too poor to provide a marriage feast, so I gave them our meal for
their wedding banquet." "Ah, my dear wife, I guessed as much."
But the greatest and most constant hospitality was shown by Hillel to
a guest who was always with him and uppermost in his thoughts. Every
day it was his habit to withdraw for a while for private meditation.
"Whither art thou going?" asked his colleagues and disciples. "I have
a guest to whom I must show attention." "Who is this guest?" "My
soul," was the solemn reply; "to-day it is with me, to-morrow the
heavenly visitant may be departed and returned home."
Is it any wonder that, after forty years of activity in the
Patriarchate, when Hillel died (in the year 10 of the common era), men
said of him: "Meek and humble-minded, a saint has departed from among
us, a disciple of Ezra the Scribe." The title fitted his career, for
he came like Ezra from Babylon to Palestine and like Ezra he restored
the Law when it was threatened with destruction. Great as a student,
he was great also as an inspirer of other students. He left eighty
distinguished disciples, of whom the youngest was that famous Jochanan
ben Zakkai who became the savior of Judaism at the destruction of the
second Temple.
[Illustration: Signature: M. Hyamson]
EDITORS' NOTE--Dr. Hyamson's portrait of Hillel is the
first in a series of character sketches of Jewish
Worthies to appear in THE MENORAH JOURNAL. The second
paper will be on Hillel's disciple, Jochanan ben
Zakkai.
The Quality of Mercy
_A Sixth Act to "The Merchant of Venice"_
BY WILLIAM M. BLATT
[Illustration: _William M. Blatt (born in Orange, N.J., in 1876)
was educated in the public schools of Boston, and received his degree
of LL.B. from Boston University Law School in 1897. Besides being
engaged with the law in Boston and contributing to a number of legal
periodicals, Mr. Blatt is also devoted to letters and has published a
number of plays, including "Husbands on Approval," and many one-act
playlets, including "The Danger of Ideals," which have been given
professional performance._]
_Characters_: SHYLOCK, JESSICA, ANTONIO, GRATIANO, PORTIA, ISAAC, _a
servant of Shylock_.
_Scene_: A street in Venice.
_Time_: An afternoon, two years after the last act of "The Merchant of
Venice."
_As curtain rises, Portia and Gratiano discovered standing and looking
down the street, Gratiano pointing._
_Gratiano_ Now Lady Portia look a long way off
And see if you can recognize a friend.
_Portia_ A friend? One person only do I see--
A man, quite old, who hobbles with a staff.
_Gratiano_ He is the one I mean. Now look again
And try to recognize his face, his beard.
_Portia_ Why, is it not old Shylock? Sure it is.
And met most opportunely, on my word.
Now, dear Gratiano, with this icy heart
We must needs waste a score or two of words.
_Gratiano_ To make him help his daughter Jessica?
_Portia_ That is the task.
_Gratiano_ Too much for Hercules.
(_Enter Shylock._)
_Portia_ A moment, Shylock, of your precious time.
You must remember meeting me before.
_Shylock_ Remember, nay then, how could I forget
The noble judge who spoke so clean and fair
And took away on quibbles all I owned.
_Portia_ Not all, good Shylock, half of it remained.
_Shylock_ Oh, true, I thank you for the half you left.
I thank that kindly merchant, him that begged
The Duke to quite remit the City's fine
Which never would have done him any good--
I thank him for accepting what was all
He could have claimed, the half of my estate.
_Portia_ In trust----
_Shylock_ I know. In trust until I die.
And trust Antonio to eat it up.
Is it not known that when he takes a risk
Of more than common danger and doth lose,
He makes a record that he did invest
A part of my belongings in the venture?
Belike by now there's not a ducat left.
For that however I have naught but joy
Because it means that she who was my daughter
And that Lorenzo who's her paramour
Will, when I die, inherit penury.
_Gratiano_ But if Antonio's trust should disappear
They still would come by all you leave yourself;
'Twas thus the Duke decreed.
_Shylock_ I know a thing
Or two that I could tell and make the face
Of son Lorenzo somewhat longer grow.
_Gratiano_ Faith, often did Lorenzo say to us
"The Jew will find a way to cheat me yet."
_Shylock_ To cheat him out of what? The gold he earned
By robbing me, debauching my--my child?
_Portia_ Nay, let us not be quarreling, old man,
I have a message that I want to give.
_Shylock_ No message from my daughter--none to me.
_Portia_ I meant not message, what I have is news.
Poor Jessica has come to sorry straits.
Her husband, having heard of what you spoke,
The loss of what Antonio received,
The tricks you have been playing with your own,
Fell out with Jessica; they came to words;
From words, they say, to blows. And so it seems
He left her in a pitiable state.
_Shylock_ (_laughing wildly_) Good, good, good, good. I prithee
tell me more.
_Gratiano_ The fiends fly off with thee. Hast thou a heart
And canst thou hear the sorrows of thy child
In laughter and with joy?
_Shylock_ She is no child
Of mine. She is a wench who lied and stole
Repaid my love with treason. Broke my heart
And left me weakened for mine enemies
To ruin and to taunt. Tell me the rest,
Leave not a portion out. Describe her pain,
Her hunger, her remorse. I would know all.
_Portia_ The font has failed to change thy cruel soul;
Thou art a Christian, Shylock, but in name.
_Shylock_ Well, blame thy sacred water. Blame not me.
_Gratiano_ And so poor Jessica must starve and die?
_Shylock_ Why, no. For you and she (_pointing to Portia_) should be
her friends.
You Christians will not let a Christian fall.
_Gratiano_ Now there we cut the venom from thy tongue
For Jessica will not accept our aid.
_Portia_ Indeed, old man, we know not where she is.
We told you, that you might go search for her.
Bassanio did offer her employment
But she refused, belike because her shame
Would not permit that we should see her shame.
And so she fled.
_Gratiano_ And may not be alive.
_Shylock_ These circumstances you should tell unto
Lorenzo. 'Twas he took her upon himself
For better or for worse. Fare you well.
I have affairs that interest me more.
_Gratiano_ Come, Lady Portia. 'Tis a waste of time.
The Bible says that God did choose the Jews
But says not what it was He chose them for.
Our ancient friend hath made it clear to me
That they were chosen by our gracious Lord
To be a kind of warning and example
Of what a misbeliever may become.
_Portia_ Thou wilt not save thy daughter?
_Shylock_ Lady fair,
In this peculiar and imperfect world
The virtues are divided into parts:
For instance, mercy. Some do practice it,
And some do merely preach. A third there are
Whose only contribution is to be
The text from which the second sermons preach;
They neither preach nor practice. Such am I.
Farewell.
_Gratiano_ We but insult ourselves to stay. (_Exit Portia and
Gratiano. Shylock looks after them. Enter Antonio, sees
Shylock, walks over to him and touches him with his
stick. Shylock turns._)
_Antonio_ Hebrew, have I found thee out at last?
Once more thy promises are broken, eh?
_Shylock_ Yes, yes. I pray you----
_Antonio_ Pray me nothing more.
_Shylock_ Signor Antonio, wait another day.
_Antonio_ Another day. For what? Until you hide
A bag of ducats or a jewel case?
Your bonds are by a fortnight overdue
And day by day your fortune dwindles down.
If I should sell the roof above your head
And all your land and chattels, they would bring
Less than enough to pay me what you owe.
_Shylock_ I prithee not so loud. But you alone
Are cognizant of my disastrous state.
My name is good. Perchance I may obtain
A temporary loan to tide me through.
But if my losses come to other ears
Before my kinsmen and my ship arrive
A bankrupt's ending stares me in the face.
Wait, wait Antonio, surely he will come,
My cousin Issachar who sailed away.
_Antonio_ Thy cousin Issachar will come no more.
He promised to return three weeks ago.
_Shylock_ But think, remember, good Antonio,
The vessel could not founder. 'Twas my best,
Held in reserve, the last one of my fleet.
Issachar swore he knew the very spot
Where dusky natives mined the laughing gold
And that if I would furnish men and ships
The moiety of the cargo would be mine.
Perhaps he is a little while delayed.
_Antonio_ Perhaps another theory will fit.
Perhaps your kinsman filled the ship with gold
And then did point his helm another way.
Perhaps in England now he lives at ease
And deems the whole is better than a half.
Consider, sir, your kinsman is a Jew.
_Shylock_ He will not fail me, for he is my friend.
Patience, good sir, patience a day or two.
Deal with me kindly as so oft before
You treated many an unfortunate.
_Antonio_ Let's have no whining. See you pay my bills
No later than to-day. Expect no further time.
I have done more than doth in truth become
A Christian to oblige a Jew withal.
Think not to share the leniency I give
To men of Venice of my faith and blood.
This case is different.
_Shylock_ But did thy Lord
Not preach a creed of brotherhood and love
And bid thee treat thy neighbor as thyself?
_Antonio_ He meant our Christian neighbors who reside
By right of law and ancient heritage
Within the land, but not the tribe who do
Usurp the places of their betters. No!
_Shylock_ I am a Christian, made so by your Church.
Your own priest said so and it must be true.
_Antonio_ 'Twas but a form to bend thy haughty will.
In heart and manner thou art still a Jew.
They should be glad that they can here remain
To practice sacrilege, and cheat, and fawn.
I marvel we can be so tolerant.
_Shylock_ The God who made this land and you and me
Mocks at your selfish, mean, philosophy.
When you or yours can build a mountain peak
Or add a grain unto the universe
Then talk of this fair ground as your domain.
The earth is one and rests within His hand;
The great and small His erring children are,
But we who from Yisrael claim descent
Are now the eldest of the family.
The God of Justice never slumbereth.
Jehovah is His name; His will be done.
_Antonio_ Mumble thy prayers if that affords relief,
But if by sundown I am not repaid
Another Moses must thou be and bring
Another set of miracles from heaven
Or lose the very coat from off thy back.
By sundown--but a few short minutes hence. (_Exit Antonio_)
_Shylock_ Finished--almost finished--almost done.
I see the wave that soon above my hopes,
My fears, my sorrows, and my broken heart,
Will roll in cruel triumph. I'm content.
A long and troubled record I shall leave
Of struggles in the dark 'gainst many foes.
I begged for light to see my duty clear
To see the purpose of my suffering
To see the end that my Creator served
In heaping hills of torment on my head.
The light has never come. But now ere long
I must be called where all shall be made clear.
Till then a few weeks more of faith in Him
A few weeks more with an unfalt'ring tongue
To praise His wisdom though its end be hid.
A few weeks more to walk within His law.
(_Starts to walk off. Enter Jessica in disordered dress
and manner._)
_Jessica_ Father!
_Shylock_ Back! Away! Dare not to touch me.
_Jessica_ A word, a single word and I will go.
_Shylock_ (_trying to wrest his arm from her grasp_)
Let be I say.
_Jessica_ Nay, but I cannot leave.
I know not how much time I have to live.
I marvel that this body thin and frail
Has so long stood th' innumerable shocks
Which in my married life it hath endured.
Death must be near, it stretcheth out its arms,
And I in answer have extended mine.
_Shylock_ Come not to me for money. Had I all
The wealth of Sheba's mines I would not pay
A mite to save thy fallen soul from hell.
The potter's field may have thy rotten bones
And owls and jackals pray for thy repose.
_Jessica_ 'Tis not for gold I beg but for thy love.
I threw it from me like an orange sucked
And turned to grasp the shining fruit that he,
Lorenzo, pictured to mine eyes. Ah me,
How bitter, hard and worthless to the taste
Hath been that substitute. The marriage moon
Had scarce grown full before my body bore
The marks of coward blows.
_Shylock_ Ha! Ha! That's well.
_Jessica_ I have not known a single kindly word,
I scarce have heard him call me by my name
Since less than four weeks after we were wed.
_Shylock_ (_gloatingly rubbing his hands_) Hm!
_Jessica_ Oh father, why was I not told before
That we and all our people are accurst;
That those to whom we give our love and trust
Curse us and loathe us with a dreadful hate,
A hate that neither reason can assuage
Nor conduct make amends for. Awful fate,
That makes the very children of the street
With circle eyes point at us in contempt,
And people who have never heard our names
Thirst for our blood and menace us with death!
_Shylock_ So thou didst think a priestly comedy
Could make Lorenzo love his Jewish wife?
_Jessica_ I could have died for him. For him I fled
And stole your wealth and helped your enemies.
Why could he not have been a little kind?
_Shylock_ (_chuckling_) Come tell me how he beat you. Tell me that.
_Jessica_ Have pity, father.
_Shylock_ Tell me how he swore.
_Jessica_ Oh, torture me no further. Take me back.
Love me not now, but let me win your love
A little at a time. No day shall pass
But in it I shall do some tiny act
That will in time make up a wealth of deeds,
And if we both are living long enough
The balance will be as it was before.
_Shylock_ Thy pleadings are but wasted, Jessica,
Thou canst not gain the end that thou dost seek.
For even if I have the foolish will
(And I assure thee that I have it not)
To bring thee back to all the luxury,
The silken clothes, the soft and perfumed beds,
The shining jewels of thy girlhood days,
I could not. I am almost penniless.
_Jessica_ Poor, and alone, and old! Nay, father dear,
Thou couldst not drive me from thee after this
Hadst thou the strength of ten. Let us go forth
And find a little corner of the earth
Where I may work and you may live at peace.
_Shylock_ I need no aid. I want no help from thee.
_Jessica_ Then give me thine. I starve for sympathy.
I shall go mad. I saw my baby die
And all around me were my husband's friends
Who spoke in terms of polished elegance.
With formal platitudes and commonplace
Regarding me as something curious,
A vulgar, noisy creature, lacking taste
And proper self-control. While on its bier
Lay all the joy that life in promise held.
Dead, and my heart within it. (_Weeps_)
(_Shylock turns to go, looks back after a step
or two, and returns_)
_Shylock_ I did not know the little one was dead.
Was it a pretty child?
_Jessica_ A pretty child!
A cherub could not be more beautiful.
Blue eyes and golden hair. A tiny mouth
A dimple in her chin. (_Shylock puts his arm around
Jessica_)
_Shylock_ Thy mother's face belike. So did she look.
And how old when it--died?
_Jessica_ A year, a year.
(_Enter Antonio and Gratiano. Antonio touches
Shylock on the shoulder_)
_Antonio_ Well, let us have an end. The time is up.
I now demand the payment of my bonds.
_Shylock_ I have not moved since last you spoke to me.
_Antonio_ All's one for that. You had no move to make.
Your whole estate is in the bailiff's hands
And you yourself may come along with me.
_Shylock_ Where would you take me?
_Antonio_ Why, before the Duke.
_Shylock_ What need of trials? Freely I confess
The debts I owe you. Take what you can find.
Take ev'ry rag and counter. Take them all.
Myself and Jessica must go away.
_Antonio_ Not quite so fast. The law expressly states
That I may put you in the debtor's gaol
And so I mean to do.
_Shylock_ But good Signor--
_Antonio_ No protest will avail. I know you Jews.
You hang together in calamity
And help each other while the Christians starve.
Let them redeem you and repay my loss.
_Shylock_ Good sir, my kin are very far away
And poor as I.
_Antonio_ 'Twill do no good to lie.
Write letters. I will see them promptly sent.
_Shylock_ I swear to you Antonio--
_Gratiano_ Wait a while.
First tell us if the oath thou art to make
Is sworn as Christian or in Hebrew style;
Though truly which to give the preference
Is matter to discuss. A Jewish oath
Thou canst not take for thou hast been baptised,
And sooth to say I have a sort of doubt
About thy reverence for Christian forms.
_Shylock_ By that great Power who can humble both
Hebrew and Christian, I do swear to you
That not in all this universe's span
Have I a claim on friends or relatives
As large as this. Much more have I the right
To claim assistance from Antonio
Who though he found me keen for my revenge
And steadfast in assertion of my rights
Can bring no accusation on my head
Of underhanded trickery or crime.
_Gratiano_ Because we watch you pretty carefully.
_Shylock_ What say you, sir? You will not keep us here?
_Antonio_ I warned thee once cajoling will not serve.
Write out the letters. That's the only way.
I'll see that while you tarry in the gaol
Your comfort shall not be too much disturbed.
Your food shall be according to your wish
And other things in reason you may have.
_Jessica_ Good sir, I think you know me, do you not?
_Antonio_ Why, are you not my friend Lorenzo's wife?
_Jessica_ I am the Jessica who married him,
But not his wife if wifehood is a state
That presupposes more than legal rights.
I and Lorenzo are as strangers now
And less than strangers, less than enemies.
_Antonio_ I grieve to hear it.
_Jessica_ I would have your grief
Not for myself but for my father here.
He speaks the truth. He has no more to give.
_Antonio_ Then let him call upon his wealthy friends,
The other Jews will trust him if he asks.
_Jessica_ You heard him say he knows not where to sue.
_Antonio_ O, that was but the cunning of his race.
_Jessica_ Unfeeling man! If his deserts are dumb
What of your obligation due to me?
The Court's decree as you no doubt recall
Was that the half of his estate should go
To you to hold in trust for me and mine.
I charge you now upon your Christian faith
To give my father all the residue
That will be mine when he shall pass away
Or take it for yourself and let him go.
_Antonio_ Three obstacles prevent your sacrifice.
The first is that though my intent was fair
By bad investments more than half the fund
Has disappeared, and all that doth remain
Would not suffice to satisfy the bonds.
The second, that the sum is payable
Upon your father's death, which is not yet.
But third and most of all the money goes
To you and to your husband, not to you.
The gift is joint and neither can alone
Claim all himself or any several part.
Indeed, I own it frankly, my desire
In asking that the Duke should so decree
Was not to benefit Lorenzo's wife,
A Jewess, who was never aught to me,
But solely to befriend Lorenzo's self
My coreligionist and distant kin.
To give you anything of Shylock's gold
Without Lorenzo's will would be a wrong,
A breach of trust, a patent injury.
And if your separation from his love,
As shrewdly I suspect, be fault of yours
And growing from thy Jewish wilfulness,
It would be most unfaithful and untrue
That I should thus reward inconstancy.
You see, in honor and before the law
I must refuse to do as you request.
_Jessica_ I see that Jesus died in vain for you.
His Jewish heart, with pity for the low
And meek and humble broke upon the cross
And for a time the magic of his words
Restrained the beast in Gentile followers,
But soon the kindly Stoic lost his sway
And cruel bigots in his Jewish name,
By his offenceless, mild authority
Took fire and sword and hatred for their flag.
_Antonio_ My girl, there is a law 'gainst blasphemy.
_Gratiano_ Why stand we here and listen to her spleen?
Away with Shylock. Take him to the gaol.
_Antonio_ Come on.
_Jessica_ No! No!
_Shylock_ Resist no more, my child.
_Jessica_ Oh, father, we may never meet again;
Your age and suffering cannot endure
The shock of this disgrace.
_Shylock_ 'Tis better so.
I pray for death. It cannot come too soon.
Farewell.
_Jessica_ Farewell. (_Throws her arms around him_)
Yet not a long farewell,
I shall not far survive. It is no sin
To end a life of misery and shame.
_Isaac_ (_behind scenes_) Where is my master? Where has Shylock gone?
(_Enter Isaac._)
_Gratiano_ Here fellow, here he is. With Jessica
He poses like a model for the arts.
_Isaac_ Great news and wonderful. His ship is here
And laden full of gold. The mine is found
And Issachar and he are princely rich.
This cargo is the greatest that has come
To Venice since the city first began.
_Antonio_ I do rejoice to hear it. Truly Jew
I have no wish to do thy body harm
But thou and thy relations are well known
To be so deep in craft and villainy
That to recover what is justly due
We Christians must resort to rigid means.
Go freely with thy daughter. Later on
When ev'rything's in order I'll return
And you may pay me what the balance is.
(_Exit Antonio and Gratiano, followed by Isaac. Shylock
still stands expressionless with Jessica's arms around
him._)
[Illustration: Signature: Wmln. Blatt]
Jewish Students in European Universities
BY HARRY WOLFSON
(_Concluded_)
_Judaism and Jewish Students in France_
The decadence of native Judaism in France has become proverbial. The
original French Jews never amounted to much; and the Alsatian
immigrants, while still supplying rabbis for the pulpits, have of late
begun to disappear from the pews. You may state it is an axiom that
the synagogue will have to go a-begging for a quorum wherever
church-going is unpopular. But French Judaism has recently been
gaining reinforcement by the influx of newcomers from Eastern Europe.
Paris might be considered next to London the greatest centre of Jewish
immigration in Europe. In fact, Paris as well as some large cities in
the Low Countries, and to some extent even London, have since the
beginning of the Jewish movement towards the United States, become the
refuge of a considerable number who straggled behind the migratory
columns and were unable to reach their final destination. Free from
any official molestations and rather welcomed by the native Jews, the
foreign Jewish community in Paris has flourished in its own way. It
numbers by this time about twenty-five thousand souls, a large
proportion of whom were born and brought up in the French capital.
It is these young French Jews of immigrant parentage, students and
professional men, who organized themselves, about two years ago, in an
"Association des Jeunes Juifs," known by its initials as A. J. J. The
aim of that organization, which is non-partisan in Jewish affairs, is
both cultural and practical. It publishes a monthly by the name of
"Les Pionniers," and occasionally holds debates and lectures on
various Jewish topics. It also carries on a program of social work
among the immigrant Jews. I might perhaps give a clearer idea of the
object of the A. J. J. by reproducing their following declaration:
"Notre But.--Nous voulons nous affirmer 'Juifs' sans forfanterie, mais
avec fermeté; cultiver, développer parmis nous, faire connaître au
dehors, l'âme juive; nous éduquer mutuellement; demander, par les
voies légales, le respect, la justice pour tous,--fussent-ils juifs;
aider nos frères émigrés à l'aquérir la qualité de citoyen; inculquer
à nos membres les principes de solidarité et de mutualité." In the
summer of 1913, Dr. Nahum Slouszch of the Sorbonne submitted to the
society a scheme for more extensive activities, both Jewish and
patriotic in their scope, namely, the participation in educational and
social work among the indigenous Jews of the French possessions in
Africa.
_The Jew of the Roman Ghetto_
It is a pity that so little is known to us about the life of the
Jewish masses in Italy. The fame of the Nathans and Luzzattis has led
us to believe that in Italy Jews form the class of society from which
mayors and statesmen are recruited. But in Italy the majority of Jews
still live in social and economic conditions not far advanced above
those of their ancestors in centuries past. Italy is the only country
in Europe outside those in the Eastern part where the so-called
ghettoes are populated by native Jews. Their political emancipation
has not raised them from the bottom of the social structure over the
heads of their Gentile neighbors. Nowhere is the average Jew so much
like the non-Jew in appearance, language, manners, and vocation than
the inhabitant of the Roman Ghetto on the bank of the Tiber. He is
engaged there in the petty trades of selling his olives, peaches, and
figs, and hires out as a journeyman in and outside his country. He
hawks with "cartiloni" and "ricordi di Roma" in front of the café
terraces, and his street waifs accost the foreigners for a "soldi."
Even at the door of his old-clothes shop you can hardly recognize in
him the Jew. It is this, more than the paucity of the number of Jews
in Italy, that explains the absence of anti-Jewish feeling there. For
the name Sacerdote by which Italian Cohens call themselves does not
suggest affluence, and the cognomen Levi does not necessarily
designate one's business.
In his religious life the Jew of the Roman Ghetto resembles the
Lithuanian rather than the Western European. His religious activity,
to be sure, is restricted to the prayer services of the Temple, but
his Temple is more like a Beth Midrash than a symphony hall and
lyceum. Living within a Catholic environment, his religion has
been preserved as something positive, tangible, and powerful; and
if it is no longer an inspiring influence within him, it exists at
least as a reality outside of him. The religious institutions and
instrumentalities are looked upon by him as something hallowed and
consecrate. The synagogue is spoken of as the "sacro tempio" and the
rabbi, referred to by the Hebrew words "Morenu Harav," is looked up to
in matters religious as if he were the incumbent of the throne of
Moses. The place of worship is opened three times a day for the
traditional number of the daily public prayers, and young men as well
as old, unwashed and in their working garments, repair there directly
from their work to hear the "sacra messa," as the services are
sometimes termed by them. Most of the younger Jews are unable to read
the Hebrew prayers, some read without understanding them; but they all
know a few selected prayers by heart which they recite aloud with many
interesting gesticulations and genuflections, while in the pulpit the
Chasan reads the services from a prayer-book printed in Livorno,
chanting them in a monotonous sing-song not unlike what one often
hears in the chapels of St. Peter.
_Societies of Jewish Youth in Italy_
Racial consciousness is strong among these Jews of the Roman Ghetto.
They are to themselves, in common parlance, "Ibrim" or "Yahudim,"
which they utter not without pride, and the Gentile is looked down
upon as a mere "goi," while the passing priest is pointed out as a
"komer." If you ever happen to be in Rome, I should advise you take
one afternoon off, and ordering a "cafe noro" at some café house on
the Piazza Venezia, sit down quietly at a table on the terrace and try
to look Jewish. You will soon be assailed by a number of postal-card
venders coming one after another, until one importunate youth,
discovering your identity, will of a sudden change his attitude, and,
his obsequiousness gone, will enter with you into an intimate
conversation. He will tell you his name, his pedigree, and of the
"tempio," and of the street where many Jews live. He will no longer
entreat you to buy his goods; and if you do so, he will mumble out his
"grazie" rather perfunctorily. For are not all Israel of the same
descent?--and if they are not all princes, at least none of them is
better than a postal-card vender in Rome.
It is therefore not surprising that among the native Italian Jews
there should arise on the part of the young educated elements a desire
to convert that latent Jewish sentiment into some form of practical
and useful activity. A society of Jewish youth in Italy has already
existed for about three years during which time two conventions were
held. A number of commendable resolutions were passed about the
improvement of Jewish education among the Italian Jews and especially
the advancement of the study of the Hebrew language among them.
Zionism was warmly endorsed, though the society as a whole did not
commit itself officially to the cause. Like the A. J. J. of Paris, the
Italian organization also purports to act as intermediaries between
the Italian government and the native Jewish population of Tripoli. In
Rome there is a local organization of Jewish students, devoted to the
study of Hebrew literature, and is rather of cosmopolitan complexion,
being composed of Italian, Greek, German, and Russian Jews. The moving
spirit of that circle was a brilliant Russian Jew, who had graduated
in law from the University of Rome.
_Conclusion: The Growing National Spirit Among Jewish Students_
A close observation of European Jewish students, both as individuals
and as groups, leads one to the realization of a growing consciousness
among them of national unity, and of an increasing belief on their
part of the imperishability of the Jews as a race. That morbid
feeling of national decay and the imminent disappearance of the race,
which had preyed upon the minds of Jewish men in the past generation,
and which is reflected in the literature of that time, has been
everywhere displaced by one of confidence and hope. Desertion from
Judaism, to be sure, may sporadically make its appearance here and
there as a convenient escape from material disadvantages; indifference
towards it may likewise in some quarters still survive as a relic of
the past,--but these are rather unusual and isolated phenomena,
emphasizing all the more the universal fidelity and attachment to all
things Jewish.
The enthusiasm for Judaism, everywhere in a process of growth,
manifests itself in its early stages in study and self-cultivation; it
assumes a more concrete form, in its later stages, of some communal or
social activity; and if that development keeps on uninterruptedly it
finally consummates in Zionism. This development, it must be admitted,
is not a spontaneous and self-directive movement. In no small measure,
it is everywhere stimulated by the growing tendency on the part of
non-Jews in almost every country to appraise the Jew according to his
racial origin, an appraisal which results in a feeling not necessarily
hostile, but in most cases neutral and sometimes even favoring the
racial and cultural peculiarity, indestructible and impermiscible, of
the Jewish element. It is this external stimulus, rather than any
internal impulse, that is responsible for the unfolding of the
national spirit among Jewish students and the assertion of their
selfhood.
None the less, their self-assertion has nowhere reached the extreme of
spiritual alienation from their environment. There is nothing more
remarkable in the character of Jewish youth of the present day, even
among those who were born and raised in East European ghettos, than
the spiritual and intellectual snugness in which they find themselves,
in what should have been expected to remain to them a foreign
environment. The residual estrangement of the Jewish soul from
everything that is non-Jewish, which our forefathers in the past had
figuratively designated with what Jewish mysticism called the
"Captivity of the Shekinah," has totally disappeared. The individual
Jew of to-day, while sharing in the sublimated consciousness of the
race as a whole, does not in any conscious or subliminal way feel
himself to be personally identified with it; whence the hesitation on
the part of the majority of Jewish students to participate actively in
Zionism even though they would all admit it to be the logical sequel
of Jewish history.
For Zionism to them can never become a personal ideal, something
requisite for the salvation of their souls. It can at its best appeal
to them, in so far as they are consciously Jewish, as the cause of the
nation as a whole; and consequently the mere suspicion that their
affiliation with the movement might be held up against them as an
impugnment of their loyalty to the land of their birth and abode is
sufficient to keep them aloof from it. It was very interesting for me
to notice how everywhere, after a long manoeuvre of Zionist
discussions with good Jewish young men, they would finally halt at
their unshakable position that Zionists might arouse the suspicion of
their Gentile neighbors as to the loyalty and patriotism of the Jews.
Where people are obsessed by the fear of being misunderstood in doing
what they otherwise think to be good and impeccable, no arguments, of
course, can avail. They are in this respect characteristically Jewish.
In their Brand-like racial frame of mind, the Jews could never stop
midway between the two antipodes of roving world-citizenry and
hidebound mono-patriotism. It is probable that their attitude will
change as soon as it is generally realized that personal devotion and
loyalty to two causes are not psychologically a self-deception, and
that the serving of two masters is not a moral anomaly unless, as in
the original adage, one of the masters be Satanic.
[Illustration: Signature: Harry Wolfson]
Extract from a letter received from William Chadwick,
President of the Hebrew Congregation and the Adler
Society, Oxford University, England, commenting on the
section devoted to England in Mr. Wolfson's article in
our January number: "The remarks of Mr. Wolfson, whom
we remember very well, concerning Oxford, were very
apt for the time; but in Oxford, one particular type
of Judaism never remains for long; Judaism here is in
a state of perpetual flux, and to seize upon any one
moment and represent that view as a type of Oxford's
Judaism is very erroneous. I am sure that if Mr.
Wolfson were here now, he would not recognize the
services or the attitude now prevalent. I doubt if he
would now hear Liberal Judaism apostrophised 'as the
safeguard of modern Jews from the attractiveness of
the superior teachings of Christ.'"
Zionism: A Menorah Prize Essay
BY MARVIN M. LOWENTHAL
[Illustration: _MARVIN M. LOWENTHAL (born in Bradford, Pa., in 1890)
is at present a Senior in the University of Wisconsin. He has won the
Wisconsin Menorah Society Prize twice--in 1912 for an essay on "The
Jew in the American Revolution," and in 1914 for the essay on
"Zionism" here published for the first time. Mr. Lowenthal is now the
President of the Wisconsin Zionist Society._]
At the head of an alley-way hard by the Place of the Temple, the
Haram-esh-Sherif, in Jerusalem, a long wall built in rough-hewn
courses lifts itself above the squalor of the Moghrebin quarter to an
eastern sky from which a sun that seldom sleeps bakes the grey stones,
bares every detail of a crumbling ruin, and intensifies the wistful
odor of decay. This, the remnant of Solomon's glory, is the Wailing
Wall of the Jews. Clad in sackcloth and covered with ashes,
patriarchal figures sway to and fro, press their lips to the hot
granite, beat now their chests and now the wall, and today, as every
day for eighteen hundreds of years, wail in the words of the Psalmist:
"Oh God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance;
Thy holy Temple have they defiled;
They have laid Jerusalem in heaps."[1]
This picture reveals the typical and traditional attitude of the Jew
toward the land of his forefathers. Taught as children in the Cheder
to turn their thoughts and desires toward Palestine; devoting
themselves as men to the study of the Law and the Prophets and to the
building upon this study of the vast Talmudic structure, until a
spiritual Land of the Book may be said to have been created wherein
they continually dwelt; crystallizing and adopting the Restoration as
a dogma of the faith; commemorating with solemn fasts the Ninth of Ab
as the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple by Titus; and
repeating at each Passover with the pitiful hope of a child, "Next
year in Jerusalem," the Jews have bound the memory of Palestine as a
sign upon their hands and as frontlets between their eyes. They have
indeed written it upon the door-posts of their houses and upon their
gates, to the end--that they have wept and prayed. The vision of the
prophets, which created and sustained this passionate ideal, itself
inhibited the realization by emphasizing the redemption as
miraculous, as a consummation to come in its own time without man's
effort, and indeed in spite of man's will. And so, except for the
sporadic and meteoric fiascos of mock-Messiahs, the Jews--this most
practical of people--continued in hope and prayer to watch the
centuries creep by. Frequently the hope flowered into the songs of a
Judah Halevi or Ibn Gabirol, songs as sweet as have blossomed in the
medieval garden; and the prayer found expression in a poignancy
attributable only to the racial genius which created the Psalms; but
until the nineteenth century the dream preserved all the qualities of
a dream.
_A Crusade for A Birthright_
On August 29, 1897, a congress convened in Basel, Switzerland,
comparable in Jewry to the Council of Clermont; for in this congress
two hundred and four Jews, acting as delegates of their people from
half the countries in the world, assembled at the call of Theodor
Herzl to go crusading for the recovery of Palestine. This difference,
among others, may be apparent--the Christians sought the recovery of a
grave; the Jews, of a cradle. Palestine was to be a cradle in two
senses; this Congress, the first body representative of all Jewry to
be convened in the Diaspora, claimed the land of Israel not by virtue
of a death, but as a birthright, and furthermore hoped to find its
recovery the opportunity for the rejuvenation of a people.
Quoting from his book, "The Jewish State"[2]--a book journalistic in
style, but trumpet-toned in the note it sounded for political
Zionism--Theodor Herzl offered the following definition of Zionism
after the first Zionist Congress (1897): "Zionism has for its object
the creation of a home, secured by public rights, for those Jews who
either cannot or will not be assimilated in the country of their
adoption."[3] Zionism, in a word, is not the last truism in a weary
debate, nor a new verse to an old song; it is, on the contrary, a
definite answer to a perplexing and imperative question. What are
these Jews who cannot or will not be assimilated, and why cannot or
will not they be assimilated? This question constitutes what is known
as _the Jewish problem_, or, for those who deny or dislike the term,
_the Jewish position_; and this question must first be fully stated
before the Zionist or any other answer can be intelligible.
_The Isolation of Medieval Jewry_
The Jews in the Middle Ages were considered by themselves, their few
friends, and their many enemies, as a twice separated nation--a people
separated from those among whom they dwelt and separated from the
land in which they originated. They were governed by their own
law--the Lex Judæorum--which was recognized by the authorities of the
land in which they lived as peculiar and proper to them;[4] they dwelt
in communal groups which were bound together by common interests; they
observed their own customs and nourished their own culture; they were
held to be foreigners, and in a comparison of their own with the
Christian civilization, they readily acknowledged this status. The
force of persecution without and the religious conviction of
superiority, separateness, and nationality within, preserved and
constantly increased this solidarity.[5]
That the existence of a separate, recalcitrant, and even obnoxious
nation within a nation did not constitute a problem for the medievals
may be attributable to two reasons: (1) the medieval theory of life
accentuated a hierarchical order of existence--a theory that found
expression in feudalism, in Church organization, and in guild and
craft life; in pursuance of this theory, the Jews were accorded a
recognized and distinct status; (2) furthermore, the Jews were an
economic necessity in the times when a ban was laid on money-lending,
and they constituted an important economic facility at a little later
period when capital could indeed be worked but when rivalry and
hatreds rendered communication uncertain.[6] To the maintenance of
Jewish solidarity and the preservation of things Jewish _qua_ Jewish,
sacrifices culminating in the surrender of life bequeathed to the race
a comprehensive martyrology.[7]
Ernest Renan defines a nation as "a great solidarity constituted by
the sentiment of the sacrifices that its citizens have made and those
they feel prepared to make once more. It implies a past, but is summed
up in the present by a tangible fact--the clearly expressed desire to
live a common life." In sum, the Jews throughout the Middle Ages,
which was prolonged for them until a little less than two hundred
years ago, comprised a nation as virtual in point of their own claim
and its recognition by other nations as in the days when they were
established in Palestine. Renaissance, Reformation, and the
rediscovery of the world by science failed to make an impression on
the thick ghetto walls; and Jewish isolation, even as late as the
eighteenth century, may be vividly realized by thinking of Rousseau
and Voltaire in contrast with the contemporary lights of Jewry--Elijah
Gaon and Israel Besht,[8] men as medieval as a gargoyle.
The French Revolution with its early philosophy of naturalism and
humanism and its later political expression in liberty, equality, and
fraternity, razed the physical and spiritual walls of the ghetto and
set up the "Jewish problem." Following the Revolution, four currents
of thought and action, working both simultaneously and successively,
causing, reacting upon, and intermingling with one another, affecting
the Jews now favorably and now unfavorably, went into the making of
this problem. To deal with Emancipation, Enlightenment, Nationalism,
and Anti-Semitism in detail would consume a volume, but an outline of
their bearing on the present situation is essential.
_Emancipation and Enlightenment_
Emancipation may be defined as the removal of the civil disabilities
from the Jews, following the acceptance of liberal principles by the
European governments. The process was a gradual one. In 1791 the
French Assembly passed the vote for the complete emancipation of the
Jews, which procedure was ratified and firmly established by the
Napoleonic regime. Belgium (1830), England (1846), Sweden (1848),
Denmark and Greece (1849), Prussia (1850), Austria (1867), Spain
(1868), Italy (1870), and Switzerland (1874) followed the lead of
France. The Balkan States in the treaty of Berlin (1878), upon
pressure from Disraeli, agreed to the emancipation of the Jews as one
of the conditions for securing their own freedom; Roumania has been
notoriously delinquent, however, in adhering to the terms nominated in
the bond.[9] The removal of civil disabilities brought the Jew into a
wide contact with the Christian. This resulted for the Jews in
liberalization of outlook and liberation of capacities and talents, in
an abandonment of the "jargon" for the national tongues, in a
precipitation into the Haskalah movement (to be described in the next
paragraph), and in a restatement of their leading religious doctrines,
which amounted to a surrender in theory of their nationality and their
destiny as a Chosen People to be restored to Palestine. For the
Christians the removal of Jewish disabilities resulted in the
necessity of either accepting or rejecting the Jew's claim to be an
equal and a fellow-countryman.
The Enlightenment, or Haskalah movement, broadly speaking, comprises
the Jewish absorption of secular learning, particularly in literature
and science, the abandonment of the study of the Talmud for modern
subjects, and the adoption of farm and craft life.[10] Moses
Mendelssohn in Germany and Lilienthal in Russia were the first great
protagonists of these radical departures; and the movement, which in
part led to the demand for Emancipation and in part resulted from it,
further removed the differences between Jew and non-Jew, at least from
the standpoint of the former, and further removed him from his
religious and historical past, perceptibly weakening and in many
cases practically destroying the medieval sense of solidarity. Each
Jew adopted the culture of his native country, and so one Jew became
virtually a foreigner to another. Haskalah, in a word, is a looking
outward on the part of the Jew; for all its virtues this movement had
the consequence of blunting racial consciousness and blurring racial
identity.
_Nationalism and Anti-Semitism_
All might have been well but for the presence of a third and
conflicting element. While the Jew became infected with the
universalism of the Revolutionary spirit, the majority of Europeans
were absorbing and developing the particularistic implications of '89.
Nationalism is the self-consciousness of a people, and it found its
European expression in the creation of the modern States of Germany,
Italy, Hungary, Greece, and the small Balkans. It is a race's
recognition of itself, a looking inward, and it leads to the pursuit
of racial ideals and development of racial qualities--an inward
expansion which, indifferent to the charge of chauvinism, can only be
secured by an outward discrimination. The Jew and the Christian had
changed places since medieval times: the Jew now stood for a universal
society and a universal church, and the Christian for exclusion and
separation upon racial bases. Emancipation thus brought the conflict
directly to the attention of the strong majority, namely, the
Christians, and anti-Semitism was their answer.
In its restricted sense, anti-Semitism is a scientific stick used to
beat the Jewish dog with. After impartial, impersonal scientific
investigation, French and German scholars[11] demonstrated the racial
inferiority of the Semite to the Aryan, enumerated the inherent
Semitic qualities as greed, special aptitude for money-making,
aversion to hard work, clannishness, obstrusiveness, lack of social
tact and of patriotism, the tendency to exploit and not to be overly
honest. Ernest Renan adequately sums up the anti-Semite position when
he claims for the Aryans all the great military, political, and
intellectual movements of history.[12] The Semites never had a
comprehension of civilization in the sense in which the Aryan
understands the word; they were at no time public-spirited.[13] In
fact, intolerance was the natural consequence of Semitic
monotheism.[14]
In the wider sense,[15] anti-Semitism is the modern word for the old
and apparently ineradicable hatred of the Jew, partly dependent, as G.
F. Abbott well shows,[16] not only upon Christian faith, but upon the
Christian frame of mind and feeling--a hatred to which the Nationalism
of the nineteenth century furnished a reasonable fuel, which found a
social expression in ostracism and rioting[17] and a political
expression in the formation of the Christian Socialist Party in
Germany (1878), and similar parties in Austria and Hungary (1882-99),
seeking the suppression of equal rights for Jews, the Dreyfus affair
in France (1895), and the open, violent persecutions in Roumania--all
aimed at annulling the privileges granted by the Emancipation.
Clerical, economic, and social opposition to the Jews combined to
support the nationalistic contention summed up in the words of
Heinrich von Treitschke (Professor of History, University of Berlin):
"Die Juden sind unser Unglück."[18] This essay is not concerned with
the truth of the contention; suffice that it is advanced, supported,
and acted upon.
_The Jewish Situation in the Four Zones_
A review of the Jewish situation is now possible. But before
presenting this review, a definition of two words which will be
frequently used may not be irrelevant. The _Jewish problem_ is taken
to mean an immediate concrete maladjustment where life and property
are imperiled, much as we speak of the Mexican problem. The _Jewish
position_, on the other hand, is taken to mean a social, cultural, or
spiritual disharmony or repression, much as we speak of the position
of the Poles in Galicia and Russia.
The Jewish situation falls naturally into four geographical zones. The
first, which contains the _problem_ in its most serious aspect, is
Eastern Europe, including Russia, Poland, and Roumania, where are
settled six of the twelve million Jews of the world.[19] In this zone,
the Jews are for the most part maintaining medieval solidarity and
separation, are suffering from medieval repression and persecution;
but on the other hand, (and this appears to be the determining factor
in the gravity of the _problem_), the Russian Jew is by no means a
necessity to the Russian in any way similar to that in which the
medieval Jew was a necessity to the medieval Christian. The eastern
Jew is beginning to expand with the leaven of the Haskalah, and is
simultaneously strangling for lack of the release and exercise of his
powers afforded by Emancipation. The Russian and Roumanian, in what
they believe to be the preservation of Nationalism, are determined on
crippling or destroying the inimical and unassimilative factor in
their population; and although the Russian is politically medieval, he
is economically modern and considers himself restrained by no need of
Jewish money.[20] The outcome for the Jews is economic impoverishment,
social persecution, political enslavement, and spiritual
degeneration.[21]
The second zone includes Austria, Germany, and to a minor degree
France, where are settled approximately three millions of Jews. Save
in Galicia, where political and racial turmoil is constantly giving
the Jewish situation the sombre tinge of a _problem_, the Jews are
finding themselves, for the most part, in a precarious _position_.
Nationalism demands that they surrender their racial identity and
proclivities; anti-Semitism declares upon the verdict of science that
such surrender is impossible, and substitutes repression,
assimilation, or extinction. The Jews in attempting to satisfy the
conditions by entering fully into all the activities of national life
arouse through their success only greater hostility; and the situation
becomes converted into a vicious circle.
France to a large degree and England comprise the third zone, where
the Jewish _position_ is identical with that of the fourth zone, the
United States, save in one important detail. The Jews in these two
zones, numbering only one-and-a-half million, have entered freely into
the national life about them, and, except for minor social
disabilities which can only make the judicious smile, have been
accorded equality, with the result that the Jew _qua_ Jew is exposed
to complete assimilation. The distinction between the third and fourth
zone is that in England and France, anti-Semitism based on Nationalism
is a potentiality (though the recent Aliens Bill and Chesterton trial
would suggest that it might be more than this), whereas the open-door
theory of settlement which created the United States militates
basically against race-discrimination. The Jew of England and America
does not face persecution nor repression, but a gradual and apparently
pleasant extinction.
The medieval Jew found himself a necessary, well-paying, if not
honored, guest in the households of Europe; but the day when the Jew
resolved on adopting the life and manners of his host, the host
resolved on drawing tightly the family lines. The modern Jew has
discovered it necessary either to convince the obdurate host, who
points to a scientifically certified chart of the family-tree, that he
too is of blood germane, or take himself to lodgings in the cellarage.
And yet--a third possibility here insinuates itself--why may not the
Jew set up housekeeping for himself?
_The Vain Effort of Reform Judaism_
The medieval Jew would have accepted without hope the unfortunate
predicament; the modern Jew, nerved with a distillation of the
Revolutionary "rights of men" and confident that he was not combating
the implacability of a religious hatred, adopted expedient and
remedial measures, the chief of which, since they form the opposition
to Zionism, will be outlined.
To justify Emancipation before and after it was secured, assimilative
doctrines of a peculiar type, known as Reform Judaism,[22] whereby the
essentials of Jewish life were to be separated and saved, constituted
the main attempt of the Jew to demonstrate that he was a member of the
households of Europe and not an intruder. Reform Judaism began as a
result of the Haskalah by simplifying and beautifying, according to
European standards, the Orthodox religious service (Germany 1810-20),
and ended by abandoning the Messianic Restoration, the doctrine that
Israel is in exile and that the prophecies are literally to be
fulfilled. The expediency of these measures is apparent. To refute the
anti-Semitic charge of racial inferiority, the existence of the race
as a separate entity was denied, and the necessary scientific backing
has lately been secured.[23] To meet the Nationalists, Israel's
national hopes were declared void, and it was strongly urged that the
basis of a modern nation is citizenship and not race.
The Reformers proceeded further and maintained that the Jewish people
were themselves the Messiah, whose mission was "to spread by its
fortitude and loyalty the monotheistic truth all over the earth, and
to be an example of rectitude to all others,"[24] whose goal was "not
a national Messianic State, but the realization in society of the
principles of righteousness as enunciated by the prophets;"[25]
wherefore, it was not only just that they receive citizenship, but
religious duty compelled the Jew to demand it.
The Jewish religion was considered the essential possession of the
Jewish people--so essential that it was to be maintained at the
sacrifice of assimilation; but nowhere is it made apparent how a
religion can be maintained without a people, how a people can be
maintained without separation, and how separation can be maintained
without abandoning the no-race, no-nation propositions. If these are
abandoned, the Jews are precisely where they began--another circle
whose viciousness is becoming obvious and is resulting in the constant
discarding of Jewish rite and form, until the religion which was to be
prized and saved is fast becoming a watery Unitarianism, and its
adherents are allowing themselves, where permitted, to become
completely assimilated. Reform Judaism which began as a compromise is
ending as a surrender. The final and unanswerable objection to Reform
Judaism as a solution is that the majority of Jews will not even in
theory accept it. The devotion to race, religion, and separation is
too strong. The Gentile in asking the Jew to assimilate is undoubtedly
right; the refusal of the Jew undoubtedly is not wrong; and the ring
of true tragedy becomes audible.
_The Palliative Measures of Philanthropy_
Contemporary with the unsuccessful attempt at clearing up the Jewish
_position_ in western Europe, palliative measures were undertaken to
solve the _problem_ in eastern Europe. In 1860 the Alliance Israelite
Universelle was founded at Paris with the following purposes in
chief:[26]
1. To work everywhere for the emancipation and moral
progress of the Jew.
2. To give effectual support to those who are
suffering persecution because they are Jews.
The Alliance began by distributing pamphlets and calling the attention
of western governments to eastern injustice; it gradually, however,
undertook practical work. Influenced by Rabbi Kalischer, religious
enthusiast, a farm school (Mikveh Israel) was established at Jaffa;
and after the Russian persecutions of 1880-82, active colonization for
the relief of refugees became the chief work, in which the Alliance
received substantial aid from Baron de Rothschild. Meanwhile Baron de
Hirsch, another philanthropist of international proportions, dedicated
millions to the foundation of colonies in Argentine and Palestine. In
the latter place the Hirsch activities were incorporated under the
title of the Jewish Colonization Association ("IKA", 1891), working in
harmony of aim with the Alliance and with still a third movement--one
more of the people--styled Chovevei-Zion (Lovers of Zion). The only
activities of the Chovevei-Zion, a general term attached to small and
ardent semi-affiliated societies throughout Europe and America, with
which we are here concerned are the philanthropic; and their services
in this respect were haphazard and negligible.[27]
To cast up briefly the sum of practical work accomplished by 1898: 94
schools in Asia and Africa,[28] and 25 colonies in Palestine
supporting 5,000 Jews.[29] Such philanthropy is to be considered an
attempt, however valiant and noble, to empty the sea with a pail--with
a leaking pail.
Thus, upon a review of the situation, three alternatives present
themselves: (1) Maintenance of the _status quo_ with its dull round of
persecution and degradation on one hand, and the soul-destroying life
in the Fool's Paradise of Reform Judaism on the other; (2)
Amalgamation with the surrounding peoples--a grim race-suicide; (3)
Re-establishment of a national center where, perhaps not the entire
people, but a remnant can be saved.
(_To be concluded_)
_As Greece stands for art and Rome stands for law and
order, so Judaea stands for morality, and so it
occupies an exalted position in history. The Menorah
Society comes to the University with a challenge and
defies us to ignore at our peril that which Judaism
has contributed to civilization and which we have
derived from it. We have derived our own religion from
it, and that spirit of Puritanism which was so closely
connected with the settlement of the new
world._--_From an Address before the Cornell Menorah
Society by President Jacob Gould Schurman of Cornell
University._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Psalm_ 79.
[2] _Der Judenstaat_ (Vienna, 1906); English translation, edited by J.
de Haas.
[3] Theodor Herzl, "The Zionist Congress," _Contemporary Review_, v.
27, p. 587.
[4] I. Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_ (Philadelphia,
1897), p. 49.
[5] Jacob S. Raisin, _The Haskalah Movement_ (Philadelphia, 1913), p.
33.
[6] James H. Robinson, _History of Western Europe_ (Boston, 1904, 2
vols.), vol. 1, p. 246. Addison & Steele, _The Spectator_ (London,
1823), No. 495, p. 710.
[7] L. Zunz, _The Sufferings of the Jews During the Middle Ages_ (New
York, 1907).
[8] S. M. Dubnow, _Jewish History_ (Philadelphia, 1903), p. 156.
[9] Lady Magnus, _Outlines of Jewish History_ (London, 1888), p. 301
et seq.
[10] Raisin, _The Haskalah Movement_, Chap. III.
[11] S. Phillippson, _Weltbegerende Fragen_ (Leipsic, 1868) Edouard
Drumont, _La France Juive_ (Paris, 1886).
[12] Ernest Renan, _Études d'Histoire Religieuse_ (Paris, 1862), p.
85.
[13] _Idem_, p. 88.
[14] _Idem_, p. 87.
[15] H. Graetz, _History of the Jews_ (Philadelphia, 1891), 5 vols.,
vol. V., p. 318 et seq.
[16] G. F. Abbott, "The Jewish Problem," _Fortnightly Review_, vol.
93, p. 742.
[17] _The Jewish Encyclopedia_ (New York, 1901, 10 vols.), under
"Anti-Semitism."
[18] _Idem._ and _ibid._, quoting from Preussiche Jahrbücher, 1879.
[19] _American Jewish Year Book_ (Philadelphia, 1913-14), p. 215.
[20] Arnold White, "Europe and the Jews," _Contemporary Review_, vol.
72, p. 738.
[21] American Jewish Year Book, 1906-07, p. 24-90. Tables showing, for
period of 3 years in Russia (1903-06), 254 pogroms, in which 3,973
Jews were killed and 14,034 wounded. C. R. Conder, "Zionists,"
_Blackwood_, vol. 163, p. 598, states on authority of Dr. Farbstein
that 70 per cent. of Galician Jews are beggars and 50 per cent. of
Russian Jews are paupers.
[22] _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Reform Judaism."
[23] Maurice Fishberg, "The Jews" (New York, 1911).
[24] _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Reform Judaism."
[25] _Idem._
[26] _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Alliance Israelite Universelle."
[27] Cohen, _Zionist Work in Palestine_, p. 157.
[28] _Idem._
[29] _Idem_, under "Agricultural Colonies in Palestine."
The Third Annual Convention of the Menorah Societies
I. The Public Meeting
_The Third Annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association was held at the University of Cincinnati, in the city of
Cincinnati, on Wednesday and Thursday, December 23 and 24, 1914. The
third session, on Wednesday evening, was a public meeting in the
University auditorium. Abraham J. Feldman, President of the University
of Cincinnati Menorah Society, formally welcomed the convention, and
introduced Chancellor Henry Hurwitz as the Chairman of the evening.
Mayor F. S. Spiegel brought the greetings and welcome of the city of
Cincinnati. Dean Joseph E. Harry extended a welcome in behalf of the
University, and Dr. Kaufman Kohler, President of Hebrew Union College,
welcomed the convention in behalf of his institution and of the Jewish
community. Professor I. Leo Sharfman of the University of Michigan,
President of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, spoke on "The
Menorah Movement," and Dr. H. M. Kallen of the University of Wisconsin
delivered an address on "The Jews and the War." For the substance of
Dr. Kallen's address see his article on page 79. The other speakers
spoke in part as follows:_
DEAN J. E. HARRY
In behalf of the University of Cincinnati, I bid you welcome. I
confess that I can agree with the statement made in your declaration
of the nature and purpose of the Menorah Societies, that modern
civilization is chiefly a product of three ancient cultures, or to be
more exact, I should prefer to say two, since the Roman is but a
continuation of the Greek, and we cannot understand ourselves without
understanding and having direct reference to the character and work of
both the Greek and the Hebrew minds.
Two principal elements have entered into the spiritual life of the
modern world. The past and the present are one and inseparable, and
you cannot destroy the former without doing positive damage to the
latter. The roots of our civilization lie in the soil of antiquity,
and you cannot destroy and disentangle the fibers of the growing tree
of civilization from the far-off centuries that are gone, without
injuring the whole organism. "If we were to wipe out all the records
of the past, what a series of inexplicable riddles would our own
history present, and if we were to blot out entirely every reference
to ancient writers, or were to blow away all the perfume that has been
shaken down from the vestments of those writers, how blurred and how
scentless would the fairest and most fragrant pages of our own great
poets and historians appear!"
What we need to-day, what our country needs more than anything else,
is thorough, really liberally educated men, and not merely men who are
supposed by the general public to be educated, simply because they
have passed through a college, because in some quarters the business
of education has, alas, fallen into the hands of men who are not
themselves liberally educated; and so as an ardent advocate of the
humanities, with hope that the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
will contribute to the laying of greater stress upon the value of the
study of the humanities in our college curriculum, I bid you
God-speed, and again extend to you the cordial greetings of the
University of Cincinnati.
DR. KAUFMAN KOHLER
I do not know whether you have observed that Cincinnati is somewhat
akin to the city of Rome as well as to the holy city of Jerusalem--it
is a city with many hills. On this hill here, facing one another for
friendly and harmonious coöperation, the two institutions of learning
in which we especially, the Jewish community, take particular
pride--the University of Cincinnati, which so prominently and in ever
expanding proportion stands for the humanities, for classical culture,
for the professional and scientific branches of secular knowledge, and
on the other hand, the Hebrew Union College, which stands for the
mother religion of civilized humanity and for the progressive spirit
of Judaism and of Americanism. In this rather insignificant incident
the Jewish community may well find a great principle expressed. With
his face towards the East from which issues the light of day, where
was cradled the faith of Israel, the Jew, ever beholding in classical
wisdom and knowledge the sister of his faith, proceeded with the
westward march of civilization in order to make religion, by the
reason and research of the ages, a great, progressive power, ever
regenerating his spiritual heritage and rejuvenating that religion of
his own as it goes on through the centuries.
This fact, however, of a continual intellectual and spiritual progress
of Judaism, is altogether too rarely recognized by the surrounding
Christian world, even by its men of light and leading or by its seats
of learning, because the New Testament is looked upon by altogether
too many as the death warrant of the Old Testament, as if the sun of
civilization had stood still over Israel ever since its seers and
singers and sages of yore voiced the Divine message. Nor does the
Jewish man of culture and college training as a rule appreciate the
wondrous achievements of the Jewish genius since the very dawn of
history until our day, in the whole domain of learning and science, or
of ethical and religious culture.
It is therefore a highly laudable endeavor undertaken by the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association to arouse the dormant spirit of
self-respect in the academic Jewish youth, to stir in him the ambition
to study and know this matchless history and literature, and to kindle
in his soul anew that idealism which made the Jew throughout all the
ages endure and brave the onslaughts of the empires and churches and
the persecuting mobs, so that even to-day he is as young and as
vigorous as any of the youngest races and nations in the world.
_The Importance of Israel's Religion_
This past, I say, cannot but appeal to every high-minded American,
whether Christian or Jew, and your study of it will certainly meet
with our warmest support and encouragement. Only, in my opinion, one
thing you need, young as your association is, young in years and young
in experience, and that is, a full comprehension and keen realization
of the subject you have in view and a wise and right direction towards
it. No one doubts or questions the sincerity of your motives or the
praiseworthiness of your aims and purposes when you place on your
program the study of Jewish history, culture and problems, and the
advancement of Jewish ideals, but you omit that which is most
essential, which is the all-encompassing force and factor of Jewish
life, the real, peculiar and genuine product of the Jewish
genius--religion. We have got a religion which, as has been put by
Matthew Arnold, has fashioned four-fifths of the world's civilization.
In omitting the idea, as expressed by Matthew Arnold, of the power
that maketh for righteousness, in declaring your movement as being
altogether non-religious, you run the risk of making of your endeavor
an inevitable and certain failure.[G] Let me quote to you from an
address delivered recently before a Jewish society in London on
"Israel and Medicine" by Professor Osler, sentences that are
remarkable and worth repeating. He says:
"In estimating the position of Israel in the human values, one must
remember that the quest for righteousness is Oriental, the quest for
knowledge, Occidental. With the great prophets of the East--Moses,
Isaiah, Mahomet [he might have included Jesus of Nazareth], the word
was 'Thus saith the Lord.' With the seers of the West, from Aristotle
to Darwin, it was 'What says nature?' Modern civilization is the
outcome of the two great movements of the mind of man, who is to-day
ruled in heart and head by Israel and by Greece. From the one he has
learned responsibility to a Supreme Being and love for his neighbor,
in which are embraced the law and the prophets. From the other he has
gathered the promise of Eden, to have dominion over the earth in which
he lives."
Now let me add to this that whatever the Jew claims or possesses of
culture he has borrowed from the nations and civilizations around him,
whether it be architecture, the art or the mode of writing, philosophy
and science, the modes of social and industrial life, all of which he
has taken and assimilated into his own life.
Not so with his religious truth. This is all his own, his peculiar and
genuine contribution to humanity. Thereby he has given human life its
eternal value, its purpose, its goal and hope for all time.
Now it seems to me that you may as well expect of the blind to depict
for you his impressions of the prismatic glories of the rainbow, or of
the deaf to orate on the beauties of a Beethoven symphony, as to
expect of one who lacks the sense of religion, the spirit of faith, to
expound, or even to understand, the ideals of the Jew, whose history
throughout the past was but one continuous glorification of the only
one God, by the master works of its hundreds and thousands of men of
learning and the unparalleled martyrdom of the whole people, and whose
future is humanity made one by the belief in the only one God and
Father. Therefore, let me give you, delegates and members of the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association, the advice to continue as you
started, as an academic, cosmopolitan association, yet at the same
time let it be linked to the synagogue of each city as the center of
the faith. Let your watch-word be true to the symbol of קומי אורי
"arise and shine," and give light to all the nations. Let your
inspiration and your power of enlightening the world ever come fresh
from the sanctuary of faith, as of yore, and you will not only be all
the more honored for this loyalty to the spirit of the past and the
spirit of the American people which is religious, but the sweetest
delight that comes from the classic world of beauty will reflect only
the brighter light of the holiness, the beauty of holiness, that comes
from Israel's one God.
PROF. I. LEO SHARFMAN
We want all that is worthy in the Jewish past to be made a potent
force in the American life of the present. You men and women who are
students at our universities cannot perform your full duty to your
universities unless you add to the richness of the university life, to
the variety of its content, to its genuineness and versatility. And in
the larger American community we Jews cannot perform our full duty
unless we place at the disposal of our country the best fruits of the
Jewish spirit. Our Menorah allegiance, then, rests on the foundation
of Americanism. And insofar as, through the Menorah movement, we are
succeeding in uniting by a common bond men and women who have been
brought up under a great variety of circumstances and conditions, we
are increasing the democratic spirit of our universities and of the
larger life beyond the academic gates. Within the universities, too,
the broadening effect of the Menorah idea is not limited to the
student body. I can bear witness from personal experience that the
university authorities, both faculty members and administrative
officers, are not merely tolerating, or even mildly accepting, the
work of our Menorah Societies in their midst, but are themselves being
led to a better understanding of the place which the Jewish problem
occupies in the larger problem of their universities and of the
American community for whose service they are training the youth of
the land.
_Menorah and Religion_
I have said that the aim of the Menorah movement is the study and
advancement of Hebraic culture and ideals. The culture of a people is
but the permanent expression of its ideals in the various activities
of life. Religion constitutes one of the most important of human
activities, and we in the Menorah Societies are fully cognizant of its
fundamental importance. Indeed, we recognize that the ideals of the
Jewish people are perhaps expressed more truly, more profoundly, more
eloquently in our religious literature than in any other manifestation
of the Jewish genius. We should not be charged with excluding
religion, merely because we aim to include more than religion in our
purposes and activities.
I happen at the present time to be teaching at the University of
Michigan, at Ann Arbor. We have there a Menorah Society, devoted to
the general object to which all our Menorah Societies are devoted. We
listen to speakers and engage in discussions on Jewish history, Jewish
literature, Jewish religion, and current Jewish social, economic and
political problems. Side by side with the Menorah Society there exists
a Jewish Student Congregation, a body of men and women of which I feel
it a privilege to have been one of the organizers and to be a member
at the present time, which devotes itself entirely to religious
activity, to regular weekly worship. The two organizations do not
conflict in any way. It is significant that about ninety-five per
cent, if not more, of the members of the Michigan Menorah Society
attend regularly the services of the Jewish Student Congregation.
Unfortunately, not so large a percentage of the members of the
congregation attend the meetings or are members of the Michigan
Menorah Society. In the course of time, the relationship between the
two organizations will doubtless be adjusted more satisfactorily. But
in the experience at Michigan we have a concrete illustration of the
spur to religion which Menorah men derive from their participation in
Menorah work.
The ideal of the Menorah Societies is a non-partisan ideal. We do not
stand for Zionism or anti-Zionism; we do not urge the acceptance of
reform Judaism or conservative Judaism or orthodox Judaism; we do not
favor the German Jew as against the Russian Jew, or vice versa, nor do
we appeal to one social class as against another. We want the Menorah
ideal to be broad enough to include every Jew. We do not exclude
religion as such from the scope of our interests; we but exclude any
insistence upon a particular sect or branch or kind of Judaism. We
avoid all partisan activity which may tend to disorganize our Jewish
students, which may tend to divide them. That is all.
_A Plea for Tolerance_
I believe that what we need in our universities, what we need in the
Jewish community, is more insistence upon Judaism and more light upon
the inspiration which Judaism can bring us, and less insistence upon
the particular kind of Judaism which you or I or some one else may
consider the acme of truth. Indifference to religion and not error in
religion is the great danger of these modern times. If we really want
religion, if we want to stir again the Jew's traditional passion for
religion, if we want to inspire once more the Jew's genius for
religion, let us try to understand all aspects and all manifestations
of it, let us bend our efforts to a renaissance of religious
influence. The future of the Jew in this country will not be
determined by the theories or the practices of any one group or sect
of Jews. The result will be a composite result, to which the reform
Jew and the Zionist, the orthodox Jew and the anti-Zionist, will alike
contribute. Let us leave it to the growing generation to determine for
itself the content of the theory of life best suited to the future
destiny of the Jew. At least, within our university walls let us be
tolerant, let us be liberal-minded, let us listen to and understand
every man's point of view.
MR. HURWITZ
In the free and honest expression of adverse views which we have heard
to-night, this, indeed, has been a characteristic Menorah meeting. It
may fittingly be closed by a word from one of our staunchest friends,
one of our staunchest friends because he is an ardent and
public-spirited Jew and a patriotic American, Justice Irving Lehman of
the Supreme Court of the State of New York, the Chairman of the
Graduate Menorah Committee. He addresses this word to the convention:
"I am very sorry that I am unable to attend the
convention of the Association this year. I feel that
during the past year we have made some progress upon
which you have reason to congratulate yourselves, but
we must remember that our movement is still far from
having the force and power which I think it deserves.
We have a great and difficult task to perform if we
are to succeed in bringing back to the Jewish youth a
pride in their Jewish heritage and a knowledge of
their Jewish past, and I know that such work is worthy
of all effort. I trust that your convention may
possess the spirit and the wisdom necessary to further
the work, and I wish to renew to you my assurance of
willing co-operation."
II. The Luncheon
_The fifth session of the Convention was a luncheon in the Hotel
Gibson, attended by the delegates, university students and graduates
in Cincinnati, and members of the Faculties of the University of
Cincinnati and the Hebrew Union College. Prof. I. Leo Sharfman,
President of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, was the
Toastmaster. Chancellor Hurwitz spoke for five minutes upon the
purposes and progress of the Menorah movement. President Abraham J.
Feldman of the University of Cincinnati Menorah Society expressed
gratification at the honor accorded to his Menorah Society by the
Convention and appealed to the graduates and prominent members of the
community present for support in the work of the Cincinnati Menorah
Society. The other speakers were Dean Joseph E. Harry of the
University of Cincinnati, Dr. Moses Barron, Representative from the
University of Minnesota, Dr. Louis Grossmann of Hebrew Union College,
Dr. Samuel Iglauer, graduate of the University of Cincinnati, Walter
M. Shohl, graduate of Harvard University, Dr. Kaufman Kohler,
President of Hebrew Union College, Prof. Julian Morgenstern of Hebrew
Union College, Dr. H. M. Kallen of the University of Wisconsin, and
Dr. David Philipson of Hebrew Union College. Following are somewhat
abridged reports of the speeches:_
DEAN J. E. HARRY
I did not know that I was going to be called upon today, or I should
certainly have tried to fortify myself, as the old darky in Virginia
said when his master sent him down to another part of the plantation
to see if the rebels were fortifying the place: "Massa, they am not
only fortyfying it; they am fiftyfying it!"
I am glad that our Chancellor here to my right said that the speeches
were to be brief. I think that an after-dinner speaker who makes a
long speech ought to have about the same punishment that the member of
parliament mentioned when he introduced a bill, "The only way to stop
suicide is to make it a capital offense, punishable by death."
But I have always tried to avoid redundancy of expression. I would
never say a "wealthy plumber," nor a "poor poet," nor for that matter
a "poor professor."
"Vessels of wrath, we pedagogues;
Better we were dead,
Who, by the wrath of Peleus' son,
Must earn our daily bread."
Nor would I say an "interesting Menorah Association meeting." That
they are interesting goes without saying, if we can judge from the
one we had last night.
I am exceedingly interested in real culture, and being an American,
and knowing, as I do, what the Jews in America can do for the
advancement of learning, of knowledge and of the humanities, I am
interested in the Menorah movement, which will tend to bring this
about; and it is when we reflect upon the war in Europe today, with
all its sickening horrors and what that means to culture (we can
hardly comprehend it yet), what an obstacle to learning, that we may
exclaim with that old bibliophile, Richard de Bury:
"O pacis auctor et amator altissime! dissipa gentes bella volentes quæ
super omnes pestilentias libris nocent."
And by "libris" he meant culture.
DR. MOSES BARRON
Minnesota brings its greeting to the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association as one of the very earliest Menorah Societies. It was
really originated in 1903, when a handful of students in the
University found it desirable to satisfy certain longings by taking up
the study of Jewish history and literature. Some of us had found that
it was of little avail to cry over the ashes of the past, and we
thought that it would be much more proper to try and study the
history, the literature, the ideals of the past for the inspiration to
be found there, which might better fit us to cope with the problems of
the present and the future. Our Society has grown from a mere handful
to an enthusiastic company, so that we have from fifty to
seventy-five, and even a hundred, attending our regular meetings. I
give this fact simply to show what a profound influence the work of
the Menorah has been, what an influence it necessarily must have in
the future, in promulgating Jewish culture, Jewish thought and ideals.
DR. LOUIS GROSSMANN
I am reminded by our Chairman of the time when he was still a student
at Harvard, in the earliest days of the Menorah movement, when I
addressed the Menorah Society there. It was in the room of the
Chancellor, unless I am mistaken, and there were a number of students.
They were grouped about, some in chairs, some sitting on the floor,
some perched on window sills, while others improvised seats on the
furniture. I felt myself patriarchal in the midst of these young men.
It was a remarkable scene and it was a remarkably helpful evening,
helpful and refreshing to me. The pulses of youth always beat high and
I caught the elation of it. Who would not have been touched by it?
Some of these young men have since become leaders in thought and
action, and I am not surprised.
Let me make a confession as to that evening. I not only felt a thrill
but made also some observations. These young men had their ideals, but
they had also their difficulties. And they spoke of them. We had an
exchange of thought and of candor such as comes to a man in the
ministry and to a teacher of students but rarely. They told me of
their doubts. Young men, serious young minds, always will have their
doubts. They want to earn their convictions. I hope the day will never
come when young men will not insist on seeing things. These young men
were quick-witted and ready with repartee and counter-argument, and I
saw in each eye a glint of an ideal. The debate was strong, but the
ideals were stronger.
_The Power of Ideals_
Ideals are pulses that beat in their own way. An ideal is a fact of
the soul; it is more than a definition or an argument. An ideal is
always very certain and nobody wants to disprove it, nor can.
I notice the Menorah Association has for its aim the cultivation of
ideals. It is natural that young men, with red blood in them, should
hold dear the precious dreams of what might and should be. As I look
upon ideals now, through the perspective of years, I see they have
both strength as well as limitations. But I know that, however much
life and experience challenges them, they are the best force in us. I
respect and value them so much that I deplore the waste of the least
of them. An ideal is a moral ambition, a great wish of a true, even if
a bit naive, soul. And it should have the right of way.
Every work in life implies stern necessity and a fine wish. I am
reminded of a bridge in Berlin which the Germans have built with
inimitable art and truth. There are four groups, each at a corner. On
one an elderly man stands erect and writing. It is History, stern and
real. At his side stands a boy, lithe and graceful. There are ideals
just as much as Law in the affairs of men. On the other side of the
bridge stands another symbol of the two forces in Life: a man carrying
a bundle, a bent man, who has borne the brunt of the pioneer days, and
next to him also a youth. Commerce, however sordid, still implies
morality and the generous side of man. On the third side stands the
solemn figure of Religion, sober and haggard, the symbol of Faith and
martyrdom. And the young man, next to it, seems sprightly and strong.
Why must Religion be interpreted as dispensing comfort alone? Should
it not also give strength and joy? In the last corner stands
Pestalozzi, the teacher, and a boy looks up into his kind face. We
crave for action and capability more than for knowledge and facts. And
we crave for love more than for truth, and the real truth brings
affections and enthusiasm.
In the meetings of your Association you speak often of ideals, you
speak of them fervently. But ideals are not merely academic. They are
personal. An ideal becomes yourself, if it is yours at all. It is a
dynamic force within you. It pervades your whole being. It is an
unseen but a very telling strength. It directs you, and it sends you
on your errand of life. You cannot rest satisfied merely to know your
ideal and to speculate about it. It is the engine of warfare in your
career. Study ideals, not to contemplate and analyze, but to emulate
them and to fill yourself with them. You have work to do. And work is
more insistent than philosophy. You have work to do which no one else
can do for you, or may do for you. An ideal is your Self at the
highest power.
You with fresh energies, you with the clear eye of healthy youth, you
with unoppressed hearts, you at the beginning of life, you should go
at your work splendidly, directly, forcefully. The real idealist is a
man of action, of untiring activity. Do things and you verify what you
plan. You have the privilege of youth. Have also the pride of youth.
Keep it sweet, but keep it also strong.
DR. SAMUEL IGLAUER
The Menorah Society appeals to me as a college graduate not only for
many of its positive virtues but also for some of its negative merits.
It is not in any sense a social organization, and above all it is not
a secret society. Now I have my own peculiar views about secret
societies in universities, and I do not believe that they tend to
promote college spirit and college unity. It has been well said that
in these societies those who are in any particular societies are
brothers, while every one else who belongs to another society, or to
no society whatever, is just a step-brother. To my mind that is not a
good spirit in an American institution.
It seems to me that, having in this city a Hebrew Union College with a
gifted faculty, we should establish at our University a Department of
Semitics. Since the University is a public school, an institution
supported by public taxation, it certainly could not affiliate
directly with a sectarian institution, but I see no reason why the
professors in the Hebrew College, if they are not already overworked
like the students, should not be able to conduct courses at the
University itself, and I believe such courses would promote the
Menorah movement more than anything else you could do. I think you
would attract students from far and wide to the University of
Cincinnati, and you would thereby achieve one of the ends for which
you are working.
MR. WALTER M. SHOHL
It is gratifying to me to attend this meeting of the Menorah, because,
as the Chairman has said, I heard the flapping of the wings of the
stork at its birth. I recall very well the preliminary meetings that
we had when the organization of the Menorah Society at Cambridge was
first spoken of. At that time I was one of the doubters; I held back.
There were in Cambridge a number of societies, social primarily, that
did not desire members of our faith among their number. I felt that a
movement which was composed entirely of Jewish men would be mistaken
for an effort at a Jewish fraternity that was to take the place of the
fraternities in which we were not welcome. The other men, however,
felt that we could have a society the purposes of which had nothing to
do with social matters, and that we could bring out all that was good
in Jewish matters of culture and develop a society to promote those
interests. So at first somewhat reluctantly, I joined in with the
movement, and the result has justified their farsightedness, and I am
sorry now that I was only a "trailer" in the beginning.
The position of the Menorah movement and what it stands for calls to
mind a story that was told in Montreal a couple of years ago by Lord
Haldane, who came to America to attend a meeting of the American Bar
Association. A part of the story was recited in verse (which I do not
recall exactly) and had to do with an Englishman who was taken
prisoner in one of the countries of the Far East, and was offered his
choice between conversion to the religion of his captors or death. He
was a man who had no particular religious feelings; he was not
religious when at home. However, he felt that first and foremost he
was an Englishman and that if he were to do anything base it would
reflect upon all those ideals which were so dear to him, and therefore
he cast in his lot and chose against the change of religion. So, too,
with some of us who perhaps are not religious in a formal way; the
realization of the great things that have been accomplished in the
past by Jews, the Jewish historical background, is in itself a shield
to us, and the realization of what Judaism is and stands for must act
to prevent us from doing something that would be unworthy of
ourselves and of the religion of which we are a part.
DR. KAUFMAN KOHLER
This comes rather unawares, but I wish to be very brief in stating
that, while I listened to the very interesting and suggestive remarks
that were made all along this table, and also on recalling what we
heard last night, I feel glad, after all, from the point of view of
the Hebrew Union College, that the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
has come here to make propaganda for its work, at the same time
receiving perhaps new direction and new ideas about the work they have
so nobly begun. The fact that the work--started, as we heard, at
Harvard in 1906--has made such progress shows that at least there was
something in the young Jewish student at the colleges that called for
the creation of such an association and such kind of work. Perhaps I
may say that those who had their misgivings as to the tendencies of
the Menorah Association are now at least informed that some of these
misgivings or suspicions were not well founded. I personally will say
that I had the impression that there was too much of nationalism or
Zionism behind the movement, and that the movement was not, from the
point of view of the Hebrew Union College or my humble self, one
deserving encouragement and support. I have learned to change some of
my views and some of my impressions as to the purpose and intention of
this movement. There is a well-known quotation, for those who know a
little German:
"Das sind die Weisen,
Die vom Irrtum zur Wahrheit reisen;
Das sind die Narren,
Die beim Irrtum beharren."
I am not one of those who insist on views once maintained though later
found faulty. I am rather ready to change my views, especially after
what I heard today from my honored neighbor (Prof. I. L. Sharfman) and
from what he said last night that the religious idea of Judaism is not
ignored but is held in view.
All Jews who are Jews must believe that Judaism stands for an
uncompromising monotheistic truth, while the world around us has
compromised the same. Therefore we, as Jews, must always insist upon
the maintenance of the pure monotheistic idea for which we suffered
and struggled, and for which our fathers died. We must maintain this
as the mainstay and vital principle of Judaism. For this very reason,
and for no other, we insist, especially from the point of view of a
Jewish theological college, that this idea of a pure Jewish religion,
the pure monotheistic idea, must be held unshakenly and without any
change or any concession. And for that very reason we could not and
will not say that race is everything. We cannot admit that a pure race
is the best, and that a pure Jew is he who has maintained solely
everything Jewish and not allowed the Greek culture to be assimilated
in order to sublimate and spiritualize and idealize the truth
inherited. For Ruppin and the Nationalists who follow him, the poor
Jews, the ghetto Jews, of Russia who speak Yiddish and live only an
exclusive narrow life, are _five-fifths_ Jews, while the Jews in free
and civilized lands are only half Jews. Now against this, we of the
Hebrew Union College, we who represent progressive or reformed
Judaism, must protest. We must insist that the Jewish race, the Jewish
people or nation, if you want to call it so, can form only the body;
Judaism, the Jewish religion, is the soul. And we will always stand
not merely for the body, not merely for the material side, not merely
for race, which is the lowest kind of life, but for the spirit, the
soul of Judaism, and that is its religious truth.
PROF. JULIAN MORGENSTERN
I believe that it is one of the positive aims of the Menorah Society
to recognize the Jewish side of much that enters, or should enter,
into our daily life, to develop our full consciousness of all that is
essentially and fundamentally Jewish, and thus enable us to live
positive and constructive Jewish lives. It is a noble aim, to which I
unrestrictedly subscribe. Whenever I hear public speakers or writers
pat Jews and Judaism on the back, and patronizingly tell us, "Oh, you
Jews are all right," I am, as no doubt most of us are, deeply
chagrined, to use a mild expression. What we want is not that others
should appreciate us and tell us that we are all right. What we want,
and what we need, is that we should appreciate ourselves and that we
should take ourselves seriously and at our full value. Not that we
should over-appreciate ourselves and think ourselves alone the salt of
the earth. There is such a thing as over-appreciation that must in the
end lead to futility and vanity. But equally, there is such a thing as
self-depreciation, and to a certain extent I cannot but feel that we
Jews have been more or less guilty of that in the past, have more or
less, particularly in our college and university life, assumed a
deprecating attitude, apologizing as it were for our existence as
Jews, and, probably unconsciously, have kept the fact of our Judaism
in the background, and suffered our education and our culture to
influence almost everything but our Jewish knowledge and our Jewish
life.
For right appreciation, which shall be neither over-appreciation nor
under-appreciation, but true appreciation, based upon a correct
estimation of all essentials, the first requisite is knowledge,
thorough knowledge of all conditions, forces and influences. And the
second requisite is pride, pride in this knowledge and in the object
of this knowledge. And this, translated into the Menorah language,
means, as I understand it, correct knowledge of Judaism, of our Jewish
history, our Jewish past, our Jewish heritage, our Jewish religion,
and pride in all this Judaism--a knowledge and pride that alone can
enable us to know what Judaism truly is, and what its work and its
mission for the present and the future must be, that alone can enable
us to live positively and constructively as Jews and perpetuate our
Judaism for the blessing of ourselves, our children, and all mankind.
So I interpret the Menorah movement. And I heartily welcome such a
movement, whose aim is the awakening of our Jewish college young men
and women to a wholesome and genuine appreciation of themselves, of
the Jewish side of their lives, of their Jewish consciousness and
Jewish obligations, of the full meaning and responsibility imposed
upon them by their subscribing to the name Jew, and their adherence to
the religion of our fathers. We must look to our college-bred Jewish
men and women to become the guiding spirits in our Judaism of
to-morrow and of all the future. And I say, "Thank God for any
movement that must surely lead to this goal."
DR. H. M. KALLEN
Since this seems to be the occasion for reminiscence, I want to take
the liberty of recalling for you an episode of the formation of the
Menorah Society at Harvard. It turned on the question of the right
form of stating the object of the Society and you will remember
perhaps that the object is stated in these terms: "The Harvard Menorah
Society for the study and advancement of Hebraic culture and
ideals"--not Jewish, not Judaistic, but Hebraic. The persons who
agitated the use of the term Hebraic had certain very definite
literary and historic and social relationships in mind.
To begin with, the word Judaism, in the English language, stands
exclusively for a religion. It is co-ordinate with the word
Christianity, the word Buddhism, the word Zoroastrianism, with any
word that stands exclusively for a religion. Now in the history of the
Jewish people, there was a time when Judaism did not exist, and if I
understand the gentlemen who represent the Reform sect correctly--I
speak under correction--the intention of the Reform movement is a
reversion in fact to the religious attitude of the pre-Judaistic
period in the history of the religion of the Jewish people. It is
"prophetic" or "progressive Judaism" for which they stand, I gather,
in contrast with the "Talmudical Judaism," of the larger orthodox
sect. But the period of the great prophets is not the period of
Judaism, and strictly speaking, the term Judaism excludes the
prophetic element as an active force in Jewish life. This is
significant, and to me the significance seems tremendous, for so far
as my personal sympathies are concerned they go entirely with the
prophetic aspects of Judaism, or better, of Hebraism.
_Hebraism and Judaism_
Hebraism and Judaism are words now in the English language and their
usage is determined for us entirely by the writers who become
authoritative either by their style or through the weight of their
opinion, and this usage has given the term Hebraism a meaning such
that it stands for the entire spirit of the Jew, not only in religion
but in all that is Jewish; in English the term Hebraism covers the
total biography of the Jewish soul, while the term Judaism stands only
for a portion of it. Now the Jewish soul is the important thing, but
no one has ever met a soul without a body (at least the people who
claim they have met it are still required, for belief, to show
evidence more than they have thus far shown); generally speaking, soul
and body are co-ordinate and mutually imply each other. You cannot
have one without the other. This is even more the case when you are
dealing not with an individual but with a people. Hence it is the
history of the Jewish body-politic with which Hebraism and its
components, including Judaism, co-ordinate.
For this reason the gentlemen who stated the object of the Society in
the constitution of the Harvard Menorah Society were compelled to take
into consideration the following historic fact: There was a time in
the history of mankind when religion and life were coincident. You
know that the prophets were reformers. The orthodox religion which
they fought was the religion of the land. They were progressive
religionists, just as the gentlemen who are in the Reform sect to-day
claim to be progressive religionists. When they established their
religion, _it_ became the religion of the whole nationality, for all
ancient religion is national religion. Religion for the Greeks, and
religion for the Jews, and religion for the Syrians, and for the
Babylonians, and the Romans, was essentially national and political,
and the political nationalism of religion in the time of the Roman
Empire was the immediate basis for the persecution of the Jews by the
Romans. The latter persecuted the Jews not primarily because they
disliked the Jews, but because the Jews were a political danger in
their refusal to worship the representative of the State in the shape
of the Emperor. But in the development of civilization, religion
became detached from the totality of civilized living. In the
progressive division of labor religion became specialized. The
priestly group learned to confine itself more and more to the "things
of the spirit"--cult, ritual, dogma, while the other elements in
civilization loomed larger and larger. Religion remained social, but
society was no longer religious. Life was secularized. I think that
the representatives of the Reform sect, in one of their conferences,
declared that America is not a Christian country. In so doing they
acknowledged this fact.
_Continuity of the Jewish Spirit_
Throughout the history of the Jewish people, there is a continuity of
spirit which is very different from the continuity of form that
attends both the secular and the religious developments of Jewish
life. This is the same in both these aspects of Jewish life--in the
secular Jewish poetry and thought of the middle ages and up to the
present day. Even a Bergson, ostensibly a Frenchman, expresses in his
philosophy what is essentially the Hebraic conception of the nature of
reality and the destiny of man. From Amos through Job, through the
philosophers of the middle ages, to Ahad Ha-'Am there is a clear and
accountable continuity. Finally, there is the development of the whole
of the secular life of modern Jewry, in Yiddish and in Hebrew. Yiddish
may be unpleasant, but Yiddish is no less the speech of the Jews than
English, no less the speech of the Jews than Aramaic, and Arabic and
Ladino, and all of these have acquired literary and qualitative
characteristics which are identical as expressions of the spirit of
the Jew, of the Hebraic spirit.
This may be seen generally in the case of Yiddish alone. Yiddish, as
you know, is a German dialect; it is middle high German in its base,
and German is an inflected language; its rhythms are essentially long,
periodic, indeterminate, radically different from the rhythms of
Hebrew, involving a different kind of co-ordination and mode. But
compare Yiddish with German, and you find quite an antagonistic
literary quality. Yiddish reads like the Psalms, and the Bible, and
the Talmud; it doesn't read like German until it is Germanized. The
whole genius of the tongue has been altered by Jewish use so that its
spiritual quality has taken on the quality of the race that uses the
tongue, and its literary kinship has become Hebraic.
Again, there is this whole mass of neo-English, neo-Russian,
neo-German literatures which, written by Jews, deal with the life of
the Jews, with their interests and character. This is not religious.
What is its relation to Jewry? Yet again, there is any number of
Jewish individuals, among whom I must count myself, who find it
impossible to adjust their consciences with any official type of
theological doctrine, who are interested in discovering the truth, and
are compelled to acknowledge that no truth has been discovered
finally, once and for all; there are hundreds and thousands such. What
is to be their relation to their people if Jews are to be considered
members merely of Judaistic sects? Yet Jews they are, and if they do
not contribute directly to Judaism, they do contribute to Hebraism.
Hebraism stands not for that particular expression of the Jewish mind,
religion, but for all that has appeared in Jewish history, both
religious and secular. The term Judaism stands for that partial
expression of the Jewish genius which is religious.
_The Ethical Motive of Judaism_
It has been said that the genius of the Jew is entirely religious. I
do not think that that is historically a demonstrable proposition. For
the dominant motive even in Judaism is not a religious motive. It is
an ethical motive. Judaism does not conceive its God as requiring man
to be damned for his glory. It conceives its God as an instrument by
the worship of whom "thy days may be lengthened in the land."
Righteousness and not salvation is the aim even of the Jewish
religion. Hebraism is the name for this living spirit which demands
righteousness, expressed in all the different interests in which Jews,
as Jews, have a share--in art, science, philosophy and social
organization and in religion. Hebraism, hence, is a wider term than
religion and its continuity embraces, but is not embraced by, the
continuity of religion.
Now the Harvard Menorah Society, taking this fact into consideration,
made use, because of the tradition of English usage, of the term
"Hebraic." It recognized that since Hebraism is more comprehensive
than Judaism, many people might be Hebraists who are not and need not
be Judaists. It refused to exclude them from a share in Jewish life
and an opportunity for Jewish service. The organization goes on the
principle--both the Intercollegiate and the constituent
Societies--that nothing Jewish is alien to it. For this reason the
Menorah takes no sides; for this reason it is Hebraic and not
Judaistic. For this reason it welcomes everything Jewish without
exception--theological and secular, Russian, German, French, English.
It requires only that a thing shall be Jewish, that it shall be a
possible part of the organic total we call Hebraism.
Hebraism is the flower and fruit of the _whole_ of Jewish life. Its
root is the ethnic nationality of the Jewish people, and with this
also the secularizing reformers agree when they prohibit and
discourage the marriage of Jew with Gentile.
Many of us, however, are not content with merely the _status quo_.
Throughout the nineteenth century it has thrown us into a series of
dishonorable compromises. We want a condition--I speak now for myself
and not for the Menorah--we want a condition in which the genius of
the Jew, the Hebraic spirit, may express itself without any need of
compromise. The orthodox Jew, at least, retains his integrity with his
darkness. But we are in danger of losing our integrity. We concede to
our environment point after point. But we are not liberated in spirit
by these concessions; we are merely turned into amateur Gentiles. The
orthodox sectary makes no concession to environment, and tends to
petrify and die. The reformed sectary makes too many, and tends to
dissolve and die. This is the penalty for the _status quo_.
Life, to be sure, consists of compromise and concession. But for
integral living we must make them as masters, not serfs. There must be
one place where the ancestral spirit of the Jew will not need to adapt
itself to the world, but will, like the English or French spirit,
adapt the world to itself. That place is determined nationally, just
as the places of all European culture are determined nationally and
racially.
_The Aspiration for a Jewish State_
Pride in ancestry is not pride of race, but pride in the spirit of the
race, and pride of ancestry is not pride merely of background, but
pride in the obligations that ancestry sets. All aristocrats have one
motto--it is _noblesse oblige_. This must be the motto of the Jew. We
must hence carry our obligation in the spirit of the prophets, which
is not primarily a theological spirit, but a purely humane spirit, for
which the necessity of man determines the invocation of God; in which
the ideal of a free and happy humanity, in a just and democratic
society, is the dominating ideal; in which a righteous Jewish state is
a persistent aspiration. This is the Hebraism which must underly all
the activities of the Menorah Association.
This Hebraism, academically realized through study, must be realized
in the lives of individuals through work, as Dr. Grossmann has well
said, and in the life of the great Jewish mass in a free Jewish state.
Every ideal we acquire from the past must be turned into a fact of the
present. _Noblesse oblige!_
DR. DAVID PHILIPSON
I am reminded that this day marks the one hundredth anniversary of the
signing of the Treaty of Ghent--one hundred years of peace between
English-speaking peoples. I need to be reminded of this after the
speech that has just been made, because much that was said has quite
fired my fighting spirit--but this is a day of peace and it might not
be quite in the spirit of this anniversary day to say all I might
otherwise say in answer to the points that have been made and with
which I differ radically.
There are some things in Dr. Kallen's eloquent address that I do
believe, but there are many more things with which I do not agree. But
let that be as it may, I was very much interested in his remark, that
the "Reform sect," as he is pleased to call us, harks back to the
prophets. This has been claimed frequently by the reformers
themselves, but he puts a new interpretation upon it; he says the
prophets were pre-Judaistic. This is the Christian point of view. They
claim that Judaism was the growth of the post-exilic period, but we
reformers interpret the term Judaism altogether differently.
_The Significance of Reform Judaism_
Judaism means for us the Jewish religion and all that this implies; if
the Reform movement in its beginnings went back to prophetism it was
simply for this reason--that the pioneers of the Reform movement
recognized that the Jews had fallen into the very condition that Dr.
Kallen deprecates, namely, they had gotten away from life inasmuch as
they had been confined to the ghetto where they had been excluded from
the currents of contemporary life. Judaism had become a ghetto
religion, and because of this divorce between life and religion the
Reform movement arose. The Reform movement is not simply a matter of
creed. It affects the whole life of the Jew. One of its basic
principles is that the religion of the Jew must square with his life;
the needs of the Jew in the modern environment must be taken into
consideration by Jewish leaders; Reform Judaism, far from making a
separation and raising a barrier between the Jew and life, as those
who call us reformed sectarians like to say--quite to the contrary,
reconciles the Jew to the civilization in which he is living and
wherein his children are growing up. This, to my mind, is the great
significance of the Reform movement, and I believe that all those who
truly understand it look upon it in that way.
The Reform movement, as the movement for religious emancipation, was
the accompaniment of similar emancipatory movements affecting the Jews
at the close of the eighteenth century. First there was the linguistic
emancipation when under the leadership of Moses Mendelssohn the Jews
of Germany discarded the use of the German-Jewish jargon or Yiddish,
the language of the Jew's degradation, (for there would have been no
such thing as Yiddish had the Jew not been degraded and excluded as he
was in the countries of Europe) and began the employment of pure
German. Secondly, there was the educational emancipation. The Jews had
been educated in _chedarim_ where they received instruction only in
Hebrew branches and no so-called secular education whatsoever. This
separated the Jew from the culture of the world. At the close of the
eighteenth century German Jews began to attend schools and
universities. Gradually this took place also in other countries.
Thirdly, there was the civil or political emancipation, when after the
French Revolution the countries of western Europe, one after the
other, accorded the Jews the rights of men. The Reform movement or, in
other words, the religious emancipation, is simply the result of great
world forces, as embodied in these various aspects of emancipation,
and for this reason the Reform movement, far from being simply a
matter of creed or theological belief, made the Jew a citizen of the
world and fitted him for the modern environment.
_The "Body and Soul" of Jewry_
Now there is one other point made by the previous speaker to which I
feel that I must refer and that is the matter of "body and soul."
This is a favorite phrase of Zionist writers and speakers as
emphasizing the difference between Zionists and reformers. We
reformers also believe that the body Jewish is necessary, but in a
sense different from the Zionistic claim that the Jewish nation must
be re-established. I as a reformer and a non-Zionist also use the term
"the Jewish people," but in the sense of a "religious people," not a
"political people." This involves a vital distinction--the distinction
between religionism and nationalism. Yes, I also believe that the
body, the religious community, is necessary. The reform rabbinical
conference declared against intermarriage for the very reason that it
is all important that the Jewish people, the _mamleket kohanim_, the
_goy kadosh_, be the vessel embodying the religious idea, the spirit.
But let it be understood clearly that nationally we are poles apart
from the Zionists. Nationally I am an American. I also feel that we
ought not to have hyphenated Americans, but Americans pure and simple.
In that sense I am nationally an American without a hyphen.
Religiously I am a Jew, and religiously I am part and parcel of the
Jewish people with whom my religious fortunes are intertwined.
Further, I feel very much as Dr. Kallen does in regard to our duty
towards the Jews made destitute by the murderous European war. They
have none else to look to and we must help them; for whatever may be
our differences, we must stand united in this pressing duty of the
hour, this work of mercy. But may God speed the day when the Jews in
Poland, Russia and Roumania will receive full rights so that
nationally they may be considered Poles, Russians or Roumanians as are
all others in those lands, as is the case here in free America. To my
mind this is the only effective solution to the so-called Jewish
problem in those countries.
Freedom is the Messiah that is still to come to the Jews in the lands
where they are oppressed, so that everywhere they may be at one in the
rights of citizenship with their fellow countrymen, differing from
them in their religion alone. This is the great distinction I desired
to draw between the Jew nationally and the Jew as a member of a
religious people; this "religious people" is the body of which Judaism
is the soul.
PROF. SHARFMAN
I am constrained to close this meeting with a statement similar to
that made by our Chancellor at the conclusion of the public meeting
last evening. This was a typical Menorah discussion. We are an open
forum for all points of view. We are glad to hear Dr. Kallen's
opinions; we are glad to hear Dr. Philipson's opinions. I am sure that
out of this clash of views will come a better understanding of the
Menorah idea, a truer and deeper realization of the strivings of our
Menorah movement.
III. The Business Sessions
FIRST SESSION
Called to order in the Faculty Room, McMicken Hall, at 11 A.M., by
President I. Leo Sharfman. N. M. Lyon, of the University of
Cincinnati, was appointed Secretary _pro tem_.
Upon the presentation of credentials, the following were seated as the
Representatives of their respective Menorah Societies in the
Administrative Council: College of the City of New York, George J.
Horowitz; Columbia University, M. David Hoffman; University of
Illinois, Sidney Casner; University of Michigan, Jacob Levin;
University of Minnesota, Dr. Moses Barron; Ohio State University,
Herman Lebeson; University of Wisconsin, Dr. Horace M. Kallen. And the
following were seated as Deputies: Clark University, Philip
Wascerwitz; Harvard University, George A. Dreyfous; Johns Hopkins
University, Jerome Mark; New York University, S. Felix Mendelson;
University of North Carolina, N. M. Lyon; University of Pennsylvania,
Joseph Salesky; Penn State College, H. L. Lavender; University of
Texas, Jacob Marcus; Western Reserve University, Sol Landman.
The applications for admission into the Association of the Menorah
Societies at Brown University, University of Cincinnati, Hunter
College, University of Maine, the Universities in the City of Omaha,
Radcliffe College, Valparaiso University, and University of Washington
were presented. After due consideration of the facts in each case and
the statements of the University authorities, all of the applications
were accepted and the Menorah Societies named were formally admitted
into the Association by the unanimous vote of the Administrative
Council.
Upon the presentation of their credentials, the following were seated
as Representatives: University of Cincinnati, Abraham J. Feldman; the
Universities in the City of Omaha, Jacques Rieur; Valparaiso
University, Florence Turner. And the following were seated as
Deputies: Radcliffe College, S. Marie Pichel; Hunter College, Naomi
Rasinsky.
The role of Representatives and Deputies was read by the Secretary,
and the dues of the several Menorah Societies to the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association for 1915 were paid.
Chancellor Henry Hurwitz read a letter of greeting to the Convention
from Justice Irving Lehman of New York, Chairman of the Graduate
Advisory Menorah Committee. (See page 125.)
SECOND SESSION
Called to order by President Sharfman at 3 P.M. in the Faculty Room,
McMicken Hall. Chancellor Hurwitz delivered the report of the Officers
for 1914.
_Abstract of Officers' Report for 1914_
In his report in behalf of the Officers, the Chancellor referred to
the organization in the past year of the eight Menorah Societies which
were admitted into the Intercollegiate Menorah Association at the
previous session of the Convention, making in all thirty-five
constituent Societies, every one having arisen spontaneously at its
college or university, with the full approval and encouragement of the
authorities. Additional Societies are in the process of formation at
several other universities.
With reference to the organization of Graduate Menorah Societies, the
time was deemed inopportune to proceed definitely in the matter, the
war situation absorbing the attention and energies of so many of those
who would otherwise be interested in the idea of Graduate Menorah
organization, and it was recommended that detailed consideration of
the question be laid over another year. But a beginning of Graduate
organization has already been made in Scranton, Pa., where a Graduate
Menorah Society has been formed.
The Intercollegiate Menorah Association has been very cordially
invited to join the Corda Fratres International Federation of
Students, whose objects are: "To unite student movements and
organizations throughout the world, to study student problems of every
nature, and to promote among students closer international relations,
mutual understandings and friendship; to encourage the study of
international relations and problems; to stimulate a sympathetic
appreciation of the character, problems and intellectual currents of
other nations; to facilitate foreign study, and to increase its value
and fruitfulness. The movement is neutral in all special religious,
political and economic principles." (From the official declaration of
principles.) The Corda Fratres at present comprises the following
national organizations as its constituents: Consulates of Corda
Fratres in Italy, Holland, Hungary and Greece; the Association
Generale des Etudiants de Paris, and the Union Nationale des
Associations des Etudiants de France; the Verband der Internationalen
Studentenverein in Germany; the Liga de Estudiantes Americanos,
including student organizations in the Argentine Republic, Brazil,
Chile, Paraguay, Peru and other countries in South America; and the
Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs in North America. Thus, at present,
the sole United States constituent is the Association of Cosmopolitan
Clubs. It was recommended that the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
accept the invitation to join Corda Fratres as a unit co-ordinate with
the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs, it being understood that the
Menorah Association, while thus expressing its approval of the
purposes and spirit of Corda Fratres and desiring to aid in its
influence and to contribute the element of Jewish culture and ideals
to its spiritual constituency, would not be qualified in any way as to
its autonomy, purposes, and activities.
During the past year the Association continued its lecture system, and
genuine thanks are due to all the speakers, members of the Menorah
College of Lecturers, who have so generously given of their time and
effort to the Menorah Societies.
Similarly, the Association has been enabled to continue sending
Menorah Libraries to its constituent Societies. In most cases these
books have been placed at the disposal of all the members of the
university no less than of the members of the Menorah Societies, and
the authorities have expressed their warmest gratitude for these
contributions to their library facilities, even though the books
remained the property of the Jewish Publication Society of America.
The presence of the books has done a great deal to stimulate actual
reading and study on the part of Menorah members, and the work of the
study groups has notably increased during the past year. This is a
most gratifying evidence of the seriousness with which the students
are taking hold of the Menorah idea. They are still hampered by lack
of suitable syllabi, the preparation of which has been unfortunately
delayed on account of the impaired health of the scholar who had
undertaken to prepare them, but it was hoped that the syllabi would be
made available before long.
The chief visible product of the administration the past year was the
180-page booklet entitled "The Menorah Movement," which contains a
full and official exposition of the nature and purposes of the Menorah
movement, a detailed history of the several Societies as well as of
the Intercollegiate organization, including reports of the conferences
and conventions, besides other material illustrating the attitude of
the university authorities and the general community towards the
Menorah movement. Its preparation took several months of labor on the
part of the Officers of the Association (special credit being due to
the Secretary, Mr. Isador Becker), assisted by the various Societies.
An edition of five thousand, of which only a comparatively small
number of copies remain, was distributed all over the country among
the members of the Societies, other students, university authorities,
alumni, and the interested public. It served to arouse both the
academic and lay interest in the movement and to spread authoritative
information about the nature and purposes of the Menorah Societies.
This publication also prepared the way for the issue of the permanent
and periodical Journal of the Menorah Association, the desirability of
which has been felt almost from the beginning of the Intercollegiate
organization and reaffirmed at the last Convention. It had been hoped
that the first number of THE MENORAH JOURNAL would appear in time for
this Convention, but the demands of an initial number that should in
every way be worthy of the Menorah ideal of the JOURNAL required a
little more time, and the first issue could not appear before January,
1915.
THE MENORAH JOURNAL, it was hoped, would not only spread interesting
and authoritative information about the activities of the Menorah
Societies and stimulate their work further in the future, but would
itself be a potent means of promoting Jewish knowledge and literature.
The JOURNAL was meant to appeal not to Menorah members alone nor to
students only, but to all within and without the universities who were
interested in the literary treatment of Jewish life and aspiration.
The JOURNAL was extremely fortunate in having the counsel and literary
co-operation of many leaders of Jewish thought and action of all
parties (for list of Consulting Editors see Contents Page), the
JOURNAL itself, like the Menorah Societies, being non-partisan, a
forum for the free expression of variant views.
Upon the success of the JOURNAL will largely depend the future
progress of the Menorah movement and its other literary enterprises
contemplated, _e. g._, pamphlet essays and Menorah Classics, which for
the present should be postponed, all energies having to be devoted to
the JOURNAL.
The gratifying encouragement given to the JOURNAL enterprise by many
men in the community is but a specific application of the co-operation
of the Graduate Menorah Committee, headed by Justice Irving Lehman,
which has continued during the past year to assist the Association
generously and in the most admirable spirit, the committee reposing
absolutely perfect confidence in the officers of the Association. To
that co-operation and spirit of confidence the Association owes a
great deal which it can repay only by continued effective devotion to
the cause which is equally dear to the students and the graduates. It
was deemed advisable that for the present the Graduate Menorah
Committee should continue as an informal body.
A gratifying evidence of the mutual co-operation of the Menorah
Societies in a material way during the past year was shown in the
appropriation of fifty dollars by the Harvard Menorah Society for the
Association.
All in all, the Association during the past year may be said to have
advanced satisfactorily, though the Officers are conscious of the
great opportunities which still remain before the organization.
Indeed, the Menorah work is still in its beginnings. With the loyal
co-operation of the students and the graduates, the Association looks
forward confidently to a bright and big future.
_Resolutions_
After due consideration and discussion, the following resolutions were
unanimously adopted:
RESOLVED, _That the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, organized for
the promotion in American Colleges and Universities of the study of
Jewish history, culture and problems, and the advancement of Jewish
ideals, affiliate with the "Corda Fratres" International Federation of
Students._ Note: This resolution was adopted upon the conditions (1)
that the Intercollegiate Menorah Association be received into the
International Federation of Students as a unit co-ordinate with the
Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs, and (2) that the autonomy, purposes
and activities of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association shall nowise
be qualified by such affiliation.[H]
RESOLVED, _That the fifty dollars contributed by the Harvard Menorah
Society to the Intercollegiate Menorah Association be devoted to_ THE
MENORAH JOURNAL.
RESOLVED, _That the Officers be constituted a committee to investigate
the nature and work of student organizations analogous to the Menorah
in other parts of the world and to submit a report thereon at the next
Intercollegiate Menorah Convention._ (Readopted from the last
Convention.)
RESOLVED, _That the Officers be constituted a committee to consider
and draw up definite plans for "Menorah insignia and distinctions._"
THIRD SESSION
The third session was a public meeting held at 8.15 P.M. in McMicken
Auditorium, University of Cincinnati. (For report see page 121.)
FOURTH SESSION
Called to order on Thursday, December 24th, at 9.15 A.M., in the
Faculty Room, McMicken Hall, by President Sharfman.
After due consideration and discussion the following resolutions were
unanimously adopted:
RESOLVED, _That the incoming Officers investigate the problem of the
organization of Graduate Menorah Societies and prepare a report with
recommendations for submission to the constituent Societies at the
beginning of the next academic year(1915-16)._
_The Administrative Council, in session assembled, hereby expresses
its hearty approval of the relationship that has arisen and has been
maintained between the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, through
its Officers, and a body of representative Jewish citizens of public
spirit, known as a Graduate Advisory Committee, and gratefully records
its deep appreciation of the wise counsel and generous assistance of
this Graduate Advisory Committee in the prosecution of the Menorah
purposes, and_
RESOLVES, _First, that these informal relations between the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association and the Graduate Advisory
Committee be permitted to continue as heretofore, and second, that the
incoming Officers of the Association present plans looking to the
permanent organization of this Graduate Advisory Committee, at the
next mid-winter meeting of the Administrative Council._ (Readopted
from the last Convention.)
_The Intercollegiate Menorah Convention extends its cordial greetings
to Justice Irving Lehman and acknowledges with warm appreciation his
welcome message and his generous assurance of willing co-operation.
The Association is encouraged to carry forward with renewed vigor and
inspiration its work of promoting the study of Jewish history and
culture at American Colleges and Universities and of advancing Jewish
ideals; to merit the confidence and support of the Graduate Advisory
Committee._
RESOLVED, _That each constituent Menorah Society should be bound to
seek the advice and consent of the Officers of the Association before
soliciting assistance from any source._ (Readopted from the last
Convention.)
RESOLVED, _That the Administrative Council of the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association, in annual meeting assembled, hereby
enthusiastically expresses its entire confidence and trust in the work
done by the Officers of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association and
its appreciation of the able and efficient manner in which they
conducted and supervised the work of the organization during the past
year._
The oral reports of the several Menorah Societies, in amplification of
their written reports, were presented and discussed.
FIFTH SESSION
The fifth session was an informal luncheon held in the Banquet Hall of
the Hotel Gibson, Cincinnati, at 1 P.M. (For a report of the
addresses, see page 125.)
SIXTH SESSION
Immediately following the luncheon, at 4 P.M., the sixth session was
convened in the private auditorium of the Hotel Gibson.
The following resolution was unanimously adopted:
RESOLVED, _That the Officers of the Association take steps to provide
Menorah Societies with syllabi of courses in Jewish history, Jewish
literature, and contemporaneous Jewish problems._ (Readopted from the
last Convention.)
Upon proceeding to the choice of Officers of the Association for 1915,
the following were elected: Chancellor, Henry Hurwitz of Boston, Mass.
(re-elected by acclamation); President, I. Leo Sharfman of the
University of Michigan (re-elected by acclamation); First
Vice-President, Isadore Levin, of Harvard University; Second
Vice-President, Milton D. Sapiro of the University of California;
Third Vice-President, Abraham J. Feldman of the University of
Cincinnati; Treasurer, N. Morais Lyon of the University of Cincinnati;
and Secretary, Charles K. Feinberg of New York University.
After some discussion as to the advisability of deciding immediately
upon the place of the next Annual Convention, it was
RESOLVED, _That the place of meeting for the next Annual Convention be
left to the judgment of the Officers of the Association._
After passing unanimously a Resolution thanking the University of
Cincinnati, the Hebrew Union College, the Cincinnati Menorah Society,
and the city of Cincinnati for the cordial reception accorded to the
Convention, adjournment was had at 5.45 P.M.
N. M. LYON, _Secretary pro tem_.
NOTE: In the course of the convention, several amendments to the
Constitution of the Association were proposed and adopted. The
Constitution as amended follows:
CONSTITUTION
OF THE INTERCOLLEGIATE MENORAH ASSOCIATION
ARTICLE I: NAME
The name of this organization shall be the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association.
ARTICLE II: OBJECT
The object of this Association shall be the promotion, in American
colleges and universities, of the study of Jewish history, culture,
and problems, and the advancement of Jewish ideals.
ARTICLE III: MEMBERSHIP
Sec. 1.--Menorah Societies in American colleges and universities,
having the object defined in Article II, shall be eligible for
membership in this Association, provided that membership in such
Societies is open to all members of their respective colleges or
universities so far as the efficient pursuit of the object may permit.
Sec. 2.--The Administrative Council (provided for in Article IV) shall
have power to elect such honorary members as it may deem fit.
Sec. 3.--One constituent Society may be composed of members of two or
more neighboring colleges or universities.
Sec. 4.--All eligible Societies which adopt this constitution by
January 3, 1913, shall constitute the charter members of this
Association.
Sec. 5.--Other Societies which are formed and eligible, or may be
formed and become eligible, for membership in this Association, shall
be admitted into this Association by the Administrative Council, and
shall become members upon adopting this Constitution.
Sec. 6.--By a two-thirds vote of the Administrative Council, that
body, in session, shall have power to deprive of membership any
Society which may not be carrying out the object of the Association,
or may be employing methods prejudicial to its spirit.
ARTICLE IV: ADMINISTRATION
Sec. 1.--The administration of this Association shall be in the hands
of the Administrative Council.
Sec. 2.--Every constituent Society shall delegate one member to be
its Representative in the Council who shall, at the time of his
election, be directly connected with the college or the university as
a student or as a member of the Faculty.
Sec. 3.--The Administrative Council shall elect annually at its
mid-winter meeting the following Officers of the Association:
Chancellor, First Vice-President, Second Vice-President, Third
Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary.
(a) Officers who are not Representatives shall ex-officio be members
of the Administrative Council.
Sec. 4.--The Administrative Council shall hold a meeting during the
mid-winter recess, when and where it shall please a majority of the
Council. Other meetings of the Council may be called upon the request
of a majority of its members, and held when and where it shall please
a majority. Notice of every meeting shall be sent to each member at
least four weeks beforehand. A copy of the minutes of each meeting
shall be duly sent by the Secretary to each constituent Society.
Sec. 5.--In case the Representative of a Society is unable to attend a
meeting of the Council, his Society may send a duly accredited and
instructed Deputy[I] who is not already the Representative or Deputy
of another Society.
Sec. 6.--A quorum of the Administrative Council shall consist of the
Representatives or Deputies from two-thirds of the constituent
Societies.
(Note:--It is understood that a term of office of a Representative or
Officer shall be one year, from one mid-winter meeting to the next).
ARTICLE V: DUES
Sec. 1.--The annual dues from each constituent Society shall be five
dollars, which shall be paid to the Treasurer before the first meeting
of the Administrative Council.
Sec. 2.--If a Society be admitted into membership after such date, its
dues shall be paid upon admission.
Sec. 3.--Societies whose dues remain unpaid after the time set shall
lose their vote in the Administrative Council until payment is made.
Neglect to pay for two years may be a cause for dismissal from the
Association by the Administrative Council.
ARTICLE VI: DATE OF EFFECT
This Constitution shall take effect January 2, 1913.
ARTICLE VII: AMENDMENTS
An amendment to this Constitution may be adopted by a two-thirds vote
of the Administrative Council.
FOOTNOTES:
[G] See Prof. Sharfman's address, page 124, and Dr. Kohler's remarks
at the Convention luncheon, page 128.
[H] The Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs, at its Convention at Ohio
State University on Dec. 26-30, 1914, passed a resolution of greeting
and welcome to the Intercollegiate Menorah Association.
[I] _How, and to what extent, a Deputy shall be instructed, depends
upon the will of the Society which accredits him. (This was the sense
of the Constituent Convention.)_
Notes
Of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
_Brown Menorah Dedication Exercises_
The Brown Menorah Society held its dedication exercises in the
auditorium of the Brown Union on January 16, 1915. The Chairman was
Maurice J. Siff, '15, President of the Society. Morris J. Wessel, '11,
spoke of the need of the Menorah from the graduate's point of view.
Chancellor Henry Hurwitz brought the greetings of the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association and explained the purposes of the Menorah
movement. President W. H. P. Faunce of the University, in his
response, welcomed the Menorah Society to Brown. Rabbi Nathan Stern,
of Providence, spoke upon the significance of the Menorah, and
unveiled and lit a brass Menorah which he presented to the Society.
Dean Otis E. Randall spoke upon "The Educational Value of College
Organizations," and expressed the hope that the new Menorah Society
would contribute to the uplift of the student body.
President Faunce said, in part: "This Society must justify itself by
making better Brown men than ever before. Most especially among its
duties it must strive for a type of Brown man that cultivates the best
there is in himself, a man who respects himself, soul, body and
spirit, the type of man who flings himself gladly into whatever he
believes in. And so I hope to-night that every member of this Society
will cherish the finest things in the history of his own people if he
is a member of the Jewish nation--that he will cultivate everything
that is worthy and noble and try to help his brethren throughout the
world."
_The Thirty-Sixth Menorah Society_
A Menorah Society has recently been organized at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, in Boston. The meeting preliminary to
definite organization was held in the Technology Union on March 9.
Isadore Levin of the Harvard Menorah Society, First Vice-President of
the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, brought the greetings of the
Association and explained the Menorah purposes and procedure. Leo I.
Dana, '16, was elected President.
In a communication to the Chancellor of the Menorah Association, Dean
Alfred E. Burton of the Institute writes: "I take pleasure in stating
that we shall be glad to have a branch of the Menorah Society formed
among our undergraduates, and I can endorse the names of the officers
who have been chosen. They are all earnest students in good standing
at the Institute and I am sure they will be able to establish a branch
of the Menorah Society that will be a credit to the general
intercollegiate organization."
The first lecture before the Society was delivered on April 5 by Dr.
H. M. Kallen of the University of Wisconsin. The subject was "Hebraism
and Nationality."
_Menorah Dinners_
The Menorah Society of Clark University held its "First Annual
Banquet" on December 17, 1914. President Max Smelensky, '15,
introduced the toastmaster, Samuel Resnick, '13. The speakers were
President G. Stanley Hall of the University, President Edmund C.
Sanford of the College, Dean James P. Porter, Rabbi H. H. Rubenovitz
of Boston, A. W. Hillman, '07, Joseph Talamo, '14, and Chancellor
Hurwitz. (For the substance of President Hall's address see page 87.)
The Ohio State Menorah Society held its Annual Banquet on February 21.
The toastmaster was Harry M. Udovitch, '14. (Mr. Udovitch was last
year President of the Corda Fratres Association of Cosmopolitan
Clubs). The speakers were Professor Joseph A. Leighton, Professor
Ludwig Lewisohn, President Henry Greenberger, '15, of the Society,
Herman Lebeson, '15, Ohio State Representative to the Intercollegiate
Administrative Council, Rabbi Morris N. Taxon of Columbus, Dr.
Sylvester Goodman, '06, and Helman Rosenthal, '12.
The Harvard Menorah Society will hold its seventh annual dinner on May
3.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Page 90, "alterative" changed to "alternative" (is an alternative)
Page 106, "qualite" changed to "qualité" (l'aquérir la qualité)
This text uses both coöperation and co-operation, as well as today and
to-day.
THE MENORAH JOURNAL
_Published Bi-monthly During the Academic Year By
The Intercollegiate Menorah Association
"For the Study and Advancement of Jewish Culture and Ideals"
600 Madison Avenue, New York_
_Editor-in-Chief_
HENRY HURWITZ
_Associate Editor_
I. LEO SHARFMAN
_Managing Editor_
H. ASKOWITH
_Business Manager_
B. S. POUZZNER
_Board of Consulting Editors_
DR. CYRUS ADLER
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SAMUEL STRAUSS
JUDGE MAYER SULZBERGER
MISS HENRIETTA SZOLD
FELIX M. WARBURG
DR. STEPHEN S. WISE
* * * * *
VOLUME I JUNE, 1915 NUMBER 3
CONTENTS
THE POTENCY OF THE JEWISH RACE _Charles W. Eliot_ 141
ISRAEL AND MEDICINE _Sir William Osler_ 145
THE WAR FROM A JEWISH STANDPOINT _Richard Gottheil_ 150
O SWEET ANEMONES: _A Song_ _Jessie E. Sampler_ 158
"PATHS OF PLEASANTNESS" _David Werner Amram_ 159
THE JEWISH GENIUS IN LITERATURE _Edward Chauncey Baldwin_ 164
JEWISH WORTHIES: JOCHANAN BEN ZAKKAI _Abraham M. Simon_ 173
ZIONISM: A MENORAH PRIZE ESSAY _Marvin M. Lowenthal_ 179
FROM COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY: _Activities of Menorah Societies_ 194
NOTES _of The Intercollegiate Menorah Association_ 200
* * * * *
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_Copyright, 1915, by The Intercollegiate Menorah
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Entered as second class matter January 6, 1915, at the
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_=Dr. George Alexander Kohut=_--="Some Curiosities of Jewish
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_=Dr. Solomon Solis Cohen=_--="The Poetry of Jehudah Ha-Levi"=
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THE MENORAH JOURNAL
VOLUME I JUNE, 1915 NUMBER 3
[Illustration]
The Potency of the Jewish Race
BY CHARLES W. ELIOT
[Illustration: _CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT (born in Boston, 1834),
preëminent as educator and publicist; for forty years President of
Harvard University; revered not only by Harvard men but by all
Americans as a great leader of thought and opinion. Dr. Eliot warmly
welcomed the organization of the first Menorah Society at Harvard, in
1906; and to his encouragement is due in large measure the growth of
the Menorah movement. At a time when the problems and lessons of the
war are absorbing his attention, Dr. Eliot has generously shown his
continued sympathy with the Menorah aims and his interest in the
Menorah Journal by preparing this article._]
For many centuries the Jews have had no country of their own or even
national headquarters. They have been scattered among many nations,
all more or less unfriendly, and some cruelly oppressive; yet they
have retained, under the most adverse circumstances, the capacity to
earn their livelihood, to bring up families, and to maintain the great
traditions of their race. The main reason for the indestructibility of
the Jews is that they early embraced certain invaluable ideals, and
have struggled towards them indomitably for thousands of years.
_Races and Ideals_
The principal difference between races is difference of ideals.
Whenever several distinct races come to live side by side on the same
territory in the bonds of a peaceful and coöperative fellowship for
all common public purposes, it will be found that they have all
reached common political and social ideals, although in regard to many
racial attributes and even in regard to religious beliefs they remain
distinct.
The assimilation of different races can be brought about only by a
gradual acceptance of the same ideals and aspirations. For several
centuries this process of assimilation has been going on in many
parts of the earth, and is now going on at an accelerated pace,
resulting in larger conceptions of nationality and larger political or
governmental units.
_The Influence of Lofty Ideals on the Jewish Race_
The Jewish race affords the strongest instance of the influence on a
human stock of lofty ideals, persistently held wherever on the face of
the earth a fragment of the race has planted itself. In all
generations and in all environments the Jews have succeeded in
competition with other races to a remarkable degree. Among a poor
population they are less poor than their neighbors; among a free and
prosperous population the Jews become richer and more prosperous than
the average. Confined in unwholesome Ghettos, they retain to an
astonishing degree their health and vitality, helped doubtless by the
dietary and sanitary directions given in their ancient Scriptures.
Deprived of the right to bear arms in many countries, and, therefore,
unable to resist savage attack, they remain inextinguishable. Wherever
they become prosperous they develop an extraordinary community
feeling, and take care of their own poor or unfortunate. In short, in
all generations and in all their various environments they have
exhibited, and still exhibit, a remarkable racial tenacity and vigor.
It is manifest that this normal success of the race is not due to any
especially favorable material conditions, but to the rare strength and
significance of its ideals.
_"The Noblest of Human Ideals": Jewish Monotheism_
What are these ideals? What have they been for thousands of years? The
first of the Jewish ideals has been that of one God--the noblest of
all human ideals--early attained, and persistently clung to by the
whole race. Mohammedan monotheism is noble, and is the main source of
the strength of those races which have embraced the religion of
Mahomet; but the Mohammedan doctrine of One God arrived thousands of
years after the Jewish, and never was so pure. The most significant
sentence in the English speech is the first sentence of the Hebrew
Bible--"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." That
is the first of the Jewish ideals, to which the race has been true in
all environments, in weal and in woe; and that belief has delivered it
from many sorts of enfeebling and degrading terrors and superstitions.
_The Ideal of the Family_
Another Jewish ideal which has counted for much in the history of the
race is the ideal of the family--pure, honorable, and sacred. The
veneration of ancestors, which has been an important part of the
religion of China and Japan, is only an undue exaggeration of the
Hebrew commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." The Jewish race
has seen fulfilled the promise which is the last phrase of that
commandment, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy
God giveth thee," although in many lands and not in any land of their
own. The organized human society most likely to prove durable or
permanent is that which possesses and maintains in theory and practise
a lofty ideal of the family. The reverence shown by children toward
their parents and the devotion of parents to their children, which
prevail in Jewish families, are both more intense than is usual in
Christian families. These sentiments yield infinite good in any human
society; they produce, and pass on from generation to generation,
purity of life, family honor, and a real consecration of the best
human affections. That is the second potent Jewish ideal.
_The Ethical Ideal of the Ten Commandments_
The third effective ideal is the ethical teaching contained in the Ten
Commandments, the most compact and yet comprehensive code of morals
ever written. These ethical principles have been held before the
Jewish race for thousands of years wherever it has lived, in good
times and bad, an ideal toward which the race has always struggled,
though with frequent lapses. This code contains the institution of the
Sabbath Day, which by itself accounts for much of the extraordinary
endurance of the race.
The Jews have always been distinguished for their respect for learning
and their zeal for education. In the Ghettos of Europe, under the most
discouraging conditions, their Rabbis kept alive the ancient learning,
and through many centuries gave the elite of the rising generation
some mental training, when no instruction was to be had by the masses
of mankind. A persecuted race, provided it retains its vitality and
elasticity, receives admirable training in loyalty to its ideals. In
the case of the Jews this was a loyalty not only to race, but to
religion; and religious loyalty is the finest and most sustaining of
all loyalties. The religion of the Jews emphasizes an ideal to which
the Jewish mind and heart have responded ardently from the earliest
times--the ideal of righteousness. Loyalty to this ideal includes
loyalty to race, family, religion, and all righteous persons. The Jews
believe that righteousness alone exalteth a nation, a family, or a
man.
_Will the Jewish Race Meet the Test of Liberty?_
For two thousand years the Jews have led their daily lives under
exposure to bodily harm, injustice, and all sorts of disaster, and
under such grievous trials have preserved their ideals. The race is
now to be put to another and severer test. In the free countries of
Europe and America the Jews enjoy complete political and industrial
liberty. They were for centuries excluded from most professions, arts,
and industries, and were driven into trade and money-lending. Now all
callings are open to them. In the Middle Ages there were only a few
directions in which a successful Jew could safely spend his money. Now
he can spend it in any direction--wisely and beneficently, or
foolishly and ostentatiously. Will the race bear liberty as well as it
has borne oppression? The liberty, which is the only atmosphere in
which the strongest men and women can develop, often causes the
downfall of weak-willed human beings. Rich Jews, like other rich
people, are in danger of becoming luxurious--the more so because the
race has been cut off from military service, and has not been addicted
to out-of-door sports. The worst destroyer of sound family and
national life is luxury. If the race is to meet successfully the test
of liberty, it will get over its apparent tendency of the moment
towards materialism and reliance on the power of money, hold fast to
its social and artistic idealism, and press steadily towards its
intellectual and religious ideals.
[Illustration: Signature: Charles W. Eliot]
Israel and Medicine
BY SIR WILLIAM OSLER
[Illustration: _SIR WILLIAM OSLER (born in Ontario, Canada, in 1849)
Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford and one of the world's leading
medical authorities; distinguished not merely as investigator,
teacher, and practitioner, but also as essayist and ethical teacher of
singular grace and humanity, as shown in the volumes entitled
"Aequanimitas" and "Counsels and Ideals." The present address,
delivered in London at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Jewish
Historical Society of England, is here given its first publication in
this country, with Sir William's special authorization._]
In estimating the position of Israel in the human values we must
remember that the quest for righteousness is Oriental, the quest for
knowledge Occidental. With the great prophets of the East--Moses,
Isaiah, Mahomet--the word was, "Thus saith the Lord"; with the great
seers of the West, from Thales and Aristotle to Archimedes and
Lucretius, it was "What says Nature?" They illustrate two opposite
views of man and his destiny--in the one he is an "_angelus sepultus_"
in a muddy vesture of decay; in the other, he is the "young
light-hearted master" of the world, in it to know it, and by knowing
to conquer. Modern civilization is the outcome of these two great
movements of the mind of man, who to-day is ruled in heart and head by
Israel and by Greece. From the one he has learned responsibility to a
Supreme Being, and the love of his neighbor, in which are embraced
both the Law and the Prophets; from the other he has gathered the
promise of Eden to have dominion over the earth on which he lives. Not
that Israel is all heart, nor Greece all head, for in estimating the
human value of the two races, intellect and science are found in
Jerusalem and beauty and truth at Athens, but in different
proportions.
_Medicine in the Talmud_
It is a striking fact that there is no great Oriental name in
science--not one to be put in the same class with Aristotle, with
Hippocrates, or with a score of Grecians. We do not go to the Bible
for science, though we may go to Moses for instruction in some of the
best methods in hygiene. Nor is the Talmud a fountain-head in which
men seek inspiration to-day as in the works of Aristotle. I do not
forget the saying:
"_In uns'rem Talmud kann man Jedes lesen,
Und Alles ist schon einmal dagewesen_."
With much of intense interest for the physician, and in spite of some
brave sayings about the value of science, there is not in it the
spirit of Aristotle or of Galen. It is true we find there one of the
earliest instances in literature of an accurate diagnosis confirmed
_post mortem_. A sheep of the Rabbi Chabiba had paralysis of the hind
legs. Rabbi Jemar diagnosed ischias, or arthritis, but Rabbina, who
was called in, said that the disease was in the spinal marrow. To
settle the dispute the sheep was killed, and Rabbina's diagnosis was
confirmed.
_The Role of Jewish Physicians in the Middle Ages_
In the early Middle Ages the Jewish physicians played a role of the
first importance as preservers and transmitters of ancient knowledge.
With the fall of Rome the broad stream of Greek science in western
Europe entered the sud of mediævalism. It filtered through in three
streams--one in South Italy, the other in Byzantium, and a third
through Islam. At the great school of Salernum in the tenth, eleventh
and twelfth centuries, we find important Jewish teachers; Copho II
wrote the Anatomia Porci, and Rebecca wrote on fevers and the fœtus.
Jews were valued councillors at the court of the great Emperor
Frederick. With the Byzantine stream the Jews seem to have had little
to do, but the broad, clear stream which ran through Islam is dotted
thickly with Hebrew names. In the eastern and western Caliphates and
in North Africa were men who to-day are the glory of Israel, and
bright stars in the medical firmament. Three of these stand out
preëminent. The writings of Isaac Judæus, known in the Middle Ages as
Monarcha Medicorum, were prized for more than four centuries. He had a
Hippocratic belief in the powers of nature and in the superiority of
prevention to cure. He was an optimist and held strongly to the
Talmudic precept that the physician who takes nothing is worth
nothing. Rabbi ben Ezra was a universal genius and wanderer, whose
travels brought him as far as England. His philosophy of life Browning
has depicted in the well-known poem, whose beauty of diction and
clarity of thought atone for countless muddy folios.
_Maimonides: Prince Among Physicians_
But the prince among Jewish physicians, whose fame as such has been
overshadowed by his reputation as a Talmudist and philosopher, is the
Doctor Perplexorum--_dux, director, demonstrator, neutrorum
dubitantium et errantium!_--Moses Maimonides. Cordova boasts of three
of the greatest names in the history of Arabian medicine: Avenzoar,
Albucasis, and Averroes (Avenzoar is indeed claimed to be a Jew).
Great as is the fame of Averroes as the commentator and transmitter of
Aristotle to scholastic Europe, his fame is enhanced as the teacher
and inspirer of Moses ben Maimon. Exiled from Spain, this great
teacher became in Egypt the Thomas Aquinas of Jewry, the conciliator
of the Bible and the Talmud with the philosophy of Aristotle. He
remains one of Israel's great prophets, and while devoted to theology
and philosophy, he was a distinguished and successful practitioner of
medicine and the author of many works highly prized for nearly five
centuries, some of which are still reprinted. He says pathetically,
"Although from my youth Torah was betrothed to me and continues to
live by me as the wife of my youth, in whose love I find a constant
delight, strange women, whom I took at first into my house as her
handmaids, have become her rivals and absorbed part of my time." The
spirit of the man is manifest in his famous prayer, one of the
precious documents of our profession, worthy to be placed beside the
Hippocratic oath. It ends with: "In suffering let me always see only
my fellow creature."[A]
_Jewish Physicians and Medieval Popes_
In the revival of learning in the thirteenth century, which led to the
foundation of so many of the universities, Hebrew physicians took a
prominent part, particularly in the great schools of Montpelier and of
Paris; and for the next two or three centuries in Italy, in France,
and in Germany, Hebrew physicians were greatly prized. But too often
the tribulations of Israel were their lot. As one reads of the
grievous persecutions they suffered, there comes to mind the truth of
Zunz' words: "_Wenn es eine Stufenleiter von Leiden giebt, so hat
Israel die hochste Staffel erstiegen._" Their checkered career is well
illustrated by the relations with the Popes, some of whom uttered
official bulls and fulminations against them, others seem to have had
a special fondness for them as body physicians. Paul III was for years
in charge of Jacob Montino, a distinguished Jewish physician, who
translated extensively from the Arabic and Hebrew into Latin, and his
edition of Averroes is dedicated to Pope Leo X. In my library there is
a copy of the letter of Pope Gregory XIII, dated March 30th, 1581, and
printed in 1584, confirming the decrees of Paul IV and Pius V, which
he regrets were by no means held in observance, "but that there are
still many among Christian persons who desiring the infirmities of
their bodies be cured by illicit means, and especially by the service
of Jews and other infidels. . . ." It was at Mantua that a Jewish
physician, Abraham Conath, established a printing press, from which
the first Hebrew works were issued.
_Names of Distinction in Later Centuries_
Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries in
France, Germany, and Italy we meet many distinguished names in the
profession, and in his _Geschichte der Jüdischen Aertz_ Landau pays a
very just tribute to their work. Only a few are met with in England.
Isaac Abendana, a Spaniard, practised in Oxford and lectured on Hebrew
at Magdalen College. We have at the Bodleian Jewish almanacs which lie
issued at the end of the seventeenth century, and a great Latin
translation of Mishnah. He afterwards migrated to Cambridge. A more
important author was Jacob de Castro Sarmento, a Portuguese Jew, who
became licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1725, and
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1730. There is in the Bodleian an
interesting broadsheet from the Register of the London Synagogues
respecting charges made when his name was proposed at the Royal
Society. He contributed many papers to the Philosophical Transactions,
and was the author of several works. In the eighteenth century Jean
Baptiste de Silva, of a Portuguese Jewish family, became one of the
leading physicians of Paris, consulting physician to Louis XV, and the
friend of Voltaire, who remarks, "_C'était un de ces médecins que
Moliere n'eut ni pu ni osé rendre ridicules_." One of the special
treasures of my library is a volume of the Henriade superbly bound by
Padeloup, and a presentation copy from Voltaire to de Silva, given me
when I left Baltimore by my messmates in "The Ship of Fools" (a dining
club). Voltaire's inscription reads as follows:
"_A Monsieur Silva, Esculape François. Recevez cet hommage de votre
frère en Apollon. Ce Dieu vous a laissé son plus bel héritage, tous
les Dons de l'esprit, tous ceux de la raison, et je n'eus que des
Vers, hélas, pour mon partage._"
_The Achievement of Recent Years_
In the nineteenth century, with the removal of the vexatious
restrictions, the Jew had a chance of reaching his full development,
and he has taken a position in the medical profession comparable to
that occupied in the palmy Arabian days of Cordova and Bagdad. In
Germany particularly, the last half of the century witnessed a
remarkable outburst of scientific activity. Traube, who may well be
called the father of experimental pathology; Henle, the distinguished
anatomist and pathologist; Valentin, the physiologist; Lebert, Remak,
Romberg, Ebstein, Henoch, have been among the clinical physicians of
the very first rank. Cohnheim was the most brilliant pathologist of
his day; to Weigert pathological histology owes an enormous debt, and,
to crown all, the man whose ideas have revolutionized modern
pathology, Paul Ehrlich, is a Jew. In America Hebrew members of our
profession for many years occupied a very prominent position. The
father of the profession to-day, a man universally beloved, is Abraham
Jacobi, full of years and honors; and the two most brilliant
representatives in physiology and pathology, Simon Flexner and Jacques
Loeb, carry out the splendid traditions of Traube and Henle.
I have always had a warm affection for my Jewish students, and the
friendships I have made with them have been among the special
pleasures of my life. Their success has always been a great
gratification, as it has been the just reward of earnestness and
tenacity of purpose and devotion to high ideals in science; and, I may
add, a dedication of themselves as practitioners to everything that
could promote the welfare of their patients. In the medical profession
the Jews had a long and honorable record, and among no people is all
that is best in our science and art more warmly appreciated; none in
the community take more to heart the admonition of the son of Sirach,
"Give place to the physician, let him not go from thee, for thou hast
need of him."
[Illustration: Signature: Wm Osler]
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote A: I am told by authorities that the attribution of this
prayer to Maimonides is doubtful. Where is the original?]
The War from a Jewish Standpoint
BY RICHARD GOTTHEIL
[Illustration: _RICHARD GOTTHEIL (born in Manchester, England, in
1862; came to New York in 1873), educated at Columbia and at German
Universities; since 1887 Professor of Semitic Languages and Rabbinical
Literature at Columbia. Apart from his scholarly labors, Professor
Gottheil has devoted himself body and soul to many Jewish causes,
notably Zionism, in which he has been a leader in America from the
beginning. He was among the first to extend an encouraging hand to the
Menorah movement and has responded generously to repeated calls to
lecture before Menorah Societies. The present article is based upon an
address recently delivered before the Cornell Menorah Society._]
The war in Europe presents problems for the Jews which must be faced
no matter what the consequences may be. These problems are of two
kinds, due to the fact that we are members of a race that is scattered
over the whole earth, and the units of which are to be found in the
four corners of the globe. In this way a double set of duties is
entailed upon us. On the one hand, we have to take our rightful place
as citizens of the different countries in which we live: to accept all
the burdens that go with such citizenship, and to partake of the joys
and sorrows that are its inevitable accompaniment--in a word, to take
the advice of the Rabbis of old and "seek the welfare" of the country
in which we live. But this obligation is so self-evident, and the
problems raised by it solve themselves so naturally, that they need no
further thought. In point of fact, the patriotism of the Jews for the
lands in which they live has been demonstrated on so many occasions
that only blind ignorance or wilful misrepresentation can call it into
question. At the present moment, in all the armies that are at the
front, our brethren are doing service even beyond their numerical
proportion.
_The Toll Paid by the Jew_
It is to the second set of problems that I venture to call
attention--those Jewish problems that concern ourselves in particular,
that deal with our relations to and with our fellow Jews--problems
which I am afraid are not always present in our minds. For one reason
or another, they are apt to be forgotten, to slip into the background
through sheer negligence. Indeed, in many cases we are fain to put
them intentionally into a corner and remove them discreetly from
sight. It has needed a great world event at this time, as it has in
the past, to bring many of us to reason and to a realization of our
duty. The titanic struggle in which so many of the nations of the
world are engaged has come to remind us also of our position as Jews
and to recall to us our relations with the past, our connections with
the present, and our hopes for the future. It is indeed true that none
of the great political movements that have affected the world have
passed by without in some special manner affecting the Jewish people.
As we look back through history and allow our thoughts to run down the
highway of the ages, we perceive the effects such struggles have had
upon the Jew. We think of the time when ancient Babylonia stretched
out its arm from the East to gain a foothold on the Mediterranean and
to grasp the power of the world. What was the effect upon the Jews?
The Babylonian captivity. Many hundreds of years after, Rome--the
Babylonia of the West--lunged out toward the East in the same search
for universal dominion; and we still observe the Ninth of Ab in
commemoration of the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. Again
some centuries passed us by, and we come to the inevitable conflict
between Christianity and the rising power of Islam. Who was it but our
own Jews who suffered most as the crusading hordes moved through
Europe--our own Jews who were driven before them from the Rhine into
what at a later time became the great national Ghetto in Poland? And
now in this twentieth century, as a people, and in proportion to its
numbers, which body of men, women and children is paying the most
exacting toll to the forces of destiny? Again it is the Jew.
_"The Belgians of All History"_
We all have the greatest possible sympathy for the Belgian people and
for the Belgian land. Yet how much greater has been the suffering of
the Jewish people--the Belgians not of a day but of all history? In
Eastern Europe, in Poland, in Galicia and in parts of Russia, at least
two or three millions of Jews have suffered from the ravages of a war
waged with a bitterness that exceeds all bounds. Invading armies have
passed and re-passed over their homes--miserable as they were even in
times of peace. False accusations have been launched against them so
that they have been regarded as enemies by both sides and treated as
such. Thousands have been driven from their homes to congest villages
already filled to overflowing or to increase the want and suffering
indigenous to towns and cities. An amount of anguish and pain has been
caused such as the Jews have never known in all their long tramp
through the ages. What have we done, we Jews in America, to assuage
even a part of this pain? What measures have we in view, when once the
war shall be over, to regain for these people the possibility of
living, to bring back for them a little of that which they have lost
through no fault of their own and in no cause which is theirs? In
most cases the only right permitted to them is the right to suffer,
and they must in addition pay the price of that suffering. As we think
of all these circumstances, is it not proper and meet that we should
ponder the whole situation in which we Jews find ourselves today?
I believe that it is eminently the moment to do so. We refuse to
believe that the great waste of human life and energy now going on in
Europe is a waste pure and simple. We refuse to believe that some
purification is not to result from the fire through which mankind is
passing, and that some sanity in handling human affairs is not to
follow the evident insanity with which we are now confronted.
Something a little more stable because a little more reasonable must
appear at the end to replace the inconstancy and unrest which have up
to now characterized the relations of peoples to each other. And as we
hope this for the world at large, we are hopeful too that full
attention will be given to those problems which concern the Jews
specifically. I wish then to indicate the chief among these problems,
in order that we may ourselves see clearly the road that must be
taken.
_The Prospect in Russia and Poland_
First and foremost, of course, rank the questions that concern the
Jews in Russia. Quite apart from any consideration of the general
problems affecting that country, the case of the Jews in Russia and
Poland demands a settlement that shall make existence bearable for
them, and which at the same time shall not run counter to the real and
vital interests of the Russian people. Nay more; such existence must
not only be bearable. It must be of a kind that will place the Jews
upon a level with the other inhabitants of the Empire and will give
them the necessary opportunity to develop whatever talents or
capabilities they possess. It is not for us to prescribe in what
manner and by what means this shall be accomplished; and I use the
word "must" not in the sense that any compulsion is to be applied to
Russia in this respect, but rather as an expression of the certainty
that the trial through which the Czar's land is now passing is of such
a kind as to purge her necessarily of all traces of national and
religious intolerance. This feeling cannot be expressed in better
words than those used by M. Bourtzeff, the well-known reactionary,
when he said, "We are convinced that after this war there will no
longer be any room for political reaction and Russia will be
associated with the existing group of cultured and civilized
countries."
Proof that such feelings are making their way among the most
intelligent portion of the Russian population is shown by the
remarkable document put forth some weeks ago over the signatures of
noted Christian professors, litterateurs, and members of the Duma, in
which the plea is made for the removal of all restrictions that at
present shackle the Jews. "Let us understand," they say, "that the
welfare and the power of Russia are inseparably bound up with the
welfare and liberties of all the nationalities that constitute the
whole Empire. Let us then conceive this truth. Let us act in
accordance with our intelligence and our conscience, and then we are
sure that the disappearance of all kinds of persecution of the Jews
and their complete emancipation, so as to be our equals in all rights
of citizenship, will form one of the conditions of a real constructive
imperial policy." And we are the more persuaded that these views will
prevail when we remember that Russia has been brought into closer
contact with just those nations of Europe where Jewish emancipation
has been most perfect and has brought forth the best fruits. It is
unthinkable that these nations should fail to put their influence on
the side of Jewish freedom in Russia when European accounts are
finally balanced.[B]
_The Broken Faith of Roumania_
In the second place, any regulation of the Jewish status in Europe
must of necessity include Roumania. The injustice of the Government's
attitude in that country is even more pronounced than it is in Russia.
For Roumania is bound to a certain course by a "scrap of paper." At
the Berlin Congress of 1878, one of the conditions upon which
statehood was granted to Roumania was that the rights of free
citizenship should be conferred upon the Jewish inhabitants in the
principality--who, it may be remarked in passing, were among the
oldest residents there. Roumania gave her solemn promise to carry out
this condition; but by political subterfuge of the most brazen kind
she has circumvented the whole spirit of the demand. The Roumanian
Chamber passed a law to the effect that only Jews who had been
naturalized by it were entitled to citizenship; and as the Chamber
refused to naturalize more than a handful each year, the provisions
of the Berlin Treaty have been as good as void. When quite
recently--in 1913--during the progress of the last Balkan War and
prior to the intervention of Roumania, the Roumanian Jews volunteered
to serve in large numbers, the proposal was brought forward to grant
the rights of citizenship to all Jews who had entered the army. Yet
this proposal was voted down; and the condition of the Jews has
remained as it was prior to 1878. They are inhabitants in a country,
subject to its laws, liable to all duties placed upon citizens--but
they are themselves prohibited from becoming citizens. It is
intolerable that such a condition should be allowed to continue; and
if right is to take the place of might in the inevitable
re-arrangement of the community of European nations, the status of the
Roumanian Jews must be one of the Jewish problems to be solved.
_The Hope of Regaining Palestine_
There is a third Jewish problem the importance of which perhaps even
transcends the two just mentioned; transcends because of the interest
that attaches to it and because of its vital import to every Jew the
world over. I refer to the problem of Palestine, which is wrapt up
with the very existence of the Jews and which symbolizes the hopes
that have been nurtured throughout the centuries. We know that the Jew
in his inevitable march westward has kept his face turned towards the
East; that in prayer and in meditation his gaze has rested upon that
country which enshrined at one and the same time his origin and his
future aspirations. It is true that up to within some forty years that
aspiration remained in large part a pious wish; and that though it was
cherished as coming to realization "quickly and in our day," very few
attempts were put through to arm the Almighty with human effort. At
best, God-fearing and pious Jews removed to Palestine, either to
immerse themselves there in study and contemplation, or to end their
days in the odor of sanctity.
But the last twenty-five years have witnessed a conscious effort to
make of Palestine a rallying point for the Jewish people, a place
where Jewish life may be lived to its fullest extent and which may
serve as a beacon light to all parts of the Diaspora. Many a waste
place has been made to blossom again; and much of the culture and
learning acquired by the Jews in the long centuries of toil and effort
has been made available to revivify the Land of Promise. With infinite
pains and untold sacrifices the Jewish pioneers went forward in their
peaceful effort to regain the soil of their forefathers. Colonies have
been founded there; primary schools, high schools and technical
institutions have been established, and many of the forces have been
started that make the foundation for a permanent settlement. This
conscious effort can not have been put forth in vain. Palestine
represents the goal of our endeavor. And any settlement after the war
that has in view the general problems involved will be forced to take
cognizance of the just hopes that we Jews place in the future of that
country and the just rights that the Jewish people believe they
possess and have acquired there. The form in which such rights shall
be expressed is not a matter for discussion at present. The fact alone
is of importance. In the past the world has applauded the fight made
by the Poles for their national existence; it has followed with
interest the Greek War of Independence, the Italian striving for
unity, the Irish endeavors for racial autonomy, and the Alsatian
effort after independent expression. It must and will appreciate and
esteem the attempt made by the Jews to re-fashion their anomalous
status and to re-create the statehood that they lost nearly two
thousand years ago.
_The Collapse of Principles Held Sacred by the Jews_
Our concern, however, in the present world conflict goes further than
our own immediate affairs, and meets those interests which we have in
common with the rest of humankind. Much as we deplore the wanton
destruction of property, much as we bewail the reckless loss of life,
we mourn especially the diminution of ethical standards and the
perversion of our whole outlook on life. For this means the lapse of
much for which our own teachers have stood, the forfeit of many a
principle which has been dear to the Jewish heart. Let me touch
lightly upon three points out of the many that come to mind.
First of all, what we must deplore most is the defiance to law and to
its reign which has become so marked a characteristic during the
present war. The agreements arrived at in conventions, the bases of
treaties, the binding character of compacts, and the sanctity of
engagements--all seem to have been thrown into one melting pot. The
mere fact that the expression "a scrap of paper" has become a
household word, bandied about by orators and scribblers, shows the
distance we have descended into the abyss. The whole structure of our
international relations seems to have fallen to the ground and the
labored work of centuries to have been undone in a few months. Now,
the Jews have been from the earliest times a people that have laid the
greatest possible stress upon the rule of law; so much so, that their
own laws were supposed to have divine sanction. In olden Jewish times
everything was regulated by law--man's relation to his fellow men, to
the state, and to God; to such a degree that we have been blamed often
for being a law-ridden people. We cannot, therefore, remain oblivious
to the fact that the sanctity of law has now been rudely called into
question and its authority greatly weakened. As Jews we must be deeply
concerned in assisting the European world back to a full consciousness
of the majesty and eminence of the rule of law.
But more than that, it was part of our earliest teaching that "thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." What clouds of hatred have not
been blown from one line of trenches to the other! What volumes of
spleen have not been sent from one country to the other! In countless
speeches, in newspapers and in books, the doctrines of dislike, of
animosity, of deepest malice have been preached. Men have been taught
to look upon certain neighbors as born enemies, to see in those who do
not speak their own tongue not only a stranger but an enemy. Back of
the soldiers under arms, back of the cannons with their deadly
missiles, stand millions of loathing men and women shooting darts of
odium that reach further than any shell and that are more poisonous
than any gas. When shall we be able once again to preach the beautiful
teaching of the prophet, "Have we not all one Father; hath not one God
created us all?"
And lastly, we must bear in mind that the Jews have been opposed from
of old to the rule and reign of might as represented by the God of
War. In a syllabus on the history of the Peace Movement just published
by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, it is passing
strange to find that the Old Testament is entirely overlooked and that
from the first point, "The Cosmopolitan Ideal among the Greek
Philosophers," the jump is made at once to the second, "Jesus Christ,
the Prince of Peace." And yet we know that in the outlook of our
greatest teachers and philosophers the vision of peace loomed large
and powerful. "Ye shall not teach war any more," said one of our
greatest. And for another the true sign of his prophetic mission is
that he preached peace. How sadly these teachings have been belied in
the present war we know only too well.
_Is War Necessary and Good?_
In many circles it has been held that development is possible for the
human race only with the concomitance of war. What wonder--when modern
teachers have preached just such a necessity? Even so great a
religious leader as Luther said, "War is a business divine in itself,
and is as necessary as eating or drinking or any other work." Should
we then wonder that a historian such as von Treitschke has added, "War
is the last revealer of power. God will see to it that war always
recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race,"--or that another
historian, Delbrueck, should have said, "What beauty was to the Greek,
holiness to the Hebrew, government to the Romans; what liberty is to
the Englishman, war is to the Prussian." Nietzsche, one of the
greatest of modern apostles, has based many of his theories upon "a
violent repudiation of any faith or tradition which recognizes a power
of right and justice lying beyond our impulsive nature; an
identification of self-restraint with degeneracy and of self-assertion
with health; a search for happiness in the conquest of others rather
than in self-conquest; a substitution of the Will to Power for the
Darwinian Will to Live, with the consequent intensification of the
unconscious and instinctive struggle for existence into a battle for
conscious mastery; and a sharpening of the competition of life, with
its self-observed rules of fair play or its traditionally imposed
limitations, into a glorification of war as the supreme test of
strength, obtaining its justification in success."
In a very remarkable article which appeared in the _Nineteenth
Century_ for last September, written by a man evidently most
religiously minded, appears the following: "Is the heart of England
still strong to bear and to resolve and to endure? How shall we know?
By the test? What test? That which God has given for the trial of
people--the test of war. The real court, the only court in which this
case can and will be tried, is the court of God. This twentieth
century will see that trial, and whichever people shall have in it the
greater soul of righteousness will be the victor. The discovery that
Christianity is incompatible with the military spirit is made only
among decaying people. While the nation is still vigorous, while its
population is expanding, while the blood in its veins is strong, then
on this hope no scruples are felt. But when its energies begin to
wither, when self-indulgence takes the place of self-sacrifice, when
its sons and daughters become degenerate, then it is that a spurious
and bastard humanitarianism masquerading as religion declares war to
be an anachronism and a barbaric sin."
_The Jewish Answer_
The Jewish attitude in regard to this great problem before the world
can be dealt with in a very few words. These words have already been
given to us in the twentieth chapter of Exodus: "If thou wilt make an
altar, thou shalt not wave thy sword over it; for if thou wavest thy
sword over it thou hast polluted it." It has been emphasized by the
prophet Jeremiah when he said, "Let not the wise man glory in his
wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the
rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth, glory in
this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord who
exerciseth loving kindness, judgment and righteousness on the earth."
To this I will add only one single word of the Rabbis: "The whole
Torah exists solely for the sake of the ways of peace." This ideal of
peace has been the guiding star of Israel for which the Jew has prayed
morning, noon and night, and I trust that the young men of the Menorah
will be true to that which the Menorah typifies, and will assist in
the spreading of its light by upholding the reign of law, the reign of
love, and the reign of peace.
[Illustration: Signature: Richard Gottheil]
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote B: In the last number of THE MENORAH JOURNAL, Mr. Jacob H.
Schiff ventured to suggest the reverse influence, and to intimate that
the association of England with Russia was having an adverse effect
upon the Jews in England. While Mr. Schiff does not tell us upon what
evidence he bases his views, I venture to guess that it consists
largely of the mistrust and ill-will caused in England by a small
coterie of German-born bankers and their following. But Mr. Schiff
must know that this ill-will is in no way connected with the fact that
the men referred to are members of the Jewish race. Most of them have
never taken the least interest in Jewish affairs, some even have
ostentatiously kept themselves quite apart from any connection with
them. And what is more, the feeling against them is shared by Jews as
well as by non-Jews in England.
Perhaps more serious still is Mr. Schiff's presentment concerning
German anti-Semitism. To speak simply of "a certain anti-Semitic
tendency in Germany" is to coat the truth with so much honey as almost
to reverse its meaning. Anti-Semitism in Germany, and especially in
Prussia, has kept the Jews far from any positions of importance in
university life, on the bench, and in all state and military affairs.
And to add that the war "will crush out most of this anti-Semitic
tendency" is to fly in the very face of well-ascertained and
authenticated facts of very recent occurrence. In _Harper's Weekly_
for February 6th of this year (p. 122), a series of such facts is
adduced. Nor can Mr. Schiff forget that forced conversion away from
the Jewish faith and communion has nowhere taken on the dangerous
proportions it has in the Fatherland. Russia, it is true, has martyred
many Jewish bodies; German "Kultur" has quenched too many Jewish
souls. History will have to decide which has done the greater hurt to
the Jewish cause.]
O Sweet Anemones
BY JESSIE E. SAMPTER
_This Song is one of a series put into the mouth of a nationalist
Pharisee of Jerusalem living through the times of the coming of Jesus
to Jerusalem and the later development or perversion of Jesus' ideals
by Paul._
O sweet anemones on Sharon's plain,
Light dancing seraphim of sun and rain,
Was he not one of us, was he not ours?
And yet he saved not us, O crimson flowers!
As stars that bloom in heaven, full-bloom and still,
As native stags that leap from hill to hill,
As you, dear blossom-stars, on native plains,
So planted here, with God, our home remains.
I, too, would perish here, where he has died,
But felled by horse and spear, not crucified;
I, man of peace, would pour, O Rock of God,
My freedom or my blood on Zion's sod.
When pagans sweep thy fields with withering blast,
My heart is sanctified to death at last;
Its taste is honey-sweet within my mouth,
For we that drink with God can dread no drouth.
O sweet anemones on Sharon's plain,
A spring shall come for us, to bloom again,--
To God a day, to us a thousand years,--
Who still remembers, lives, refreshed with tears.
"Paths of Pleasantness"
_The Study of the Jewish Law_
BY DAVID WERNER AMRAM
"_Her paths are paths of pleasantness, and all her ways are peace. She
is a tree of life to those that lay fast hold on her, and happy is
every one that retaineth her."--Prov. 3:17, 18._
[Illustration: _DAVID WERNER AMRAM (born in Philadelphia, 1866),
educated at the University of Pennsylvania, has been Lecturer and
since 1912 Professor of Law in the University of Pennsylvania Law
School. Professor Amram has published books and articles not only on
common law topics but on interesting subjects in Jewish legal lore and
belles-lettres, among his books being: "The Jewish Law of Divorce,"
"Leading Cases in the Bible," and "The Makers of Hebrew Books in
Italy."_]
One of the methods by which the Jewish people managed to survive
endless misery and persecution during eighteen centuries of dispersion
and protect themselves from the continuous bombardment of their social
and moral citadels was by taking refuge in the study of the law. The
study and observance of the law, both civil and religious, saved the
Jews from degeneration and vulgarization, and preserved for them the
humanizing memories of the thoughts and deeds of their forebears.
Through their common interest in the law and its study they kept in
touch with one another throughout the lands of their dispersion, they
kept alive their feeling of brotherhood and the memory of their
ancient independence, and translated this memory into a hope for the
re-establishment of the State, a hope which has never died.
"_The People of the Law_"
The term "the people of the law" has often been applied to the Jews in
the opprobrious sense that they are a people who deal according to
hard and strict rules, untouched by the qualities of love and mercy.
Properly understood, however, the term "the people of the law" is a
title of honor, one of which we may well be proud. As used in our
literature and by our people, "law" signifies something more than
civil and criminal jurisprudence. It is our word "Torah," meaning
doctrine, teaching, including not only what is generally known as law
but also what is known as ethics. The people of the law is the people
that studies the great thoughts of its great men of all times, and
adopts them as rules of life which it becomes a duty and a pleasure to
obey. The people of the law is the people that in the midst of a world
of chaos in which nation fought nation with the weapons of death, sat
in communion with a past world from which came such messages as this:
"Attend to me, O my people: and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a
law shall go forth from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a
light to the peoples. . . . Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness,
the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men,
neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth shall eat them
up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my
righteousness shall be forever and my salvation unto all generations."
Righteousness was the aspect of Deity that appealed to the second
Isaiah, and it was he that spoke words of comfort to our people in all
the days of their endless tribulations. The certain faith in the
ultimate success of right sustained them throughout the centuries and
constitutes their strength to-day. This is the law that was handed
down to them from of old, the law of right, which though often broken,
often forgotten, was always found again and cherished as the one thing
worth while in a world torn by the brutal instincts in man--instincts
which the law had chained and sought to make harmless.
So we may well cling to our title of the people of the law,
remembering that it does not mean merely Nomos, as the Hellenized Jews
mistranslated Torah, but legal and ethical doctrine and knowledge in
its broadest sense, and that it is the people of the law that have
always shown their love of knowledge and found it "a tree of life to
those that lay fast hold on it." Some ancient Jewish mystic said that
the sword and the book came out of heaven together and Israel had to
choose. Israel did choose and thereafter dreamed of days when swords
would be beaten into ploughshares.
_How the Heritage of the Law Was Preserved_
The reading of the law has since time immemorial been an established
part of the synagogue service, thus educating the people to know their
law, the very phrases of which by constant reference and repetition
became part of their daily vocabulary. The origin of this custom of
reading the law in the synagogue may probably be found in the Biblical
references to the great convocations when King and scribe read the law
to the assembled people.
The effect of the dispersion of the Jews was to give a peculiar
sacredness to the law as the sole heritage of their earlier and
happier days. In most of the lands of their dispersion, the Jews dwelt
a race apart, separated from the rest of the community by mutual
prejudices and antagonisms. The soil on which they dwelt was so far as
ultimate overlordship was concerned the land of the stranger, but
nevertheless in a very definite and special sense it was the Jews'
own land. For it was a land in which the law of the stranger was not
the law. The law of the land of their dispersion was not the law of
the owner of the soil but the law of the Jews. In this sense the
Ghettos of Italy and the Gassen of Germany were not so much Italian
and German soil as they were Jewish. As by the modern fiction of
extraterritoriality the home of an Ambassador is considered part of
his own national territory, so these exclusively Jewish settlements
were colonies of Judæa planted on foreign soil. They were separated
from the rest of the land by visible or invisible walls, and within
these walls, hardly touched by the influences that were at work
shaping the life around them, the ancient law of the Jews was
preserved and handed down from generation to generation. Hence during
the Middle Ages the student of the law became the most important
member of the community, and all the energy of the community that was
not required to outwit the constant menace of brutal force and
religious persecution was devoted to the cultivation of the law and of
the literature that it gave rise to.
It should be noted, however, that since the beginning of the Talmudic
period, the civil law developed in certain directions only, because
after all the Jewish people had no land of their own in the usual
sense and no central authority and were constantly moving from place
to place, always subject to persecution. Some branches of their law
were entirely neglected and others abnormally developed.
_The Schools of the Law_
In the Talmudic period, the judges, members of the Synhedrion, and
professors of the law schools, received a long professional training.
The course of study lasted seven years, at the end of which, having
passed their examination successfully, the graduates were eligible to
assignment as judges in the lower courts, from which they were
promoted to act as associate judges in the great Synhedrion and
eventually might hope to attain the dignity of full synhedrial
membership. These judicial dignitaries were obliged to be well versed
in the languages, law and customs of the contemporary peoples,
especially in the laws of the Greeks and Romans. Great academies of
the law flourished in Palestine and still greater ones in Babylonia,
the latter eventually supplanting the former. These academies called
for the enthusiastic encomium of one Talmudist who said, "God created
these academies in order that the promise might be fulfilled that the
word of God should not depart from Israel's mouth."
The law students met twice a year in assembly for examination. Their
studies were pursued at home, except in the months of Elul and Adar
when they went up to the Assembly. Here they were arranged in classes
and under the direction of their masters heard lectures and discussed
the subject matter presented to them topically. At these Assemblies
actual questions of law were submitted from Jewish communities all
over the Jewish world, and the solutions to these problems were
prepared and forwarded by the great masters. In addition to these
professional schools there were everywhere general schools or, as we
might say, high schools connected with the synagogues. It is a tribute
to the importance that was ascribed to the high schools in later
generations that their origin was projected back to the days of the
Flood when Shem and Eber established a law school in which
subsequently Isaac, Jacob, and Rebecca heard lectures. It will be
noted that according to this bit of folklore Rebecca was the first
woman law student. The same fancy which invented this most ancient of
the schools, also invented the law school which Judah built for Jacob
in Egypt, and the school established by Moses in which he and Aaron
were the professors and Joshua was the janitor.
_The Study of the Law "the Chief End of Man"_
The fancy of the people associated nearly all of its great men with
the study of the law. The entire tribe of Issachar was said to have
devoted itself to the study of the law, the merchant tribe of Zebulon
furnishing the means of support. God himself, according to another
mystic, was a professor in the celestial law school in which He taught
the law to the souls of all the righteous, in that heaven which they
conceived of as a place where the law might be perpetually studied;
and even while the Temple was still standing and sacrifices were being
offered, the Jewish teachers used to say that God does not require
burnt offerings but the study of His law.
From all of these traditions it will be seen that to the ancients the
study of the law was the chief end of man. The Jew never considered
ignorance to be bliss and has little sympathy with the religious ideal
of many non-Jewish people that religion is more important than
knowledge. One of the great masters even went so far as to say that
the ignorant man cannot be pious. It was Simon the Just, one of the
survivors of the Men of the Great Synagogue, who said that the world
stands upon three things, the law, the service of God, and charity,
and he put the law first, for the first duty of a man is to observe
the law. He must be just before he can be charitable.
At one time it was sought to place some limitations upon the right to
become a student of law, and herein the schools of Hillel and Shammai
differed. Hillel was the democrat who held that all persons, without
exception, should enjoy the privilege of studying law; Shammai was the
intellectual aristocrat who sought to limit this privilege to those
who were wise, modest, of ample means and of goodly parentage, thereby
establishing rules similar to those that obtain in the best modern law
schools, which require a collegiate education as a preliminary to
admission; but Shammai went further in that he required the students
to be wise and modest as well as persons of good breeding and of
ample fortune. Just how many of our modern law students could meet
these requirements is a question upon which I have no statistics. On
this very matter of the proper qualifications for admission to the
privilege of studying law, we have heard much in our time. Perhaps a
contribution to the subject from the old and somewhat neglected Code
of the Mishnah would not be inappropriate. The Mishnah says:
_"Eight and Forty Qualifications for the Law"_
"The law is greater than priesthood and royalty, for royalty is
acquired by thirty qualifications, priesthood by four and twenty, but
the law by eight and forty, and they are as follows: Study, attention,
utterance, understanding, reverence, veneration, modesty, cheerfulness
and purity, service of the wise, choice of associates, debate with
fellow students, deliberation in study of Bible and Mishnah, a minimum
of business, a minimum of worldly pursuits, a minimum of pleasure, a
minimum of sleep, a minimum of talk, a minimum of jesting,
forbearance, kindliness, faith in the wise, resignation in suffering,
knowing one's place, satisfaction with one's lot, bridling one's
words, refraining from self-complacency, amiability, loving the
Creator, loving His creatures, loving righteousness, loving equity,
loving reproof, eschewing worldly honor, not being puffed up by
learning nor delighting in laying down the law, helping one's neighbor
bear the yoke, inclining toward a favorable judgment of others,
steadfast in the truth, steadfast for peace, concentration in study,
asking, answering, listening, enlarging, learning with a view to
teach, learning with a view to act, enabling one's teacher to become
wiser, thoroughly understanding what one hears, and repeating every
dictum in the name of him who uttered it." I recommend this list of
qualifications to the consideration of modern teachers and students as
well as to those who are concerned with the preparation of a code of
legal ethics for the profession.
The Jews loved the law and respected it and they honored its
expounders and administrators. They do not believe that the world can
be made over or made better by any man or by any preaching. They are
by instinct conservative, holding on with tenacity to the ideas and
institutions that have grown up in past times and that are expressions
of the needs of society and of its adjustment to the forces that play
upon it. This is why the law, which is the embodiment of these
conservative forces, meets with their respect and allegiance, why its
study was cultivated with such zeal in the past, and why in our own
day it still finds so large a percentage of votaries among the sons of
our people.
[Illustration: Signature: D.W. Amram]
The Jewish Genius in Literature
_A Study of Three Modern Men of Letters_
BY EDWARD CHAUNCEY BALDWIN
[Illustration: _EDWARD CHAUNCEY BALDWIN (born in Cornwall, Conn.,
1870), Assistant Professor of English in the University of Illinois,
has taken a special and scholarly interest in the contributions of the
Jews to civilization, on which subject he has written a notable book
entitled "Our Modern Debt to Israel," besides articles in various
periodicals. He is an honorary member of the Illinois Menorah Society,
evincing a warm sympathy with the Menorah aims and actively
coöperating in the Menorah work._]
A study of great Jewish names in modern literature has impressed me
with the fact that every Jewish man of letters has attained his fame
by virtue of qualities that are essentially Jewish. In other words, we
cannot fully understand the work of even modern Jewish literary men
unless we know the fundamental qualities of Jewish genius. To
illustrate what is meant by this assertion, we may consider briefly
the work of three nineteenth century Jewish authors--Heine,
Beaconsfield, and Zangwill. These men are apparently wholly different;
and yet they attained literary eminence through qualities or mind and
heart which we have learned to associate with the race from which they
sprang.
_Heinrich Heine: A Jew at Heart_
Heinrich Heine is the one writer of the first rank that Germany can
boast between the death of Goethe in 1832 and the advent of the
younger generation of dramatists, Sudermann, Hauptmann, and the rest,
sixty years later. To free himself from such a limitation as his
Jewish birth seemed to him to be, and with the more specific object,
it is said, of securing a government position in Prussia, Heine
allowed himself to become a convert to Christianity. "Judaism," he
said, "is not a religion; it is a misfortune." His conversion,
however, failed to profit him. He lost the fellowship of his own
people, and was contemptuously called "the Jew" by his enemies. In a
sense, the designation was entirely just. A Jew at heart Heine
remained to the day of his death. On his death bed, speaking of the
Jews he said: "Queer people this! Downtrodden for thousands of years,
weeping always, suffering always, abandoned always by its God, yet
clinging to him tenaciously, loyally, as no other under the sun. Oh,
if martyrdom, patience, and faith in spite of trial can confer a
patent of nobility, then this people is noble beyond any other. It
would have been absurd and petty if, as people accuse me, I had been
ashamed of being a Jew."
Not only was Heine a Jew in his instinctive racial sympathies, but his
work bears the indelible impress of Judaism. It is a distinctively
Jewish product. In it appear the buoyancy of spirit which sustained
him under suffering that would have crushed a less resilient temper;
the intellectual arrogance; the proneness to censure rather than to
commend; and especially the excessive self-consciousness;--all these
distinctively Jewish traits were in him exaggerated and helped to make
his work what it was. It is his self-consciousness, in particular,
that made his _Buch der Lieder_ his best production. In that
remarkable collection of lyrics Heine appears at his best, because the
ability to compose songs that are the spontaneous utterance of
emotion, at one and the same time personal and representative, is a
Hebrew heritage. The Hebrew genius was essentially lyric, rather than
epic or dramatic; and in consequence, the lyrics of ancient Hebrew
literature are its chief glory. In proof of this, we have but to
recall the dirges and triumph songs, the reflective lyrics, and the
liturgical hymns that compose the collection we know as the Psalms.
The excellence of both the old Hebrew lyrics and of Heine's Lieder is
to be found in the extraordinary subjectivity of the Hebrew
temper--the racial fondness for impassioned, yet artistic,
self-expression.
Yet Heine's Jewish traits are evident not only in the subjectivity of
his lyrics, but in the new and richer character that he gave to the
German Lied. This, hitherto vague and dreamy, became in his hands
startlingly concrete and definite. And this is true even when he
expresses the most subtle feelings. Always the most evanescent
_Stimmung_, not less than moods more primitively simple, find
expression in metaphors so sensuously material as to recall Solomon's
Song. Compare a typical lyric of Heine, such as the following:
Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne
Die liebt' ich alle in Liebeswonne,
Ich lieb' sie nicht mehr, ich liebe allein
Die Kleine, die Feine, die Reine, die Eine;
Sie selber, aller Liebe Bronne,
Ist Rose und Lilie und Taube und Sonne
with the love lyric sung by one of Israel's nameless singers:
Behold thou art fair, my love;
Behold thou art fair;
Thine eyes are as doves.
Behold thou art fair, my beloved
Yea, thou art pleasant:
And our couch is green.
The beams of our house are cedars,
And our rafters are firs.
I am a rose of Sharon,
A lily of the valleys.
As a lily among thorns,
So is my love among the daughters.[C]
Even so brief a comparison may illustrate, though it may not prove,
that for the ultimate source of Heine's Oriental exuberance and
materialization, so new to German literature, we must look in Jewish
not in European culture.
_The Spiritual Depth of Heine_
Perhaps because Heine was in spirit an Oriental, the Germans never
have known exactly what to make of him. Professor Francke says
(_History of German Literature_, p. 526) that Heine "produced hardly a
single poem which fathoms the depths of life." This assertion seems
scarcely defensible in view of such poems as the following:
Wo wird einst des Wandermüden
Letzte Ruhestatte sein?
Unter Palmen in dem Süden?
Unter Linden an dem Rhein?
Werd' ich wo in einer Wüste
Eingescharrt von fremder Hand?
Oder ruh' ich an der Küste
Eines Meeres in dem Sand?
Immerhin! Mich wird umgeben
Gotteshimmel, dort wie hier,
Und als Todtenlampen schweben
Nachts die Sterne über mir.
To find an equally beautiful expression of faith in God as a universal
spiritual presence that transcends all space relations, we must go
back to the anonymous Jewish poet who wrote the psalm in which occur
the lines:
"Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
And whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me,
And the light about me shall be night;
Even the darkness hideth me not from thee;
But the night shineth as the day.
For the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."
As a matter of fact, both poems are to be accounted for as equally the
product of a rarely gifted people--a people with a unique genius for
religion.[D]
_Disraeli and His Oriental Imagination_
Benjamin Disraeli belonged to a family who left Spain in the fifteenth
century to avoid the horrors of the Inquisition. Upon their escape, in
gratitude to the God of Jacob who had sustained them through unheard
of trials, they adopted the name Disraeli, in order that their race
might be forever recognized. Of such a family Benjamin Disraeli was a
worthy representative. He never was ashamed of his race. On the
contrary, he gloried in it, and lost no opportunity to put forth the
claim of his people to be the true aristocracy of the earth. "Has not
the Jew the oldest blood and the finest genius of the world?" he asks.
And again, in one of his books (_Tancred_, 1847), he says, "The Jews
are of the purest race; the chosen people; they are the aristocracy of
nature."
It is Disraeli's Jewish characteristics that have bewildered and
sometimes offended his critics. He has been charged with insincerity
because he was so clever, and because he wrote with a kind of Oriental
exuberance that was to him entirely natural and a part of his Jewish
heritage. Gilfillan is the only critic, so far as I know, who has
recognized that Disraeli's excellences, and his defects as well, were
racial rather than individual. Speaking of his Oriental fancy and
cleverness, Gilfillan says: "Disraeli has a fine fancy, soaring up at
intervals into high imagination, and making him a genuine child of
that nation from whom came forth the loftiest, richest, and most
impassioned songs the earth has ever witnessed--the nation of Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Solomon, and Job. He has little humor, but a vast deal of
diamond-pointed wit."[E]
_Disraeli's Wit: A Purely Jewish Product_
Disraeli's wit, which made him so many enemies, is a purely Jewish
product. It is satiric. Now satire was the form taken by Jewish wit in
the Middle Ages as a result of the hard conditions under which the
Jews lived. As one modern Jew has said, "The Jews seized the weapon of
wit, since they were interdicted the use of every other weapon." With
every door closed in hostility against them, there was little they
could do but laugh with bitter irony at their fate, and with savage
satire at their oppressors. With such an ancestry as this behind him,
it is not to be wondered at that Disraeli's wit is scornful, and that
he excelled in personal satire and invective. It was never, however,
unprovoked. Disraeli never indulged in personal satire or invective
except in his own defence. For example, his mockingly ironical reply
to the attack of a member of the House of Commons named Roebuck, which
was one of the most effective rejoinders Disraeli ever made, was in
answer to a most virulent arraignment of his political motives. "I
have always felt," he said, "that in this world you must bear a great
deal, and that even in this indulgent, though dignified, assembly,
where we endeavor so far as possible to carry on public affairs
without any unnecessary acerbity--still we must occasionally submit to
some things which the rules of this house do not permit. I could, no
doubt, have vindicated my character; but that would only have made the
honorable member from Bath speak once or twice more, and really I have
never any wish to hear him. I have had the most corrupt motives
imputed to me. But I know how true it is that a tree must produce its
fruit--that a crab-tree will bring forth crab apples, and that a man
of meagre and acid mind, who writes a pamphlet or makes a speech, must
make a meagre and acid pamphlet or a poor and sour speech. Let things,
then, take their course."
_Disraeli's Fondness for Allegory_
Another striking peculiarity of Disraeli was his fondness for veiled
allusion. Nearly all of his most popular novels--and this was _one_ of
the main reasons for their phenomenal popularity--were thinly veiled
representations of Disraeli's own contemporaries, who were easily
recognizable by the reading public. Take, for instance, the admirable
burlesque entitled _Ixion in Heaven_, where the author tells how
Ixion, king of Thessaly, having fallen into disrepute on earth, was
taken up into heaven by Jupiter and feasted by the gods. Here Jupiter
is really George the Fourth and Apollo is the poet Byron. The latter's
pose of gloomy misanthropy, as well as his habit of fasting to keep
from growing fat, are admirably satirized in the following dialogue:
"You eat nothing, Apollo," said Ceres.
"Nor drink," said Neptune.
"To eat, to drink, what is it but to live; and what is life but
death. . . . I refresh myself now only with soda-water and biscuits.
Ganymede, bring some."
Now this fondness for veiled allusion is distinctly a Hebrew
characteristic. The Arabs today have a saying, "as fond of a veiled
allusion as a Hebrew." This has always been a Hebrew trait. I suppose
no literature of any people consists so largely of allegory, in
proportion to its bulk, as does the Hebrew. In proof of this
assertion, one needs but to allude to the vogue in post-exilic Judaism
of the Apocalypse, in which contemporary history was presented in the
form of allegory, and to the Rabbinical fondness for the allegorical
interpretation of the Scriptures. So it would not be difficult to show
that not only these qualities I have mentioned, but all the qualities
that made Disraeli admired or feared were his by virtue of his Jewish
inheritance.
_Zangwill's Prophetic Spirit in "The War God"_
Israel Zangwill knows the Jews, not as George Eliot did, through a
process of philosophic induction, but at first hand, because he is a
Jew by birth and breeding. He, unlike Heine, has never tried to
conceal the fact that he is a Jew. In Israel Zangwill all the
tenderness and sympathy, all the tenacity, the suppleness and
adaptability, and it may be added, the baffling inconsistencies of his
race appear.
Inconsistent he certainly is. He has been an ardent Zionist, and in
his story "Transitional" (from _They That Walk in Darkness_) he seems
to hold that assimilation will never solve the Jewish problem; yet in
_The Melting Pot_ he obviously regards assimilation as the inevitable
and desirable end of Judaism.
In spite of his inconsistencies, Zangwill is one in whom the ancient
ideals of Israel live again. It is in the spirit of the prophets that
he wrote _The War God_ (1912). This play, with all its faults as an
acting drama, is nevertheless a remarkable document, voicing, as it
does, on the very eve of the breaking down of European civilization,
the old prophetic protest against the brutality and waste of war.
This protest dates back to at least the ninth century B.C. It may not
be generally known that it was a Hebrew prophet who first advocated
the humane treatment of prisoners of war. The story is told in the
Second Book of Kings that when a band of marauding Syrians were
corralled in Samaria, the "king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he
saw them, 'My father, shall I smite them? Shall I smite them?' And he
answered, 'Thou shalt not smite them: wouldst thou smite those whom
thou has taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? Set bread and
water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their
master.' And he prepared great provision for them: and when they had
eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. So
the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel" (2 Kings
6:1-23). Again, Amos, in the eighth century, in his arraignment of the
sins of the nations, pronounces God's severest judgments upon
Damascus, Edom, Ammon, and Moab for their cruelty in war. The charge
against Edom, for example, is that "he did pursue his brother with the
sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually,
and he kept his wrath forever." And the later prophets' visions of the
Messianic age include as the brightest feature of that wished-for time
the prediction that then "the nations shall not learn war any more."
Of such a spirit Mr. Zangwill's play _The War God_ is an expression.
It is a satire upon militarism, but a satire without exaggeration. The
arguments employed to justify the maintenance of a huge army and navy
are not a whit more absurd than the fallacies which have been put
forth for a generation by those who would justify the maintenance of
armaments. These so-called arguments are presented by "the Chancellor"
who represents Bismarck, and by the king of Gothia, in whom we may
easily recognize the Russian Czar. "Dominance," roars the
Chancellor,--
"There rings the password of the universe.
Who knows it, he is free of every camp.
Equality, your level, endless cornfield,
However fat and fair and golden-stalked,
Would set us pining for the snow-topped peaks
And barren glaciers. Life is fight, thank God!
"Take war away and men would sink to molluscs,
Limpets that wait the tide to wash them food.
The nations would grow foul with lazy feeling.
What heaven loves is breeds with life a-tingle,
Swift-gliding, flashing, darting death at rivals,
Men fearing God and with no other fear.
Thus were the Albans, now the turn is ours
To be the chosen people of Jehovah."
And the King endorses such sentiments with the sage observation,
"No doubt we must protect our growing commerce."
In opposition to such militarists stands Count Frithiof, in whom we
may easily see the lineaments of Tolstoi. His motto is, "Resist not
evil, but reform yourself." In answer to the Chancellor's declaration,
"To safeguard peace, we must prepare for war," he replies,
"I know that maxim; it was forged in hell.
This wealth of ships and guns inflames the vulgar
And makes the very war it guards against.
How often, as the mighty master said, the sight
Of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done."
_A Voice for Social Justice_
Quite outside the dramatic action of the play stands the Jew, Blum,
the Chancellor's secretary. Through his astuteness in managing the
Chancellor, he has hitherto moulded public policy according to his own
will. Finally, near the end of the play, he denounces Christian
civilization in a passage worthy of quotation:
"Man wins the realm of air and might have been
An eagle with a soul; you make him harpy,
More murderous than dragons of the ooze.
I tell you, we outsiders see the game,
We Jews, who bidden rise beyond the code
Of eye for eye, must rub both eyes to see
Not e'en eye-justice done in Christendom,
Whose cannon thunder 'gainst both God and Christ."
So might have spoken one of the ancient prophets of his race. Indeed
Amos, amid the orgies of the autumn festival at Bethel, did speak in
the same spirit when he denounced the formal service of worshippers
who ignored the claims of social justice. "Seek good and not evil,"
cries Amos, "that ye may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts,
shall be with you, as ye say. Hate the evil, and love the good, and
establish judgment (justice) in the gate. It may be that the Lord God
of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph."
So it is evident that even the literary work of modern Jews can be
understood and appreciated only as an expression of the
characteristics of the Jewish race. In this modern Jewish literature
appears the exuberance, the emotional intensity, and the love of
social justice that were characteristic also of ancient Hebrew
literature as written by prophet, priest, and sage.
_The Role of Israel in Human Emancipation_
Far greater, however, than the work of these three authors, far
greater, indeed, than Israel's literature as a whole, of which they
are a part, is the life of this people, of which their literature is
the record. We speak of a nation's literature as great if it possesses
three or four tragedies that are classics. _Hamlet_, _Othello_,
_Macbeth_ and _King Lear_ would, for example, be sufficient to justify
the title "great" as applied to English literature. What shall we say,
then, as some one has suggested, of this people who for more than
twenty centuries have lived a tragedy more pathetic than any the
world's literature can show? Job has always seemed to me a type of the
Jewish race. We recall that majestic picture in the thirty-first
chapter, where Job stands up on his ash-mound, robbed of his wealth,
bereaved of his children, deserted by his wife, suffering the agonies
of a loathsome and incurable disease, and cast off, as it seems to
him, by the very God in whom he trusted, and yet, in the face of
poverty, and bereavement, and mortal pain, and bewildered isolation,
asserts his own unchanged and unalterable belief that righteousness is
salvation.
Similarly Israel, through the long centuries of its tragic history,
has stood on the ash-mound of its national humiliation. Plundered,
vilified, and persecuted, a nation of sorrows, and acquainted with
grief, from whom men have hid their faces in aversion not concealed,
Israel has yet clung with a grip that nothing could weaken nor
dislodge to the fundamental idea that religion--the right relation of
man to God--was not creed nor ritual, but simply doing justly, loving
mercy, and walking humbly with God.
We have been looking backward at the literary accomplishment of three
Jewish men of genius. It is, I believe, a fault of modern Judaism to
look backward instead of forward, as if the glory of Israel had indeed
departed, and as if nothing were left but to look back with pride and
regret upon what has passed like a dream away. But I believe Jews may
look forward now with confident hope toward the years that are to be.
That Israel has completely played its role--that it has finished its
service to the world--cannot for a moment entertain. Surely no one who
believes in a philosophy of history, who sees in human history more
than a meaningless and unrelated succession of events, can think that
Israel has been preserved through centuries of discipline for no end
whatever. On the contrary, we must believe that Israel has still a
mission. What that mission is to be we cannot now foretell. We of this
generation are looking upon the breaking down of European
civilization. Some of us hope and expect that when the smoke of battle
has cleared away there will gradually be built up a new and better
social order. In this constructive work of rebuilding, who is better
fitted to take a prominent part than the Jew, with his noble heritage
of ideals, his passion for social justice? Jews may well rejoice as
they reflect upon what individual members of their race have through
literature contributed to the emancipation of the human spirit. And
they may rejoice also in the hope of what Israel may yet accomplish in
the years that are to be.
[Illustration: Signature: Edward Chauncey Baldwin]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote C: _Song of Songs_, 1:15-2:2.]
[Footnote D: An adequate and sympathetic treatment of Heine's work as
a Jewish poet may be found in _Heinrich Heine als Dichter Judentums_
von Georg J. Plotke (Dresden, 1913).]
[Footnote E: George Gilfillan, _Third Gallery of Literary Portraits_,
p. 360.]
[_The Second in a Series of Sketches of Jewish Worthies_]
Jochanan ben Zakkai
BY ABRAHAM M. SIMON
[Illustration: _ABRAHAM M. SIMON (born in Kalvaria, Russian-Poland, in
1886; came to America in 1904) received his A.B. with honors from
Harvard College in 1910, and his M.A. from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1911. During 1910-11 he was a Fellow in the Dropsie
College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning of Philadelphia, and he spent
the summer of 1911 at the Bodleian Library at Oxford and the
Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, reading and copying Arabic
manuscripts. In 1913 he won his Ph.D. in Semitics at the University of
Pennsylvania. Mr. Simon was one of the original members of the Harvard
Menorah Society, and read a Hebrew poem_ Ner Yisrael (_"The Light of
Israel"_) _at the dedicatory exercises of the Society._]
The Jewish commonwealth was dissolved; the Jewish nation disrupted.
Jerusalem was taken; the Temple had become a ruin. The last vestige of
independence seemed to have been wiped out. All who had taken up arms
were either dead, or enslaved, or banished. The infuriated Roman
conquerors had spared neither the women nor the children. It seemed as
if Judaism had breathed her last in that terrible year 70. Sadduceeism
was annihilated; the Zealots were exterminated; the austere sentiment
of the Pharisees, continually looking back to ancient customs and
institutions, tried to assert itself. It is no longer permitted, they
announced, to eat meat or drink wine, now that the Temple has fallen,
because animals can no longer be sacrificed on the holy altars, nor
wine offered there as a drink-offering. By such asceticism, these
Pharisees of the strict school would have caused the destruction of
Judaism. But there was a Hillelite still alive--a man who had
inherited the spirit of Hillel, who rated conviction higher than
ceremony, and consulted the times more than the ancient forms. It was
he who kept the remnants together in close union, and did not permit
the spirit to vanish, although the material bond was broken. This
Hillelite was Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai.
_The Disciple and Favorite of Hillel_
Of the eighty disciples moulded by the great Hillel to continue his
policy, Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai was especially distinguished. Before
his death, Hillel is said to have designated Jochanan as "the father
of wisdom," and "the father of the coming generation." Tradition
divides Jochanan's life, like Hillel's, into three periods of forty
years each. The first forty years were spent in mercantile pursuits;
in the second he studied; and in the third he taught and managed the
affairs of the Jewish spiritual community.
Even before the destruction of Jerusalem, Jochanan's fame had spread
far and wide. He was a member of the Synhedrion and taught the holy
law within the shadow of the Temple. His school was called the "Great
House," and was the scene of many incidents which formed the subjects
for anecdote and legend. He was the first man who successfully
combatted the Sadducees, and who knew how to refute their arguments,
which were partly religious and partly juridical. But Jochanan's great
fame was chiefly due to the influence which he afterwards exercised at
Jabneh.
_Jochanan's Escape from Jerusalem_
Owing to his peaceful character, Rabbi Jochanan had joined the party
of peace when the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, and on several
occasions urged the nation, and in particular his nephew, ben Betiach,
the leader of the Zealots, to surrender the city. "Why do you desire
to destroy the city, and give up the Temple to the flames?" said he to
the leaders of the revolution. But his well meant admonitions were
disregarded by the "war party." When he saw the end approaching, and
recognized that all was lost, he determined to leave the doomed city.
He counselled with his foremost disciples, Eliezer ben Hyrkanos,
Joshua ben Chananja and others. It was decided that Rabbi Jochanan
should leave the city, go to the Roman general, and plead for those
people who had no share in the rebellion. But to depart from the city
was extremely dangerous, as the Zealots kept up a constant watch and
slew all who attempted to leave. Rabbi Jochanan, therefore, caused a
rumor to be spread of his sudden sickness and later of his death.
Having been placed in a coffin he was carried to the city gates, at
the hour of sunset, by his pupils Eliezer and Joshua. When the funeral
procession approached, it was stopped at the gate within.
"Whose body do you carry here?" asked the Hebrew guard.
"We are carrying the crown of Israel, the body of our master, Rabbi
Jochanan ben Zakkai," they answered in tears.
The captain of the guards was affected.
"Open the gates, men, and let them pass," the captain ordered.
"Are you sure, captain, that Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai is dead?"
exclaimed one of the soldiers. "Maybe they are taking away a living
traitor. I will make sure that he is dead."
He raised his dagger to strike at the shrouded form of the Rabbi.
"Hold, soldier!" cried the captain; "to dishonor the body of the saint
would be a sin for which all Israel would have to atone. Open the
gates and let them pass in peace."
The fanatic reluctantly desisted; the gate was opened and the
procession passed through.
Vespasian received the fugitive in a friendly manner, the more since,
like Josephus, Jochanan prophesied imperial honors for the general.
Asked to name the favor he desired, Rabbi Jochanan, instead of seeking
personal gain, requested permission to establish a school at Jabneh
(or, as the place is sometimes called, Jamnia), where he could
continue to give his lectures to his disciples. The request was
granted, and thereupon Jochanan settled with his disciples in Jabneh,
there to await the issue of events.
What could Vespasian have thought of Rabbi Jochanan when he made his
request? Any one else bearing such prophecies might have asked for
gold, honor, great political preferments, while this Hebrew sage asked
simply for a corner where he could study undisturbed. How could the
Hebrew nation exist when the leaders, their great men, lacked
ambition? Little did Vespasian dream that his granting of the Rabbi's
modest request would undo the whole work of the Roman conquest.
_The Fall of the Temple: Jabneh Succeeds Jerusalem_
In Jabneh, surrounded by his disciples, Rabbi Jochanan received the
terrible news of the fall of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple.
Although he had foreseen the calamity, yet the news crushed the soul
of the great master. He and his disciples tore their garments and for
seven days wept and mourned in sackcloth and ashes. Jochanan, however,
did not despair, for he recognized the truth that Judaism was not
indissolubly bound with its Temple and its altar. He saw a new
spiritual Temple emerge from the ruins and smoke of the old one; he
beheld Judaism rising to a higher plane, offering faith, love, truth
and happiness to all humanity. He comforted his colleagues and
disciples by reminding them that Judaism still existed. "My children,"
he said, "weep not, and dry your tears; the Romans have destroyed the
material Temple, but the true altar of God, the true place of
forgiveness, they could not destroy, and it is with us yet. Would you
know where? Behold, in the homes of the poor, there is the altar;
love, charity, mercy, and justice are the offerings, the sweet incense
which pleases the Lord more than any sacrifice, as it is written: For
I take pleasure in mercy and not in burnt offerings." The next step
taken by Rabbi Jochanan and his friends was to convoke a Synhedrion at
Jabneh, of which he was at once chosen president. With no opposition,
Jabneh took the place of Jerusalem, and became the religious national
center for the dispersed community. It enjoyed the same religious
privileges as Jerusalem. All the important functions of the
Synhedrion, by which it exercised a judicial and uniting power over
the distant congregations, proceeded from Jabneh.
Rabbi Jochanan's motto was: "If thou hast learnt much Torah, ascribe
not any merit to thyself, for thereunto wast thou created." He found
his real calling in the study of the Law. His knowledge was spoken of
reverently as though it included the whole cycle of Jewish learning.
And not only the Law but many languages of the Gentiles occupied the
active mind of Rabbi Jochanan. The following description of him is
handed down to us by tradition: "He had never been known to engage in
any profane conversation. He had always been the first to enter the
Academy. He never allowed himself, wittingly or unwittingly, to be
overtaken by sleep while in the Academy. He had never gone a distance
of four cubits without meditating on the Torah and without
phylacteries. No one ever found him engaged in anything but study. He
always lectured in person to his pupils. He never taught anything
which he did not hear from his masters. He had never been heard to say
that it was time to leave the Academy." He advised a certain family in
Jerusalem, the members of which died young, to occupy itself with the
study of the Torah, so as to mitigate the curse of dying in the prime
of life.
_Rabbi Jochanan as Teacher and Commentator_
Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai may be designated as the representative of
Halachic Judaism, founded by the great master Hillel, rather than as
an originator or independent thinker. Hillel, the most respected of
all the teachers of the Law, had given to Judaism a special garb and
form. He had drawn the Law from the midst of contending sects into the
quiet precincts of the Beth-Hamidrash, and labored to bring into
harmony those precepts which were apparently opposed to one another in
the Law. Rabbi Jochanan employed and developed Hillel's method. Like
Hillel, he was also liberal in his general views. Thus he seems to
have frequently engaged in discussions with heathens. And such was his
general affability and courtesy to all that no man was ever known to
have anticipated his salutations. The Haggadic tradition connects
numerous and various sayings with the name of Rabbi Jochanan. The
Haggadah was a peculiarly fascinating branch of study. Abounding in
brilliant sallies, displays of ingenuity, and wonderful stories, it
gave special scope for the cleverness and the rich imagination of the
lecturers. By it a Halachah might be illustrated, or a passage of
Scripture commented upon in a novel fashion. Without binding himself
to any strict exegetical principles, the Haggadist would bring almost
anything out of the text, and interweave his comment with legends. At
the same time, the Haggadah remained only the personal saying of the
individual teacher, and its value depended upon his learning and
reputation, or upon the names which he could quote in support of his
statements.
In this manner Rabbi Jochanan explained many laws and rendered them
comprehensible, when they seemed obscure or extraordinary. Rabbi
Jochanan's view of piety corresponded with his teaching that Job's
piety was not based on the love of God, but on the fear of God. To
love God; to serve Him out of love and not out of fear; to study the
law continually, and to have a good heart--these were the essentials
of a pious man. He once saw the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion
picking up a scanty nourishment of barley-corn from among the hoofs of
the horses of the enemy. When he recognized the woman, he broke out in
tears and told his companion how he had signed her marriage contract
as a witness when her father gave her one million golden dinars,
besides the wealth she received from her father-in-law. Then the old
sage exclaimed: "Unhappy nation, you would not serve God, therefore
you must serve your enemies; you would not offer half a shekel for the
Temple, therefore you must pay thirty times as much to the
institutions of your conquerors; you refused to keep the woods and
paths in order for the pilgrims, therefore you must build roads and
bridges for the Roman soldiers; and in you is fulfilled the prophecy:
Because thou servest not the Lord with joyfulness, and with gladness
of heart, by reason of abundance of all things, therefore shalt thou
serve thy enemies, which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger
and in thirst and in nakedness and in want of all things."
_Jochanan's Spirit in Affliction and in Death_
Rabbi Jochanan had domestic as well as national troubles. A dearly
beloved son was taken from him by death, and the soul of the father
was filled with grief. His five famous scholars came to offer sympathy
and consolation. One recalled the sorrow that Adam had endured when he
looked at the body of his murdered son. Another one urged the example
of Job; a third, that of Aaron, the brother of Moses; a fourth, that
of David, King of Israel.
"My sons," said the stricken father, "how can the sufferings of others
alleviate my sorrow?" But Eliezer ben Aroch, the most famous of his
scholars, then spoke to him and said:
"A certain man had a priceless jewel entrusted to him. He watched it
by day and by night for its safe keeping, but was always troubled by
the thought that he might lose it. When, therefore, the owner of the
jewel came to take it back, the man was happy, because he no longer
had to fear for the safety of the precious jewel. Even so, dear
master, thou shouldst rejoice when thou hast given thy son to God, who
trusted thee with him, since thou hast returned him in his innocence
as thou didst first receive him."
"My son," said the master, "thou hast truly comforted me."
When Rabbi Jochanan was nigh to death, his colleagues and disciples
gathered round him in sorrow and trembling.
"Master, Light of Israel!" they exclaimed. "Why weepest thou?"
And the master answered: "If they were about to lead me before a king
of flesh and blood, who today is and tomorrow is in the grave--if he
were wroth with me, his wrath were not eternal; if he should put me in
chains, his chains were not eternal; if he should put me to death,
that death would not be eternal; I might appease him with words or
bribe him with gifts. But now they are about to lead me before the
King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, who lives and remains
through all eternity. If He is wroth with me, His wrath is eternal; if
He casts me into chains, His chains are eternal; if He puts me to
death, it is eternal death; Him no words can appease, no gifts soften.
And further, there are two ways--one to hell, one to Paradise; and I
know not which way they will lead me. Is there not cause for tears?"
Asked to give his disciples a last blessing, he told them:
"Fear God even as ye fear men."
His disciples seemed disappointed, whereupon he added:
"He who would commit a sin first looks around to discover whether any
man sees him; so take ye heed that God's all seeing eye see not the
sinful thought in your heart."
His death occurred only a few years after the destruction of the
Temple. But in that short time he saved Judaism, and the impress he
left upon Israel is evident from the famous dictum of the Talmud:
"With the death of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai the light of wisdom was
quenched." And many still believe that none like him--scholar and
diplomat--has since arisen in Israel.
[Illustration: Signature: Abraham M. Simon]
EDITORS' NOTE.--_The first sketch in this series on
Jewish Worthies, Dr. Moses Hyamson's study of
"Golden-Rule Hillel," appeared in our April number.
The third in the series will be on Rabbi Akiba._
Zionism: A Menorah Prize Essay
BY MARVIN M. LOWENTHAL
(_Concluded_)
[Sidenote: _This Essay was awarded the Menorah Prize at the University
of Wisconsin last year. In the first part, printed in our April issue,
the author reviews the status of the Jews in medieval Europe and
describes the effects upon the Jews of the razing of the Ghetto walls
and the play of the modern forces of Emancipation, Enlightenment,
Nationalism, and Anti-Semitism. In the situation resulting, the author
distinguishes between the "Jewish problem" ("an immediate concrete
maladjustment where life and property are imperiled"), existing
chiefly in Eastern Europe, and the "Jewish position" ("a social,
cultural, or spiritual disharmony or repression"), prevailing in
Western Europe and America. After rejecting Reform Judaism and the
"palliative measures" of philanthropy as answers to the situation, the
author proceeds in this concluding instalment to a consideration of
the third alternative, namely, "re-establishment of a national center
where, perhaps not the entire people, but a remnant can be saved."_]
That the effort to ameliorate the conditions through charity,
and the effort to assimilate and yet keep the essentials apart,
are ineffectual has been shown. There remains the third
possibility--Zionism. To a consideration of its theoretic background
this section will be devoted. Although a natural commingling is
unavoidable, Zionism presents three distinguishable aspects--as (1) a
creative vision, (2) a solution, (3) a fulfillment.
_The National Ideal_
In its first aspect, Zionism applies the sauce of the proverbial goose
to the proverbial gander. Nationalism is the partial cause, or at
least the excuse, for making the modern position of the Jew in Europe
untenable; nationalism for the Jew becomes a means of evacuating the
position. Europe has intimated to the Jew that it can get along
without him; the Jew now proposes to show that he can get along
without Europe. Nationalism is nothing new to the Jew; from the final
dispersion in 70 C. E., through the universalism of the Roman Empire
and later of the Roman Church, the national ideal, as indicated in our
introduction, was religiously preserved; but its modern practical form
first arose among the leaders of the Chovevei Zion movement in the
middle of the last century. The "Rom und Jerusalem" of Moses Hess
(1862), "Die Verjüngen des Jüdischen Stammes" of Graetz, the Jewish
historian (1864), the "Hashachar" of Smolenskin (1869), the
"Auto-Emancipation" of Dr. Leo Pinsker (1882) clearly foreshadowed
the final and effective expression of political Zionism--namely, "The
Jewish State," published by Herzl in 1896.
_The Vision of a Jewish State_
Basing its structure on the formulas of the prophets,[1] who
proclaimed that polity was indispensable for effecting the true
mission of Israel--for the realization of the religious, social, or
ethical ideal; conceiving Israel, as did Reform Judaism, to be its own
Messiah, not fated, however, to remain a minutely scattered leaven
among nations who condemned or destroyed it, but destined according to
the prophetic promise to re-establish itself upon Zion;[2] convinced
that a true assimilating of the fruits of emancipation in
contradistinction to an imitating of Gentile culture could only be
effected by an emancipation from within, by an auto-emancipation;[3]
the vision of a Jewish State grew into outline. To the consummation of
the picture, a wealth of economic, scientific, and cultural
inspiration has been devoted. Herzl and his predecessors selected the
stone which had been rejected by the philanthropists and the earnest,
but mistaken, builders of Reform Judaism in their efforts to create a
fit habitation for the European Jew; and lo! it has become the chief
corner-stone.
To assure the foundation, to justify the conception of a Jewish State,
a number of powerful arguments other than above indicated have been
brought to bear. The problem of race was attacked,[4] and a consequent
demolition of the basis of Reform Judaism undertaken, whereby the
racial identity of the Jew became demonstrated and a comparative
racial purity established. In turn, the claim of the anti-Semites that
the Jewish race indeed existed, but to the peril of Western
civilization, received scientific annihilation. At the most, the Aryan
race was proclaimed a myth and Teutonic superiority a lie;[5] at the
least, a justification of the Jewish race was achieved upon its
contribution to civilization: in metaphysics, of the vision of reality
in flux; in morals, the conception of the value of the individual; in
religion, the conception of Jehovah as a moral-arbiter; in culture, a
literature of basic inspiration for the western world.[6]
_The Moral Right of the Jewish Race to Survival_
That this race, definable in identity and valuable in content, is
being either crushed by force or dissipated by freedom, raises on one
hand the next question for creative Zionism, and constitutes on the
other the problem which Zionism in its aspect as a "solution" assails.
The question: Has this race, facing destruction, a moral right to
survival? is in the instinctive, Darwinian sense unnecessary. Every
race has a right to survive if it can prove its right by surviving;
however, like most evolutionary thinking, this is tautological.
Nevertheless, an affirmative answer[7] has been advanced, based on the
conception of values recognized since Aristotle; whereby was
demonstrated the intrinsic value of the Jews as witnessed by their
virility and capacity for an intelligent enjoyment of life, which
their social customs, religious ideals, and cultural ethos have
created for them, and which have won for them the title "_Am Olam_,"
the perpetual people; and their instrumental value in the preservation
and enrichment of life for the Western world at large, as witnessed by
their contributions to civilization outlined above.
To the final question: How may the destruction facing a race, worth
the saving, be averted? the Zionists, as already shown, answer: Let us
establish a Jewish State. It now remains to explain how this answer
can be made effective.
_The Program of the First Zionist Congress_
Although Herzl, like Pinsker, at first was indifferent as to the
location of the State, Palestine was decided upon at the First Zionist
Congress for the following practical reasons:[8]
1. Palestine is, of inhabitable and sufficiently uninhabited lands,
the nearest to Russia and Roumania, where the greatest number of Jews
are undergoing physical suffering.
2. It is not ruled by Christians, and penal discriminatory laws
against Jews are not there in force.
3. Conditions of Oriental life are in accord with the stage and
condition of life reached by Jews in Eastern Europe.
4. The country is already somewhat of a Jewish center.
5. Jews are more familiar with the language spoken there than with any
West European language.
6. Palestine for sentimental reasons has a power of attraction that
would operate practically upon Jews wishing to emigrate, and a power
of inspiration which would flower in equally practical works when once
Jews were established there.
Zionism, as a "solution," sets forth, in the program of this
Congress, four ways to achieve its object:[9]
1. To promote the settlement of Jewish agriculturalists,
handicraftsmen, industrialists, and professional men. This would offer
an asylum for the persecuted Jew and assure him of an independent
livelihood, and so simultaneously relieve suffering, starving
Jewry--the immediate phase of the _problem_--and afford a substantial
basis for the prosperity and ensuing civilization of the State.
2. To centralize the Jewish people by means of general institutions
agreeable to the laws of the land. By institutions are meant
banking-houses, schools, etc., which would promote the welfare of the
people and render the growth of a culture more unconstrained.
3. To strengthen Jewish national self-consciousness and national
sentiment;--this to be accomplished by the establishment of newspapers
and societies throughout the world, so as to secure the aid or
interest of the Jew who does not want to assimilate in behalf of a
national center, and offer a road of return to the Jew who has become
assimilated at the cost of his spiritual happiness.
4. To obtain the sanctions of Governments necessary for carrying out
the objects of Zionism. This demand for legal assurances, for a
charter if possible, distinguishes political Zionism in the matter of
means from the mere small-scale colonizing efforts of the
philanthropists and the Chovevei Zion societies, precisely as the very
conception of a State distinguishes it in the matter of ends. In the
words of Herzl, "We do not wish to smuggle in any settlers, and above
all, we do not wish to bring about any 'accomplished facts' without
preliminary agreement. We have absolutely no interest in bringing
about an economic strengthening of Turkey without a corresponding
compensation. The whole thing is to be accomplished according to the
simplest usage in the world: 'do ut des.' We Zionists think it more
foolish than noble to settle colonists without any legal and political
guarantees."[10]
_The Variant Views of Zionist Groups_
Beside the political Zionists, a large group can be distinguished as
Opportunist Zionists, the chief representative of whom is Israel
Zangwill,[11] who in his eagerness to relieve the Jewish _problem_ has
become impatient with the slow and seemingly fruitless political
progress, and who desires to lead his people to any vacant, habitable
territory rather than wait for a charter in Zion. Other leaders in the
movement, such as Ussischkin, contend that until the charter is
granted, colonization in Palestine should continue, both to satisfy
the Jewish demand for emigration and to give weight to the justice and
necessity for autonomy.
In sum, the establishing of Zion, while in process, will rescue the
sorely oppressed, magnetize and concentrate the interests of Jewry at
large, and force the issue of suicide or salvation upon the race; and
the establishment of the State, once accomplished, will rejuvenate a
people. "They shall revive as the grain and blossom as the vine; the
scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon." (Hosea 14.7). In the
Zionist vision, assured not by the prophecies, but by the achievements
of a glorious past, this new wine, ripening and enriching its flavor
in a cup that had long been bitter, will be partaken of by the
nations, Jew and Gentile. Jewish culture in its widest sense,
embracing the realization of ethical, social, and artistic ideals,
nourished by a people living again a homogeneous, autonomous, national
life free as it has not been for eighteen centuries from outward
pressure--a life imperative for the production of culture--will go
forth as a pure vintage, taking its place with the vintages of other
nations, to satisfy the soul in dry places and make strong the bones;
and over this new wine a new Kiddush may perhaps be spoken. The Reform
Jew, the "assimilated" Jew, who finds himself to-day in what we have
nominated a _position_, in a conscious or unconscious inspiration and
pride induced by the resurrection of a motherland, as the German in
America is inspired by his national unity in Europe, will indeed find
his soul satisfied in dry places, and can more generously and
effectively contribute to the welfare of the fatherland of which he is
a citizen. The Jew who walks in the darkness of a Russia, where his
situation is a _problem_ and where existence itself is threatened,
will discover in this reawakened motherland a hope and possibly a
material aid which will make strong his bones that he may endure until
emancipation.
_The Communistic Aims of the Social Zionists_
Under the stimulus of a new creative vision, many poets, practical or
otherwise, have brought their own tints to add to the rosy prospect,
and these we have designated to be Zionism as a "fulfillment." Just
prior to the birth of these United States, Thomas Paine, who in a few
respects was the Herzl of the new republic, rapturously exclaimed in
his pamphlet _Commonsense_: "We have it in our power to begin the
world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened
since the days of Noah!" Stimulated by the potentialities of an empty
country and a great race eager to reoccupy it, modern theorists have
likewise, and with some reason, discovered in Palestine a land of
promise.
Basing their faith in the inherent demand for social justice which
racial genius, as witnessed in the Deuteronomic experiment and the
whole social trend of the prophetic writings, has created as a
permanent characteristic of the Jew and which the injustice of
centuries has accentuated, a group of Jewish socialists have entered
the Zionist cause in the hope of establishing a form of the
communistic principle as a foundation for the new society. The
communistic ownership of land is particularly urged. Past experiments
of this nature--the Brook Farm and the French Commune as a small and a
large example--have failed partly for lack of scientific guidance and
sufficient exact knowledge of actual conditions, and partly because of
the social unfitness of the participants. Social Zionism, however, has
secured for its director an acknowledged authority in communistic
economics, Dr. Franz Oppenheimer of the University of Berlin; and it
is counting on the Jewish heritage of social instinct to furnish the
proper human material for its purpose. Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa,
who came down from his mountain in 750 B. C. to storm at the
capitalistic greed of Israel, raised the first plea in history for
social justice. The successful consummation of the prophet's ideal in
the new Israel would be a contribution to the world distinctly Hebraic
and possibly the most valuable of the modern Jew.
_The Yearning for a Spiritual Revival_
To Ahad Ha-'Am,[12] the leading writer of to-day in Hebrew, a
"spiritual revival" should be the desideratum of the Zionists.
Spiritual is of course not used in the restricted religious sense, but
as the opposite of material. Although Ahad Ha-'Am concedes the
establishment of a center in Palestine to be a necessity, he considers
it only a means to the end of an "awakening" of spiritual forces in
art, morals, and national consciousness among Jewry at large; and, to
hasten this end, he urges the establishment of a University, an
art-school, and bands of workers in the spirit--poets, painters, and
all manner of creators--for he conceives the Jews not to be a young
race who must climb from satisfying the needs of the belly to the
needs of the brain, but an old people who can and must satisfy both
demands together.[13]
Finally, the great mass of European Jewry, who weep on the Ninth of
Ab, who send their pittance to the Jews of the Holy City in order that
they may devote their days to lamenting at the old Wall, who pray each
Passover "next year at Jerusalem," and who treasure their little
casket of Palestinian earth, which some day will be placed over their
shroud, look to Zionism as a "fulfillment" in its literal, Biblical
meaning. Although the yearning for such a fulfillment may never be
satisfied, it constitutes the impelling force, the prime motive,
behind the people who are to settle once again in Canaan, and who are
the stuff of which the philosophers' dreams are to be made.
The opportunists who work for the day when the plowman shall overtake
the reaper, the politicals who plan that the house of Jacob may
possess its possessions, the culturals who behold upon the mountain
the feet of him who bringeth glad tidings, the socialists who strive
to draw righteousness and peace within kissing distance, and the
devout who pray that out of Zion shall go forth the Law, are all
intermingling composites of the Zionist dream. That the dream is not
in vain, there is no positive assurance; but somewhere it is written
that Palestine _is_ the Land of Promise.
_The Organization of Zionism_
Sophistication makes for sluggishness of action; and a sophisticated,
practical people, such as the Jews, surrounded by an equally
sophisticated world, have not marched upon Jerusalem with the
flag-flying alacrity of the Crusaders. However, their sophistication
has substituted for speed a broad measure of surety; and a summary of
the organization of the movement and the work accomplished within and
without Palestine gives promise that, if the will behind Zionism be
sustained, the Jews who wail at the Wall may profitably direct their
energies elsewhere.
The Zionist organization comprises all Jews who subscribe to the
Zionist program and pay the annual contribution, known as a shekel,
varying from 15 cents to 25 cents in different countries. The program
is that formulated at the First Zionist Congress (Basel, 1897): "to
obtain for the Jewish people a publicly recognized and legally assured
home in Palestine." The members are grouped in local societies which,
in turn, are organized into national federations, to be found at
present in Argentina, Belgium, Bukowina, Bulgaria, Canada,
Croatia-Slavonia-Herzegovina, Egypt, England, France, Galicia,
Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Roumania, Russia, South Africa,
Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States. Unfederated societies
exist in Palestine, Morocco, Servia, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, China,
Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.[14] In short, the atlas is
practically exhausted. With a representation proportional to the
number of shekel-payers, a Congress convenes bi-annually in a central
European city (usually Basel), resolves, and prosecutes all work
incumbent upon the furtherance of Zionist purpose. The executive
power, although formerly invested in a president, is now exercised,
since the death of Herzl (1904) and the resignation of Wolffsohn, by a
commission of five, acting as the head of a committee of twenty-five,
who constitute a permanent body meeting at intervals between the
sessions of Congress.[15] The Congress itself is divided into
party-groups, based on policy, and representative of the different
theoretic elements that guide the movement.
The original Government party, which stood shoulder to Herzl in his
brilliant but unsuccessful diplomatic schemes to secure a charter from
the Sultan, upon the overthrow of the autocracy in Turkey (1908), has
abandoned purely political Zionism, for the expedient reason that the
Young Turk government has naturally been reticent in the granting of
broad concessions. Political Zionism, of which Max Nordau and David
Wolffsohn[F] are the leading protagonists, has through the accidents
of Turkish politics been rendered ineffective; and the actual work of
Zionism rests now upon the policies of the Opportunist wing, although
the creation of a State, autonomous in as great a degree as possible,
is the cardinal aim of the Zionists, and must be, in order to
distinguish the movement from a large-scale philanthropy.[16]
_Parties in Zionism_
The Opportunists were divided into two groups--the followers of
Zangwill who urged immediate colonization anywhere, and the Ziyyone
Zionists (Zionists toward Zion) who favored immediate settlement in
Palestine. The first party broke from the Zionist movement at the
Seventh Congress, instituted the Jewish Territorial Organization
(ITO), and have vainly devoted their energies toward securing lands in
North, East, and West Africa, Mesapotamia, and Australia.[17] The
Ziyyone Zionists, however, possess the controlling vote, and in the
last Congress (1913) annulled the Basel program, temporarily at least,
by securing from the Congress a recognition of the work of settlement
in Palestine as the primary task.[18]
Socialistic Zionism is represented by the Po'ale Zion, a small but
vigorous group, who are endeavoring to secure at least the adoption of
the communistic ownership of land in the pursuance of the Opportunist
program.
Dr. Franz Oppenheimer, lecturer in economics at the University of
Berlin, has recently issued a pamphlet disclosing the success of the
Merchavia Colony, a co-operative settlement near Nazareth, and
demonstrating that the only practical method of achieving large-scale
colonization is by this means.[19]
Strong in numbers and in influence, the Mizrachi party represents the
orthodox wing of Jewry, who "believe a faithful adherence to the Torah
and Tradition in all matters pertaining to Jewish life constitute the
duty of the Jewish people."[20] In the assemblage of futurists, the
Mizrachi stands as the spirit of the past, to whom all plans must be
justified, and whose power has its source in the religious fervor of
the majority of eastern Jews.
Finally, the Cultural Zionists may be said to find representation in
all parties, for the furtherance of spirituality is inseparably bound
up in the aims of every Zionist.
_The Financial Institutions of Zionism_
The financial instruments by which the practical Zionist aims are
seeking accomplishment are (1) the Jewish Colonial Trust,[21]
incorporated as a limited company in London (1899) with a capital
stock of $20,000,000 and a paid-up capital of $1,324,000; (2) the
Anglo-Palestine Company,[22] an offshoot of the Colonial Trust, with a
paid-up capital of $500,000, which finances Zionist undertakings in
Palestine, and declares annual dividends of 4 1-6 per cent.; (3) the
Anglo-Levantine Banking Company,[23] the financial institution of the
Zionists devoted to their undertakings in the remainder of Turkey,
with a capital of $125,000 declaring 6 per cent. returns; (4) the
Jewish National Fund,[24] whose object is to acquire land in Palestine
as the inalienable property of the entire Jewish people, with a
capital of $650,000 raised by individual contributions; (5) the
Palestine Land Development Company,[25] with a registered capital of
$87,500, organized for the purpose of (a) acquiring, improving, and
dividing into small holdings large Palestinian estates, (b) laying out
and cultivating intensive crops, (c) systematically settling and
training agricultural laborers in Palestine.
Of late the Jewish Colonization Association, which is backed by the
forty-million dollar fund of Baron de Hirsch, is co-operating with the
Zionists in the purchase of Palestinian land to be administered by the
Palestine Land Development Company.[26]
The actual achievements, which these instruments have been the means
of effecting, may be summarized in two classes--Palestinian and
non-Palestinian. In both fields, the several branches of Zionist aims
have borne fruit.
_What Zionism Has Accomplished in Palestine_
Palestine in 1880 contained 30,000 Jews, who studied the Law, wailed
at the Wall, and lived miserably on the alms (the Chalukah) of pious
Jewry at large. In 1911 the Jews comprised 100,000 out of a total
population of 700,000. In Jerusalem are 50,000 Jews, 7,000 at
Tiberias, 8,000 at Safed, and 10,000 at Jaffa. A large proportion, it
is true, are settlers of the Ghetto type, but the young generation is
rapidly being changed by the growing school-system.[27]
Numbering about fifty, Jewish agricultural colonies extend the length
of the Holy Land and support some 5,000 Jews in their yield of olives,
dates, wine, sugar, cotton, grain, and cattle. Broad streets, clean
homes with gardens, and orchard land characterize the standard of
living in the colonies, as machinery and agricultural school students
characterize their modern standard of gaining their livelihood.[28] A
constantly increasing number of emigrants are streaming into the Holy
Land, although the Zionists are devoting their main endeavors toward
firmly establishing the resident inhabitants and bettering their
condition. On April 3, 1914, the London _Jewish Chronicle_ reported
the emigration from the single port of Odessa as numbering 250 persons
a week.[29]
In 1886, $1,800,000 of trade passed out through Jaffa, the port of
Palestine; in 1909, the value of the exports rose to $7,500,000.[30]
Rischon-le-Zion, the oldest colony and containing 500 inhabitants,
annually produces, alone, more than a million gallons of wine.[31]
The schools of the older class--Talmud Torah and Yeshibah--still
dominate; but, following the example of the Alliance Israelite, a
modern type of school with a modern curriculum taught in Hebrew has
been established in every colony, and culminates in a Gymnasium at
Jaffa as the principal national educational institution. The
attendance of the colonial schools number about 1,500, and in the
Talmudic schools number several thousands. The Mikveh Israel
Agricultural School, near Jaffa, is the center of vocational
instruction in Palestine, and aids materially the work of the
colonists. Funds for a Hygienic and Technical Institute have likewise
been started to further practical education.[32]
_The Revival of Jewish Culture_
The cultural revival in Palestine is plainly apparent in the excellent
work of the Bezalel,[33] the school of arts and crafts in Jerusalem,
named after the builder of the first tabernacle in the wilderness,
where are devised carpentry, copperware, wood-carving, basketry,
painting, and sculpture "of cunning workmanship" and of distinctly
Hebraic design. Another sign of great hope springs from the
widespread revival of ancient Hebrew as a living tongue, which has
become an awkward necessity among the older Jews gathered from many
different nations, and the free and natural expression of the
children. Several weeklies and monthlies are published in Hebrew.[34]
A National Jewish Library, soon to be housed in a fireproof building
at Jerusalem, was founded by Dr. Joseph Chazanowicz, a Zionist leader
in Russia, who devoted his entire income to it. In 1910 the Library
contained something over 15,000 volumes.[35] Finally, the Eleventh
Congress (1913), convened on the 2,500th anniversary of the
destruction of the old temple on Mount Moriah, witnessed the pledging
of $100,000 to the building of a Jewish National University at
Jerusalem--a new temple of culture and science.[36]
Precisely as the roots are more important than the blossoms in the
growth of a plant, the accomplishments without Palestine are more
significant than within. To-day the Golus (Diaspora) is the root, and
Palestine the stalk; some day the Zionists hope to reverse the
simile--this, in short, is the essence of the entire movement.
_The Accomplishments of Zionism Beyond Palestine_
Zionism's chief aims without Palestine are two: (1) Revival of
national consciousness, (2) Relief of the persecuted. In regard to the
second, the Zionist organization, constantly working to shift
emigration from West to East, has in a measure focused it upon
Palestine; and more important, it is rapidly perfecting adequate
machinery, which once securing the motive power of money in such
quantities as is now devoted to the Jewish Colonization Association,
will appreciably lessen the gravity of the Jewish _problem_.
In regard to the awakening of the national consciousness, the Zionist
societies, which number in the thousands, constitute centers for the
dissemination of propaganda and the stimulation of study in all things
Jewish; and the Zionist press, comprising one hundred newspapers and
periodicals, the official of which is _Die Welt_, and the leading
American representative, _The Maccabaean_, materially aid this
preaching of Zion gospel. Under the stimulus of the movement, numerous
student societies have sprung up abroad, promoting and crystallizing a
national sentiment and a race interest, while older societies of this
order, such as the Kadimah, have received a renewed impetus. Women's
societies of a literary, educational, and social character--the Benoth
Zion (Sofia and New York) and the Hadassah (Vienna and New York) for
example--have taken a place in the general revival.[37]
The effect of Zionism in large centers of population is ably shown by
Charles S. Bernheimer in his study of the Russian Jew in the United
States, and his findings may be taken as typical. In general, the
Zionist societies have formed the chief social centers of the
ghetto,[38] have opened religious schools[39] and libraries,[40] have
brought the radicals in religion under the influence of the national
idea,[41] and so prevented the loss of religion from being followed by
a loss of race-consciousness, and have "enlisted the sympathies of the
older people. The young people have grasped the great significance of
Zionism, and have taken a renewed interest in religion, education, and
culture."[42]
A renaissance of art is following that of culture; in painting Ephraim
Lilien, Lesser Ury, Judah Epstein, and Hermann Struck, and in marble
and bronze Boris Schatz (the founder and director of Bezalel),
Frederick Beer, and Alfred Nossig are receiving their inspiration from
Zionism.
The primary enthusiasm for the movement has long ago been expended;
and the present interest is deep, healthy, and likely to abide.
However, the sustainment of this interest appears to be the primary
duty and task of Zionism; in a movement that is a long, dull, slow
pull, every moment is a critical moment.
_Misconceptions of Zionism_
To the modern Jew who lacks the gift of prophecy, the outcome of an
undertaking must be determined by a consideration not only of the
force propelling the movement, but of the opposition confronting it. A
consideration of this opposition will afford an opportunity, moreover,
for a clear and summarizing definition of what the movement is, and,
equally important, of what it is not. Opposition to Zionism divides
itself into three categories--ignorant; theoretic; practical. One is
reminded of Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the servant, and Geshem the
Arabian, who mocked and threatened Nehemiah when he undertook to
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
Ignorant opposition assails Zionism with arguments that are
incontrovertible, but totally irrelevant; it busies itself with
destroying claims which the Zionists have never made. A trio may be
taken as representative. It is pointed out with cogency that Palestine
is not capable of supporting the twelve million of Jews who inhabit
our world; and more conclusively, the twelve million of Jews do not
wish to go to Palestine. Briefly, the Zionists in seeking a home for
the Jew in Canaan no more expect all the Jews to congregate within
its bounds than a man who builds himself a house expects that all his
posterity will live in it. As a matter of history, more Jews after the
fall of the first Temple have lived without Palestine than within.
Only a remnant returned after the captivity; and Babylon, Alexandria,
and Rome contained a larger Jewish population than Jerusalem.
Throughout the dispersion, the majority of the Jews lived apart from
the nation center--whether that center was the Mesapotamia of Talmudic
times, the Spain of the Middle Ages, or the Poland of the early modern
period. The Zionist object is only to secure such a national center
(free from outward pressure) as a ganglion radiating Hebraic culture,
which can preserve Jewish unity and identity and inspire Jewish
culture elsewhere, precisely as the Judæa of old rendered similar
service;[43] and the modern Palestine with a soil capable of
supporting a million inhabitants without extensive irrigation amply
satisfies the Zionist purpose.
_Zionism Leaves the Status of the Jew Uninjured_
Closely allied to this argument is the claim that Zionism constitutes
an abandonment by the European Jew of his hard-earned Emancipation,
and a traitorous retreat from the position of brother and
fellow-countryman which he is now claiming in the several nations. In
sum, renationalization in the East spells de-nationalization in the
West, and the return of the Jew to the status of alien. Such a
conclusion follows as inevitably as it follows that the unification of
Germany in 1870 rendered alien the Germans of America who emigrated
here in the '40s, that the French Revolution denationalized the
refugee Huguenot population of Prussia, that the unification of Italy
disfranchised the Italian Swiss, or that the Irish Home Rule Bill will
transform the populace of Boston into undesirable citizens. On the
contrary, the Zionists are convinced that the re-establishment of a
Jewish nation will strengthen, for example, the claim of the German
Jew that he is a German by distinctly separating the national from the
universal Jew--the sheep from the goats, if you will--and will render
his status less precarious because it will be more definable.
Moreover, such a national center will increase Jewish self-respect
with the consequence of increasing Christian respect. Jewish
"aloofness" need no longer be a reproach, because it may safely be
abandoned; with Zion itself preserving Hebraism in the East, the Jew
in the West may throw himself unreservedly into the life about him;
and a flourishing of Jewish culture will make his contribution the
more valuable.
Finally, the third objection is formulated in the question, "What is
the use?" Whether it be grounded in self-satisfied indifference,
hostility, or a sense of hopelessness, it forms the most insidious
opposition, because it betrays a lack of racial consciousness that
cannot be supplied by argument, and exposes a weakness that cannot be
remedied by emotional appeal. It is a weakness amounting to an
absence, a literal lack, of the very functions through which a cure
could be effected. An Englishman asking, "Why preserve the English?" a
Scandinavian asking, "Of what use are the Scandinavians?" a Swiss
asking, "Why maintain Switzerland?" is inconceivable. Answers indeed
can be found, but the point is that to put the question indicates that
the interrogator is beyond a comprehension of the reply. He is like a
congenital blindman, who asks: "Of what use is seeing?" The question
was, indeed, propounded in the third section of this paper, but only
as the hypothetical question of an outsider, much as an Englishman
might ask, "Of what value are the Chinese?" to secure an external,
historical justification of their existence. However, if the great
majority of Jews ever seriously question the need of preserving their
own race, the answer becomes immediate and conclusive; there is no
need, for there is no longer a race.
_Zionism Has No Insuperable Obstacles_
Theoretic opposition is determined on one hand by racial questions,
and on the other by religious dogmas. That the Jews are no longer a
race, that their preservation need not be undertaken because they do
not exist, is, laying aside the scientific disputations, in one sense
begging the question. Whether the Jews are a racial unit, and whether
their preservation will result in a distinct racial culture, is
precisely what a successful consummation of the Zionist object will
prove or disprove with finality; and until such consummation, even
scientific theorizing on the subject will expose itself to the
unscientific process of working without the check of laboratory
experiment. To the scientist, Zionism offers Palestine as such a
laboratory. The religious opposition offered by Reform Judaism has
been previously discussed; however, it may be summed up in three
statements. An appeal to the implied meaning of the Scriptures can
only be authoritatively settled by the author. Granting, nevertheless,
that a suffering Israel and a missionary Israel are essentials in a
Divine plan, the establishment of a national center does not
dogmatically preclude Israel from continuing to suffer elsewhere, nor
forbid Israel from pursuing her missionary project of acting as a
model example and shining light to the nations. Quite the reverse;
inasmuch as the Dispersion is fast becoming a Destruction, which
Zionism is attempting to avert, the preservation of Reform Judaism
itself demands the success of Zionism.
Practical opposition is indeed ponderous, but not necessarily
insuperable. The majority of Palestinian obstacles, such as the
difficulties which the confusion of national tongues, culture, and
habits will impose on unification, the precarious chance of ultimately
securing legal recognition from Turkey, the possible obstructions
amounting even to conflict to be offered by the native Arabian
population, are distant bridges which the far-seeing may fear, but
which, the wise will not attempt to cross until reached. However,
three urgent perplexities and impediments are imminent in the danger
of securing only a low class of settlers, of suffering from
insufficient means, and of failing from diminution of interest. At
bottom, the three are one, and amount to the necessity of keeping up
the old heart and inspiring new hearts.
With a sufficiency of interest, the necessary money and the proper men
will find their way to Palestine; in a word, only a people can save
themselves, and, failing to do so, aside from scientific argument and
religious dogma, they remain no more a people. That this people may
not so perish, the Zionists are not only furnishing the vision; but
with back and arm, they are working to rebuild the Wall where men have
wailed the centuries by. To the captious, the hostile, and the
persistently heedless, their cue is to say with Nehemiah of old: "I am
doing a great work, so that I cannot come down."
[Illustration: Signature: Marvin M. Lowenthal.]
_The Jewish students form so distinctive and gifted an
element in the life of all our colleges that their
self-expression should serve a valuable purpose.
Through becoming articulate in such a publication as_
The Menorah Journal, _the first issue of which is full
of promise, they may well bring to pass not only a
fuller realization of the part they are to play in
American society, but also a better understanding of
that part by the entire community to which they
belong. Without such better understandings there is
small hope for the community as a whole._--_From an
Editorial in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, March 17,
1915._
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: I. Friedlaender, _The Political Ideals of the Prophets_
(pamphlet) (Baltimore, 1910), p. 10.]
[Footnote 2: _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Graetz."]
[Footnote 3: Ahad Ha-'Am, "Pinsker and His Brochure" (pamphlet) (New
York, 1911), p. 5.]
[Footnote 4: Ignaz Zollschan, _Das Rassenproblem_ (Leipsic, 1911). G.
Pollack, "Jewish Race," _The Nation_, vol. 94, p. 609, in review of
the above book. A. S. Waldstein, "A Study of the Jews," _The
Maccabaean_, vol. 21, p. 41. M. Waxman, "The Ethnic Character of the
Jews" (New York, 1910). _The American Hebrew_, "The Jewish Race
Problem," vol. 90, p. 435.]
[Footnote 5: Zollschan, _Das Rassenproblem_, p. 140.]
[Footnote 6: H. M. Kallen, "Judaism, Hebraism and Zionism," _The
American Hebrew_, vol. 87, p. 181.]
[Footnote 7: _Idem_, p. 182.]
[Footnote 8: R. C. Conder, "Zionists," _Blackwood's_, vol. 163, p.
598.]
[Footnote 9: Max Nordau, _Zionism_ (New York, 1911), p. 11.]
[Footnote 10: _The Maccabaean_, "Theodor Herzl in His Writings," vol.
23, p. 229.]
[Footnote 11: Zangwill, "Zionism and Territorialism," _Living Age_,
vol. 265, p. 663.]
[Footnote 12: Ahad Ha-'Am, _Selected Essays_ (Philadelphia, 1912), p.
253 et seq.]
[Footnote 13: _Idem_, p. 290.]
[Footnote 14: Cohen, _Zionist Work in Palestine_, p. 198.]
[Footnote 15: _The Survey_, "The Tenth Zionist Congress," vol. 25, p.
845.]
[Footnote F: This Essay was written before Mr. Wolffsohn's death.]
[Footnote 16: _The American Hebrew_, "Dr. Max Nordau on Herzl's
Policies," vol. 93, p. 403.]
[Footnote 17: _American Jewish Year Book_, 1910-11, "Events of the
Year." I. Zangwill, "Zionism and Territorialism," _Living Age_, vol.
265, p. 668.]
[Footnote 18: L. Lipsky, "Results of the Eleventh Congress," _The
Maccabaean_, vol. 23, p. 250.]
[Footnote 19: Franz Oppenheimer, _Merchavia_ (New York, 1914), p.
1-13. "Life Work of Franz Oppenheimer," _The Maccabaean_, vol. 24, p.
12.]
[Footnote 20: _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Zionism--Party
Organization."]
[Footnote 21: _Idem_, under "Jewish Colonial Trust." Cohen, _Zionist
Work in Palestine_, p. 198.]
[Footnote 22: _Idem_, p. 127.]
[Footnote 23: _Idem_, p. 199.]
[Footnote 24: _Idem_, p. 203.]
[Footnote 25: _Idem_, p. 199.]
[Footnote 26: _American Jewish Year Book_, 1913-14, p. 203.]
[Footnote 27: H. Bentwich, "The Jewish Renaissance in Palestine,"
_Fortnightly Review_, vol. 96, p. 136.]
[Footnote 28: Cohen, _Zionist Work in Palestine_, p. 195.]
[Footnote 29: _Jewish Chronicle_ (London), No. 2348, p. 34.]
[Footnote 30: Bentwich, "The Jewish Renaissance in Palestine,"
_Fortnightly Review_, vol. 96, p. 136.]
[Footnote 31: H. F. Ward, "Palestine for the Jews," _The World Today_,
vol. 17, p. 1062.]
[Footnote 32: Cohen, _Zionist Work in Palestine_, p. 86.]
[Footnote 33: Bentwich, "The Jewish Renaissance in Palestine,"
_Fortnightly Review_, vol. 96, p. 136.]
[Footnote 34: _Idem._]
[Footnote 35: _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Arbanel Library."]
[Footnote 36: _The Maccabaean_, vol. 23, p. 263.]
[Footnote 37: _Jewish Encyclopedia_ under "Zionism."]
[Footnote 38: C. S. Bernheimer, "The Russian Jew in the United
States." (Philadelphia, 1905), p. 232.]
[Footnote 39: _Idem_, p. 180.]
[Footnote 40: _Idem_, p. 168.]
[Footnote 41: _Idem_, p. 155.]
[Footnote 42: _Idem_, p. 181.]
[Footnote 43: M. Waxman, "The Importance of Palestine for the Jews in
the Diaspora," _The Maccabaean_, vol. 23, p. 232. A succinct detailing
of this service.]
From College and University
_Activities of Menorah Societies_
Brown University
The need of some organization based on ideals that would tend to
promote a closer relationship among the Jewish students at Brown
University had long been felt on the campus. To meet this need there
has even been an attempt at uniting the Jewish men by ties not
necessarily Jewish in spirit; happily this attempt failed. Early in
this college year the Menorah movement was brought to the attention of
the Jewish students and its aims at once appealed as very worthy of
the serious consideration of Brown men.
An informal meeting was held and almost unanimous favor was exhibited
for the establishment of a Menorah Society at Brown. Whereupon a
committee was elected to interview the authorities of the University
concerning this matter, and their attitude was found to be all that
could be desired. Steps were then taken for formal organization, and
on the evening of January 6, 1915, a dedicatory meeting was held, and
the Brown Menorah Society was launched on its career. (For an account
of this meeting, see the April MENORAH JOURNAL, page 140.)
Shortly afterwards the Executive Council formulated a program of
activities for the rest of the year, a program which has now been
successfully carried through. On February 17, Prof. Richard Gottheil
of Columbia University gave a very interesting lecture on Zionism.
Several members of the Faculty were present and took part in the
general discussion that followed the lecture. At the meeting of March
17, Prof. A. T. Fowler of the Biblical Department of the University
and a member of the Advisory Board of the Society, spoke on "The Bible
as a Literary Document." On April 21, Prof. David G. Lyon of Harvard
University gave an illustrated lecture on "The Samarian Excavations."
This lecture was given in one of the largest halls of the University
and was open to the public.
The other meetings of the year were either business meetings or study
councils. At the study councils topics of Jewish interest were
discussed. An informal supper on the evening of May 20, with election
of officers for the following year, completed the activities of this
year.
ABRAHAM J. BURT
University of Chicago
After lying practically dormant for about one and one-half years, the
Menorah Society at Chicago has awakened during this last year.
The first meeting of the year was held October 26, 1914, at which
officers for the quarter were elected. Then at varying intervals there
were addresses by Dr. H. M. Kallen of the University of Wisconsin, Dr.
A. A. Neuman of the Dropsie College, Dr. Emil G. Hirsch of Sinai
Temple of Chicago (who gave a series of two lectures on Jewish
history), and Mr. Louis D. Brandeis of Boston. The inspiring address
of Mr. Brandeis, held November 19, 1914, was the biggest event of the
year, the meeting being largely attended by Jews and non-Jews alike.
Rabbis Stolz and Cohon, representing the Chicago Rabbinical Society,
also delivered short talks.
Hitherto, the Menorah Society has been unknown to have other than
quite formal lectures. No attempt has been made to make the members
feel at home and more sociable at the meetings. An innovation was
tried when, at the meeting on May 10, there was an informal talk by
Dr. Joseph Stolz, of the Isaiah Temple of Chicago, on Hillel, which
was followed not only by discussion but also by refreshments. This
meeting was a complete success. It was followed by another informal
meeting on Maimonides.
The last meeting was a "get-together" meeting of the Society to
discuss plans for the next year. Suggestions were accepted to interest
incoming freshmen by personal letters and visits and "get-acquainted"
and "enthusiasm" gatherings. It is reasonable to hope from the
increasing membership and the suggestions for future action that the
Menorah will become more and more powerful on the campus, especially
with the encouragement and the aid of the alumni in Chicago, who are
planning to have also a graduate Menorah organization.
ETHEL JACOBS
Clark University
The second year, just closed, of the Clark Menorah Society has been
most successful. At the weekly meetings, papers were given by various
members on such subjects as Reform Judaism, Orthodoxy, Zionism,
Assimilation, which were followed by entertaining and instructive
discussions. Reports were also given by members on current books of
Jewish interest, among them being: Fishberg's "The Jews," Ruppin's
"The Jews of Today," and Israel Cohen's "Jewish Life in Modern Times."
Current magazine articles of Jewish interest were also reviewed and
discussed.
Members of the Faculty and outside speakers, including Rabbi M. M.
Eichler and Jacob de Haas of Boston, gave addresses at various times
and Rabbi H. H. Rubenovitz of Boston delivered a series of lectures on
"The Maccabees."
The first banquet of the Society, held December 17, 1914, was a great
success and helped stir up much interest among the students in the
Menorah. (For a note on this dinner see the April MENORAH JOURNAL,
page 140; for the after-dinner address of President G. Stanley Hall
see the April JOURNAL, page 87).
A program for the next year has already been made and the forecast for
the future is most promising.
ISADOR LUBIN
University of Colorado
The academic year 1914-1915 opened auspiciously for the University of
Colorado Menorah Society. The old men returned with new and greater
enthusiasm, and the new men quickly caught the same spirit. Our first
meeting was a get-together affair where acquaintances were renewed and
new acquaintances made.
The meetings of the first semester were addressed entirely by the
members of the Society who chose their material from the excellent
Menorah Library. Those of the second semester were addressed in part
by outside men and in part by members. During the year two meetings
were held in Denver in conjunction with the University of Denver
Menorah. These were well attended and the principal addresses given by
the heads of the two universities.
MICHAEL IDELSON
Columbia University
The past year has been a year of steady progress for the Columbia
Menorah Society and of increasing interest in its activities. At the
first meeting of the year the members were greatly stimulated by an
address by Dr. H. G. Enelow on the work of Menorah Societies. At other
meetings held during the year, Mr. Samuel Strauss spoke on "Some
Delusions Now in the Testing," Professor Talcott Williams, dean of the
School of Journalism, on "The War and Race Prejudice," Rabbi Rudolph
I. Coffee, of Pittsburg, Pa., on "The College Graduate in Jewish
Affairs," Professor Israel Friedlaender, on "Jewry, East and West." At
a smoker given in February, Rev. Dr. Jacob Kohn spoke on "Jewish
Ceremonialism," Mr. Henry Hurwitz spoke on the work of other Menorah
Societies, and Mr. M. David Hoffman, the Representative of the
Columbia Society in the Administrative Council of the Intercollegiate
Association, presented an interesting report of the Menorah Convention
of Cincinnati.
Although the Society is not satisfied with the number of its members,
that number is one which would probably be deemed large at many
another university. The Society is becoming more and more active and
acquiring ever greater prestige among the Jewish students, as well as
in the University in general. It has aroused interest on the part of
not a few who have heretofore been indifferent to Jewish affairs.
HARRY WILK
University of Illinois
At the beginning of this year conditions were somewhat abnormal for
the Illinois Menorah Society. The preceding graduating class had taken
an extraordinarily heavy toll from our members and, as the number of
Juniors left was small, we had few veterans remaining. But, to offset
our loss, we were compensated by an unusually large number of
promising freshmen.
We started the year with a reception to the new students at which over
one hundred were present. Our customary smoker was dispensed with on
account of the increased number of Jewish co-eds, there being about
fifteen at present. At our next meeting, at which we formally welcomed
the new students to our Society, Dr. David S. Blondheim of our Faculty
explained the nature of the work we are doing and gave some practical
advice, and Dr. Jacob Zeitlin of our Faculty spoke on the Jewish
problems of the present. Since then we have had many regular meetings,
every other Sunday, student programs alternating with outside
speakers. Among the latter have been Professor I. Leo Sharfman of
Michigan, who spoke on "Jewish Ideals," Rabbi A. A. Neuman of the
Dropsie College, who talked on "Life Among Medieval Spanish Jews," and
Dr. H. M. Kallen of Wisconsin on "The Meaning of Hebraism." Mrs. E.
F. Nickoley, who has traveled extensively in Palestine, gave an
interesting talk on the Jews in the Holy Land. Professor Simon Litman
of our Faculty spoke on "Jews and Modern Capitalism." Professor E. C.
Baldwin of our English department, in speaking on "Prayer," roused a
lively interest in the question as to whether prayer is decadent among
the Jews. Professor Albert H. Lybyer lectured on "Jews as the
Transmitters of Culture from the Moslems to the Christians"; Professor
Boyd H. Bode discussed "What the Jew Contributes to American Ideals,"
and Dr. A. R. Vail spoke on "The Influence of the Hebrew Prophets as
the Teachers of Moral Law."
Nor have we had a dearth of student talks and readings, among them the
following: Herbert B. Rosenberg on the Falashas, Louis Ribback on the
Chinese Jews, Jesse Block on the Spanish Jews, S. J. Lurie on
Maimonides, Julius Cohen on "The Jewish Messianic Idea," L. J.
Greengard on "Prophecy," Karl Epstein on Jewish Nationalism. Current
events were given during the year by Bertha Bing, Julius Cohen, and
William A. Grossman.
Early in February a study circle was formed, under the leadership of
Mrs. Simon Litman, for the study of post-Biblical Jewish history. Ten
members of the Society enrolled and met weekly at the home of
Professor and Mrs. Litman. Portions of Vol. II of Graetz and of Riggs'
"History of the Jews" were read and amplified by the excellent
lectures of the leader. The discussions also furnished very valuable
instruction.
KARL EPSTEIN
University of Maine
During the past year the conditions on the campus were such that it
made all of the Jewish students feel the necessity of the right kind
of Jewish organization. Clubs had been formed time after time, each of
a different nature; yet none of them could fulfill the need and they
all sooner or later broke up. Thus things dragged along, each one
feeling that something ought to be done, yet no one knowing what
remedy was needed, until a report came of the Menorah movement. After
a hastily gathered meeting one Saturday night, the matter was
presented to the Jewish students for discussion. Great enthusiasm was
displayed and everybody was heartily in favor of organizing a Menorah
Society.
With the aid of the Menorah catalogue ("The Menorah Movement"), and
Mr. Joseph Spear, of our Faculty, a former member of the Harvard
Menorah Society, a constitution was drawn up and presented at the next
meeting, when it was accepted. It was also submitted to President
Aley, who approved it and congratulated us most heartily upon the
formation of the Society.
Our first task was to place the Society in the right light on the
campus by emphasizing the absolutely unsectarian, academic, cultural
nature of the Menorah Society and the fact that membership is
invitingly open to all members of the University. In this we were
greatly helped by the visit of Chancellor Henry Hurwitz who addressed
the whole student body in Chapel on the morning of May 5th, after
being introduced by President Aley, upon the nature and purposes of
the Menorah movement; and he addressed a public meeting of the Society
in the evening, which was also attended by President Aley, on "Jewish
Ideals."
During the course of the year we have succeeded in holding several
other enthusiastic meetings besides. We have had frank and inspiring
talks by President Aley and Professor Huddleston. At other meetings
our own members gave talks and discussions. Thus, Samuel Rudman gave a
splendid talk on "The Attitude of Jewish Young Men towards Jewish
Religion", which was warmly discussed. Another paper was delivered by
A. I. Schwey on "Hebrew Literature."
Through the kindness of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, into
which we were admitted at the Cincinnati Convention, we have secured a
Menorah Library, which has been put in a conspicuous place in the
reading room of the University library, for the benefit of all the
students. But the Menorah members especially intend to make good use
of the books in the preparation of papers and in regular study. We
have also been fortunate in securing a set of the Jewish Encyclopedia
from Mr. Cyrus L. Sulzberger of New York for presentation to the
University library. The coming of the Encyclopedia and the Menorah
Library has been greatly appreciated by the authorities, and the Maine
Menorah Society is happy to have been able already to be of concrete
service to the University. All of our activities have caused favorable
interest on the part of both the student body and the college
authorities, and a great change has come about in the attitude towards
the Jewish men. We look forward to even greater progress as well as
hard work in the future.
A. I. SCHWEY
University of Missouri
Our Menorah Society this year has done at least two things. First, it
has definitely held to a program of work; secondly, it has become
accredited as representative of the Jewish students to the Jewish
students themselves, and even more to the non-Jews. The opposition
that some of the students manifested in other years has not been so
active, and the Society drew a large proportion of them, sometimes all
of them, to its meetings. The non-Jews, especially among the Faculty,
have exhibited an actively interested and helpful attitude. In this
connection, our thanks are due Prof. J. E. Wrench, of the History
department, whose presence at all of our meetings greatly stimulated
profitable discussion.
Of the Jewish faculty men, Dr. Henry M. Sheffer, of the Philosophy
department, one of the founders of the Harvard Menorah Society, took a
particularly active interest in the work, especially in the
preparation of our programs. The program for the second semester was
on "Typical Hebraic Ideals", as follows:
I. Transitional:
1. Hellenism J. Sholtz
2. Emancipation J. L. Ellman
II. Contemporary:
(a) Religious
1. Orthodoxy Wm. Stone
2. Reform Robert Burnett
(b) National
1. Assimilationism A. Hertzmark
2. Zionism D. A. Glushek
(c) Literary
1. Yiddish M. Glazer
2. Neo-Hebrew C. Goldberg
III. Prospective:
The New Hebraism Dr. H. M. Sheffer
This program was devised with the idea of creating a definite reaction
to Hebraism. So, the papers on Hellenism and Emancipation tried by the
contrast of transitional periods to make Hebraic ideals as a whole
stand out. The meeting on Reform and Orthodoxy was devoted to an
historical analysis of the forces underlying the present situation in
Judaism. The papers on Zionism and Assimilation, again, summed up from
another angle the characteristics of Hebraic aspiration. And at the
two last meetings, present Jewish life and ideals were discussed in
terms of their literary and philosophical expression.
Along with these meetings we had several lectures by Dr. H. M.
Sheffer, Rabbi A. A. Neuman of the Dropsie College, and Dr. H. M.
Kallen of Wisconsin. These meetings were in every case productive of
great enthusiasm. Prof. J. E. Wrench addressed a meeting composed in
numbers equally of Jews and non-Jews on "The Jew and Christian in the
Middle Ages", and we also had an address by Dr. A. T. Olmstead,
Professor of Ancient History, on the "Book of Kings".
JOHN SHOLTZ
University of North Carolina
The Menorah Society at our University is in a unique position. The
number of Jews in North Carolina is the smallest of any in the
Southern States. Only in a few places is there any organized Jewish
life. The Jewish students come chiefly from such places where the
number of Jews is very small. Under these circumstances, it can
readily be seen how difficult it was at first to implant the idea of
a Jewish society for the purpose of the study of Jewish subjects of
which the majority of the students were greatly ignorant. The Society,
however, has now passed far beyond the experimental stage. All the
Jewish students at North Carolina now show a great deal of interest
and enthusiasm in the Menorah work.
From the fact that our Society can look to very little in the way of
help from any Jewish community in the State, and that it is far from
any Jewish cultural center in the South, it can be perceived how hard
it was at first to carry on our work in comparison with our sister
Societies located in more favorable localities. A review of our work
of the last term will show, however, gratifying results. Our method
was similar to that of the class room. A text book on Jewish history
was taken as the basis for study, supplemented by additional
information from the Jewish Encyclopedia and other books on Judaica
from the University Library and the Menorah Library. The value of our
study of Jewish history may be educed from the fact that most of us
had but the faintest knowledge of our glorious past. When a thorough
knowledge of the text was acquired, discussions and studies of
different phases and movements in Judaism were taken up. In this work
the Menorah Library proved an especially valuable aid.
While our Society is not a religious organization, it endeavors to
surround our work with ethical and religious aims. The Society tries
to be here for the Jewish students what the Y. M. C. A. is in a
measure for our Christian fellow-students, and we can say that it has
succeeded in its endeavor. The relation of the Menorah Society here
with the Y. M. C. A. is one of heartiest co-operation.
SAMUEL R. NEWMAN
Universities in Omaha
The Omaha Menorah Society, covering both the University of Omaha and
Creighton University, was founded in September, 1914. At the
organization meeting, Rabbi Frederic Cohn spoke on the Menorah
movement, and letters of endorsement from President D. E. Jenkins of
the University of Omaha and from President E. A. Magevney of Creighton
University were read. A discussion of principles of the Menorah
movement followed.
Among the speakers of the year were Dr. I. Dansky, Dr. A. Greenberg,
Dr. R. Farber of S. Joseph, Professor Nathan Bernstein, Mr. Isador
Rees of the Omaha High School, Professor F. P. Ramsay, and Professor
Walter Halsey. In addition to their valuable addresses, discussions on
important Jewish topics were held by the members of the Society--a
phase of Menorah work which is being steadily accentuated.
The largest meeting of the year took place in Jacobs Memorial Hall, on
the evening of May 11th, at which over 300 people were present. The
speakers on this occasion were President D. E. Jenkins of the
University of Omaha on "Idealism in Education" and Rabbi Samuel Cohen
of Kansas City, who spoke on "The Functions and Genesis of
Ceremonials".
JACQUES RIEUR
Radcliffe College
During the month of December, 1914, the Radcliffe Menorah Society was
organized with a membership of twenty. On January 7, 1915, the
purposes of the Society were outlined to the members by Mr. Henry
Hurwitz; and Mr. Ralph A. Newman, President of the Harvard Menorah,
extended greetings and welcome from that Society. Dean Bertha Boody
showed her interest and approval by her presence.
Since the Radcliffe Menorah was not organized until well after the
college calendar had been arranged, it was difficult to formulate
definite plans for the time which remained. Lectures, however, have
been given at open meetings by Dr. H. M. Kallen of the University of
Wisconsin and Mr. Maurice Wertheim of New York; and plans are now
under way for the formation of a study circle devoted to the study of
the Hebrew language.
The interest and enthusiasm of the members--more than half of whom
are first year students--gives promise for work of greater scope in
the future.
LILLIAN H. ROSENBLUM
New York University
In the first number of THE MENORAH JOURNAL it was reported that
because of the division of New York University into uptown and
downtown colleges, it was found necessary to organize an additional
Menorah Society at Washington Square, the downtown section. This
Washington Square Society has for its sphere the professional schools
of New York University, whereas the University Heights Society has the
Schools of Art and Applied Science.
Organized in October, 1914, the Washington Square Society can already
boast of a membership of 160. Over eighty percent of the members are
young men and women who work during the day and devote five evenings a
week to school.
The Society has conducted under its auspices in the past year about
ten lectures, at which the attendance averaged seventy-five members.
The lectures covered many phases of Jewish culture and were greatly
appreciated. It is expected that study circles will be held during the
next academic year, even though it may be necessary in most instances
to hold them after 9:30 p. m.
Among the lectures during the past year were the following: Dr. H. M.
Kallen of the University of Wisconsin, Dr. H. G. Enelow of Temple
Emanu-El, Mr. Samuel Strauss of The New York Times, and Chief Justice
Isaac Franklin Russell of the New York Court of Special Sessions.
To celebrate the completion of one year's active work, a dinner was
held on the evening of April 30th at the Broadway Central Hotel, at
which there were present about 100 members. The Toastmaster was E.
Schwartz, and the speakers of the evening included Dr. Bernard
Drachman, Israel N. Thurman, Hyman Askowith, Louis Weinstein, the
outgoing President, and Chancellor Henry Hurwitz.
BERNARD J. REIS
Notes
Of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
_Menorah Prize Awards_
The Harvard Menorah Prize of $100 has this year been divided into two
equal parts and awarded to Benjamin I. Goldberg, '16, for an essay on
"Maimonides as a Scientist", and Leonard L. Levy, '17, for an essay on
"The Modern Jewish National Movement". (This essay also won the second
undergraduate Bowdoin Prize at Harvard.) Honorable mention was given
to Henry Epstein, '16. The judges were Prof. David Gordon Lyon,
chairman, and Prof. J. R. Jewett of Harvard University, and President
Solomon Schechter of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
The Wisconsin Menorah Prize of $100 has this year been awarded to
Percy B. Shoshtac, '15, for an essay on Scholom Asch, the Yiddish
novelist and dramatist. The judges were Prof. R. E. N. Dodge,
chairman, Prof. E. B. McGilvary, and Prof. M. S. Slaughter of the
University of Wisconsin.
Of the three prizes of $25 each, offered by the Cornell Menorah
Society this year, only one was awarded ("for the best essay on any
subject relating to the status and problems of the Jews in any one
country"). The winning essay was by Morris J. Escoll, '16 (College of
Agriculture) upon "Phases of Jewish Thinking in American
Universities." For the prize in Hebrew there was no competition; for
the prize "on any subject relating to Jewish literature in English",
no essay was deemed of sufficient merit. The judges were Prof.
Nathaniel Schmidt of Cornell, chairman, Prof. I. Leo Sharfman of the
University of Michigan, and Prof. M. M. Kaplan of the Jewish
Theological Seminary.
_Gift from the Cornell Menorah Society_
THE MENORAH JOURNAL has received a gift of $50 from the Cornell
Menorah Society.
_Harvard Menorah Dinner_
The seventh annual Dinner of the Harvard Menorah Society was held on
May 3, 1915, in the Hotel Lenox, Boston. It was the largest and most
successful dinner in the history of the Society, some 200 men,
including a number of graduate members, being present. The toastmaster
was President Ralph A. Newman, and toasts were responded to by Prof.
D. G. Lyon, Prof. G. F. Moore, Prof. Felix Frankfurter, Dr. Stephen S.
Wise, Mr. Felix M. Warburg, Mr. Maurice Wertheim, Mr. Joseph L. Cohen
(of Cambridge University, England), Mr. Hyman Askowith, and Chancellor
Henry Hurwitz. The winners of the Harvard Menorah Prizes, announced by
Prof. Lyon, gave summaries of their essays.
_Wisconsin Menorah Banquet_
The fourth annual Banquet of the Wisconsin Menorah Society was held on
May 22, 1915, in the Women's Building of the University. President
Harry Hersh was toastmaster, and toasts were responded to by Judge
Julian W. Mack, Prof. I. Leo Sharfman, Mrs. Joseph Jastrow, Dr. H. M.
Kallen, and Dr. C. S. Levi of Milwaukee.
_Incoming Menorah Presidents_
The elections of the following presidents of Menorah Societies for
next year have been reported: Brown, Abraham J. Burt; California,
Stanley M. Arndt (re-elected); Clark, Abraham J. Levensohn;
Cincinnati, Philip L. Wascerwitz; College of the City of New York,
Moses H. Gitelson; Cornell, Aaron Bodanski; Harvard, Fred F. Greenman;
Hunter, Sarah Berenson; Johns Hopkins, Jonas Friedenwald; Illinois,
Karl Epstein; Maine, Lewis H. Kriger (re-elected); Michigan, A. J.
Levin; North Carolina, Alfred M. Lindau; New York University, Michael
Stavitsky (University Heights) and Bernard J. Reis (Washington
Square); Pennsylvania, Jacob Rubinoff (re-elected); Radcliffe, Hannah
R. London; Wisconsin, Charles Lebowsky.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
This text uses both co-operation and coöperation, as well as both to-day
and today.
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page ii, "commissiom" changed to "commission" (My commission expires)
[Illustration: THE SPOILS OF JERUSALEM, FROM THE ARCH OF TITUS]
THE MENORAH JOURNAL
VOLUME 1 OCTOBER, 1915 NUMBER 4
[Illustration]
The Arch of Titus
Done into English by H. M. K. from the Hebrew of H. A. W.[A]
CRUMBLING, age-worn, in Rome the eternal
Stands the arch of Titus' triumph,
With its carven Jewish captives
Stooped before the holy Menorah.
And each nightfall, when the turmoil
Of the Petrine clangor ceaseth,
Seven flames the arch illumine,
Mystic burnings, glowing strangely.
Then cast off their graven shackles
Judah's sons of beaten marble;
Living step they from the ruin
Living stride they to the Jordan.
They are healèd in its waters,
Till the freshness of each dawning;
Then resume their ancient sorrow,
Perfect marble, whole and holy.
Dust of dust the wheeling seasons,
Grind that mighty archèd splendor,
Raze the Gaul and raze the Roman,
Grind away their fame and glory,
The shackled Jews alone withstand them,
Stooped before the holy Menorah.
[Illustration: _MAX NORDAU (born in Budapest, 1849), world-famous
neurologist, author, and publicist, a Nestor among Jewish leaders, and
since Herzl's death the President of the International Zionist
Congresses. His books on "Degeneration," "Paradoxes," and other
volumes of social studies, have evoked world-wide discussion. In
sending the present article to The Menorah Journal from Madrid, where
he is now sojourning on account of the War, Dr. Nordau writes: "I wish
my words may not be dropped into deaf ears. You can do much to bring
them home to the consciousness and the conscience of leading American
Jews."_]
The Duty of the Hour
BY MAX NORDAU
WE are the people of the Messiah. We feel, we think Messianic. In all
situations of life, and particularly in the critical ones, we hope for
a miraculous event which will fulfill all our yearnings, and in this
hope we feel delivered of the manly duty to work for the realization
of our ideals, to prepare our salvation by our own efforts.
At this moment a large portion of Israel dreams once more a
particularly lively Messianic dream. Hundreds of thousands, millions
of Jews, indeed, have abandoned themselves to the expectation that at
the conclusion of the peace which will put a stop to the world's war,
the destiny of the Jewish people must take a miraculous turn. The
plenipotentiaries of the belligerent powers will assemble in a
conference or a congress to treat of the conditions of peace. The
conquerors will exact of the vanquished the price of their sacrifices
and return home with their booty in the shape of territorial
acquisitions and indemnities. And in the course of these transactions
the miracle will happen that a share will be apportioned to the Jewish
people too. Palestine will be offered them, either as an area for
colonization or, still better, as a full property under the
protectorate of a great power. They will be accorded also entire
equality of rights in Russia and Roumania.
_The Basis of Jewish Hopes: (1) The Self-Interest of the Powers_
WE may plead reasons or excuses for indulging in this dream.
Utterances of leading personalities of the big nations which will
necessarily be represented at the peace conference have become
publicly known which permit the conclusion, without intentional
self-beguiling, that some governments at least, if not all of them,
are occupying themselves earnestly with the Jewish problem and
examining the question whether it might not be worth trying to settle
the Jews in search of a homestead in Palestine, under international
and local legal conditions vouchsafing them full freedom of economic,
intellectual, and moral development.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the situation of the six
millions of Russian Jews occupies a certain place in the thoughts and
cares of the governments. Several countries have an interest in
turning away from their frontiers the ever more violently swelling
stream of Jewish emigration, and doing so otherwise than with the
brutal method of locking up their boundaries and posting a police
watch before them. Others have the well-being of Russia at heart; they
understand that the sufferings and the despair of her six millions of
Jews are a source of dire evils and that the emancipation of this
hard-working and highly gifted population will bring about the
material prosperity, the general progress, and the powerful
strengthening of Russia. Other countries again, the statesmen of which
are more farseeing than the average and have been able to rise to the
conception of a political world hygiene, are aware that the systematic
crushing of six millions of intellectual and strong-feeling people
driven to despair must create a hotbed of the most dangerous
anarchistic and revolutionary epidemics, the spreading of which
cannot easily be limited to the spot of their origin. Lastly, even the
most irreclaimable pessimist will admit at least the possibility that
governments may not be entirely inaccessible to purely humane
sentiments of pity and justice, and may regard the treatment of the
Jews of Russia and Roumania as an indictment against the civilization
and the ruling religion of white mankind.
_(2) The Precedent of 1878_
THE hope of the peace conference resulting in great achievements for
the Jewish people, moreover, can evoke an historical precedent. The
Berlin Congress of 1878 which brought the Russo-Turkish war to an end,
created the Bulgarian state, raised Roumania to the rank of an
independent kingdom, and gave Bosnia and Herzegovina to
Austria-Hungary, found time to occupy itself with a Jewish matter and
to introduce into the treaty condensing its decisions the well known
article obliging the new kingdom of Roumania to bestow on her Jews
equality of civil franchises. It is not the fault of the Berlin
Congress that this article has remained to this day a dead letter. The
case, at any rate, is of a nature to encourage Jewish optimism against
those sceptics who sneer: "A diplomatic conference distributes no
presents; complacency and liberality play no part there; there are
only such interests enforced which are backed by a victorious army or
at least by an army which still inspires some fears." Well, in 1878,
too, the Jewish people had no country, no army, no government, no
accredited ambassador, and yet two of the most influential members of
the Berlin Congress, the representative of Great Britain, Earl
Beaconsfield, and that of France, Waddington, were ready to step
forward as advocates of the Jewish cause, and the president of the
Congress, Prince Bismarck, evidently favored their action.
_But We Ignore a Valuable Lesson_
I HAVE produced everything capable of justifying the expectations with
which many Jews look forward to the future peace congress. But I do
not notice that the Jewish people keep in view the lessons taught by
the historic example of 1878. Beaconsfield and Waddington did not
plead for the Roumanian Jews at the Berlin Congress from impulses of
their own or in consequence of a sudden inspiration from on high. The
Paris Alliance Israelite Universelle, the London Anglo-Jewish
Association, the Berlin Verband der deutschen Juden, had done serious
and efficient preparatory work, memorialized their several
governments, informed them of the facts, solicited their intervention.
It was due to their efforts that the position of the Roumanian Jews
came up for consideration at the Berlin Congress. They showed the way
the Jewish people must follow if they wish to obtain anything of
governments in congress. What are the Jewish people waiting for in
order to act now as their fathers acted thirty-seven years ago?
The war is raging, in a hundred battlefields uncounted brave men shed
their blood for the future of their nation, Jewish soldiers fight and
fall side by side with their non-Jewish countrymen and comrades, but
their heroic sacrifices are utterly useless for their own people. In
every country, even in Russia, the military excellence, the
patriotism, the contempt of danger and death of the Jewish soldiers,
will be rewarded more or less lavishly and liberally with distinctions
and preferment, but experience teaches us that their glorious conduct
is forgotten very soon after the war by everybody but themselves and
their brethren, and that it certainly does not change in the least the
status of the Jewish people among the nations. At any rate the
consideration of the merits and military virtues of the Jewish
soldiers will not by itself stimulate to action the diplomatists at
the peace congress, unless they are insistently recalled to their
memory. All this requires preparation and arrangements, of which as
yet there is scarcely any trace to be seen.
_Who Could Accept Palestine for the Jews?_
THERE is another point to which attention must be drawn. Let us admit
the most favorable case: the congress will really open up Palestine to
the Jewish people for colonization with self-government and autonomous
local institutions. To whom will it be in a position to make such a
concession? To whom will it deliver Palestine? The Jewish people is a
concept, but it is not a political and administrative individuality,
it is not a body with a head and vital organs. There is actually not
one man who could present himself to the governments assembled in
congress, receive Palestine from their hands, and offer them the
guarantee that he will lead into the land of their ancestors those
Jews that yearn for a new home and national life on an historic soil,
and that he will undertake the implanting of modern culture, the
maintaining of order, and the economic development of the country. An
offer of the congress would fall flat, nobody having the moral right
and the material capacity to accept it in the name and in behalf of
the Jewish people.
_Let Dreaming Give Way to Organizing! The Task for American Jewry_
ALL this points to the necessity of an adequate preparation for coming
events. The Messianic dream does not suffice. Mere wishes and hopes
are vain. We must work. We must organize ourselves without further
loss of time. We must create a body with men of authority at its head,
and the living forces of the Jewish people, or at least a considerable
portion of them, at its back. The forces and the men do exist. They
have only to be gathered, united and grouped.
Who is to do this organizing work? My reply is unhesitating: American
Jewry. I should be happy to say: here is a task for the Zionists'
organization which exists, which lives, which is prepared for work of
this kind, and which has to consider its carrying out as its natural
function; but I shrink back from giving this near-lying answer. Many
pre-eminent and influential Jews whose good Jewish sentiments no one
has a right to doubt, persist in considering Zionism as a party
tendency against which they raise objections. Now the representations
of the Jewish people before the governments must not be a party
affair, but ought to be the cause of the entire people and must
embrace all its parts. The invitation must therefore be issued by
personalities who repel nobody at the outset by their pronounced party
color. Moreover, these personalities must necessarily belong to a
neutral country, so as to leave no room for the argument that
according to the political definition of the hour they are enemies and
to co-operate with them would mean disloyalty to one's own country.
Only in the case, which I hope will not be realized, of the United
States also precipitating itself into the whirlpool of the war, would
they be bound to transfer their initiative to the Swiss or the Dutch
Jewry. The first labor of the initiators should consist in inviting
the existing Jewish organizations of all countries to have themselves
represented by a delegation on a permanent board or committee. It
would be a matter of regret if they refused, but this ought by no
means to be a reason for discouragement nor for discontinuing further
endeavors. In this case the initiators would simply have to do
fundamental work and try to fall back on elements that at present
stand outside, or intentionally keep aloof from, existing
organizations. It would be the business of the permanent board to
secure financial co-operation that could be called upon under given
circumstances, and to cause Jews of standing in every great country to
approach their government, to submit to it in time the aspirations of
the Jewish people, and to procure its approval and sympathy for them.
"_Not an Instant to Lose if We Wish to Prepare_"
OUT of the peace which must follow the present horrible war, a new
Europe, a new world will be born. It depends on us whether in this new
world there is to be a place, "a place in the sun," for the Jewish
people. We have not an instant to lose if we wish to prepare for the
grand opportunity. Should we miss this occasion we should have to
resign all our national hopes, I am afraid, for a very long time, if
not for ever. We may, of course, continue to dream our Messianic
dream, but this will then ever remain a dream till the dreamer
disappears and his dream with him.
[Illustration: Signature: Dr M. Nordau]
FOOTNOTE:
[A] Original and translation read at a dinner of the Harvard Menorah
Society.
What Judaism Is Not
BY MORDECAI M. KAPLAN
_"Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing
is so useless as a general maxim."_
_Macaulay, in Essay on "Machiavelli."_
[Illustration: _MORDECAI M. KAPLAN (born in Russia in 1881, came to
America in 1889), studied at College of the City of New York (A. B.
1900), Columbia (M. A. 1902) and Jewish Theological Seminary (Rabbi,
1902); held Rabbinical position in New York, 1903-1909; Principal
since 1909 of the Teachers' Institute, and Professor of Homiletics
since 1910 in the Jewish Theological Seminary. Fearless and original
in thought, and exceptionally stimulating as a Menorah lecturer,
Professor Kaplan has won the deep respect and friendship of Menorah
students at the various universities where he has lectured on Jewish
Religion and Education._]
MOST of the pain, which according to Koheleth comes with the increase
of knowledge, is in the unlearning of the old rather than in the
learning of the new. Once an idea has become imbedded in the mind, it
cannot be removed without causing a mental upheaval. Blessed are the
young to whom unlearning is easy, or who have not much to unlearn.
Whether our Jewish young men know much or little about Judaism, they
are certain, as a rule, to have formed notions about it of which they
must be disabused, if Judaism is to constitute an important factor in
their lives. Strange to say, they have obtained these notions not from
sources hostile to Judaism, but on the contrary from sources
distinctly intended to inculcate both a love and an understanding of
the Jewish religion,--such as catechisms and text-books used in our
religious schools, and articles in encyclopedias meant for the
enlightenment of the general public. The view of Judaism that one gets
in this manner is not only a distorted one, but it has the effect of
bringing all further reflection to a standstill. It lands one in a
blind alley. The conclusion which a person generally arrives at when
he consults these sources for information about the Jewish religion is
that, whatever else Judaism might be, it certainly offers no field for
the exercise of deep insight or broad vision. This largely accounts
for the manifest sterility and uncreativeness of present-day Judaism.
To give new impetus to fruitful and creative thinking in Jewish life,
it is necessary, in the first place, to counteract the paralyzing
spell of these routine and conventional interpretations of Judaism.
To be concrete, let us take a typical instance of the kind of
instruction that has been in vogue for more than a century. Here are a
few sentences from the article on Judaism in Hastings' _Encyclopedia
of Religion and Ethics_: "Judaism may be defined as the strictest form
of monotheistic belief; but it is something more than a bare mental
belief. It is the effect which such a belief, with all its logical
consequences, exerts on life, that is to say, on thought and
conduct. . . . A formal and precise definition of Judaism is a matter of
some difficulty, because it raises the question, What is the absolute
and irreducible minimum of conformity? . . . Judaism denounces idolatry
and polytheism. It believes in a universal God, but it is not
exclusive. It believes that this world is good, and that man is
capable of perfection. He possesses free will, and is responsible for
his actions. Judaism rejects any mediator and any cosmic force for
evil. Man is free. He is not subject to Satan; nor are his material
gifts of life inherently bad. Wealth might be a blessing as well as a
curse," etc., etc.
In an encyclopedia we do not expect to find original or striking
views. It is not the particular article from which this excerpt is
taken that fault is found with. That article is selected simply as
representative of the kind of information that is expected to help one
grasp the meaning of Judaism. It is typical of the baffling glibness
with which Jewish teachers and preachers usually talk about the Jewish
religion. One who reads or listens to such statements finds that
somehow or other little has been added to his stock of knowledge about
Judaism. He experiences how irritating words can be when they either
hide thought or betray its absence.
_Mistaking the Shadow for the Thing Itself_
IN the instance quoted, it is both amusing and painful to follow the
author's vacillating description of Judaism. At first Judaism is a
form of belief. Then it becomes the effect of that belief upon thought
and conduct. From that it evolves into some irreducible minimum of
conformity, if we can only get hold of it. This being difficult, it
gets to be a series of colorless platitudes. Such a definition calls
up the image of a streamlet, now leaping over rocks and boulders, now
meandering upon level ground, and finally losing itself in the
marshes. The fitfulness and inconsistency of the formulation, the
picking up of the different threads of thought without following out
any one of them to its conclusion, are characteristic of this type of
definitions. They are as devoid of vitality as a long drawn-out yawn,
and their want of logic is exasperating. The merest tyro can see that
one can profess the principles they embody without being a Jew. There
are many sects that would heartily subscribe to all of them.
Universalists, Deists, Theists, Unitarians, and even Ethical
Culturists hold these doctrines. As matters stand at present, these
sects engage more actively in spreading them than we do.
What is fundamentally wrong with the above definition and with the
entire class of formulations of which it is an instance? The tendency
to mistake the shadow of a thing for the thing itself. The main cause
for misapprehending the true character of Judaism is the proneness to
regard it merely as a form of truth, or, at best, as the effect of a
truth upon thought and conduct, and to overlook entirely the fact that
it is a living reality, a very strand of the primal moving forces of
the world. "Judaism is the truest form of truth," says one writer.
"Judaism gives, to truth the most truthful shape," says another. Now
and then they speak of it as a "form" of life, but it turns out to be
only a lip service, or a homiletical phrase. They fail to follow up
the clue which is more than once suggested to them by the difficulty
of expounding Judaism as a form of truth. That being a Jew has always
involved conforming to certain principles and modes of life is a
truism. But these principles or observances by themselves constitute
only the outward expression of Judaism. The mathematical formula which
states the law of gravitation is not the same as the force of
gravitation itself. It is conceivable that further experimentation
might make it necessary to qualify the mathematical formula. But the
force of gravitation will ever be the same as it has been. The change
from looking upon Judaism as a form of truth to that of regarding it
as of the very substance of reality calls for a complete
transformation in our mode of thinking, or what has been termed "a
psychological change of front." We must break completely with the
habit of identifying the whole of the Jewish religion with merely
certain beliefs and duties, while ignoring completely the living
energy which has operated to produce them. They are only the static
residue of something that is essentially dynamic.
_The Jewish Aversion to Creeds and Formulas_
THE change in attitude which is here advocated is not a departure from
all that has gone before in Jewish life. If it were that, Judaism
could not possibly survive under it. The fact is that we are only
bringing to the fore and translating into modern phraseology an
attitude that in one form or another has always asserted itself in
Judaism. Simultaneously with the tendency to compress Judaism within
certain formulas, there has always shown itself a strong aversion to
gathering Judaism within creeds and minima of conformity. To-day that
aversion, which has hitherto remained a matter of feeling and
intuition, can make itself articulate by availing itself of the
results of recent research in the fields of religion. It need no
longer entertain the fear of being charged with spiritual anarchy.
Discountenancing dogmas in Judaism is not synonymous with intellectual
libertinism. It is rather a protest against shallowness and
superficiality, much like the chagrin of the artist at having his
knowledge of drawing praised and the soul of the picture missed.
We can give in this connection a few cursory examples of the
anti-summarizing tendency. The Torah itself, in one instance, seems to
set out with a view of reducing Judaism to a minimum, but scarcely
finds itself able to do so. "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy
God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, and to walk in all
His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of thy Lord and
the statutes, which I command thee this day, for thine own good?" "Is
this a small matter?" asks the Talmud, in evident surprise at the
hugeness of the program. When the would-be proselyte came to Shammai
and requested him to sum up the entire Torah in one principle, he
received no better treatment than he deserved, when he was made to
take to his heels. That Hillel did not rebuff him and gave him the
principle, "What is hateful to thee do not do unto thy neighbor,"
proves that Hillel knew how to be patient and tactful, but not that
the Talmud looks upon that summary, or any other, as expressive of the
essence of Judaism. The same applies to religious practices,
concerning which the Mishnah announces the maxim that it is not for us
to estimate which are more important than others. We are told that the
custom obtained at one time of having the Ten Commandments read as
part of the daily service; but that as soon as it gave rise to the
impression that the Ten Commandments were more essential than the rest
of the Torah, it was discontinued. It is true that Philo reduces the
teachings of Judaism to five essential doctrines, but that was because
Judaism to Philo was Platonism divinely revealed.
_As Shown by Judah Ha-Levi_
THE movement to formulate the fundamental teachings of Judaism first
gained headway at the beginning of the eleventh century with the
Karaites, whose entire conception of Judaism was such as to render
their sect hopelessly stagnant and doomed to dwindle. Still, even they
would never have thought of emphasizing certain dogmas as
indispensable, had they not discerned in the teachings of
Mohammedanism a dangerous challenge to Judaism. Thus the dogma-making
tendency in Judaism arose during the Middle Ages not as an indigenous
product but as a retort to the dominant religions of the time. What
might be called the application of the synoptic method to the Jewish
religion remained confined mostly to the part of Jewry which came,
directly or indirectly, under the influence of Aristotelian
intellectualism.
To this trend Judah Ha-Levi (1085-1140) stands out as a notable
exception. In him the disapproval of having Judaism subsumed under
formulas of a philosophic stamp comes again to the surface. His being
a poet even more than a philosopher enabled him to get a better
insight into the inwardness of Judaism than that obtained by the
intellectualists with their analytic scalpels. This is apparent in his
well-known "Al-Khazari." The story goes that the Khazar king, after
consulting a philosopher, a Mohammedan, and a Christian as to what he
should believe and do, finally turned to a Jewish rabbi. When the king
asked him about the Jewish religion, the rabbi replied, "I believe in
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who led the Children of Israel
out of Egypt, who fed them in the desert, and gave them the land. . . .
Our belief is comprised in the Torah, a very large domain." Upon
hearing this, the king grew indignant, and said to the rabbi,
"Shouldst thou, O Jew, not have said that thou believest in the
Creator of the world, its Governor and Guide, and in Him who created
and keeps thee, and such attributes which serve as evidence for every
believer?" But the rabbi persists in his mode of stating Judaism. He
parries successfully the king's efforts to draw out of him some
definition of Judaism in terms of speculative theology. The king in
time becomes a convert to Judaism, and it is only then, according to
Judah Ha-Levi, that he succeeds in getting the rabbi to teach him
concerning the attributes of God, as if to imply that one has first to
be a Jew before indulging in any abstract or philosophic study of
Judaism. The keynote of Ha-Levi's thought is that the essence of
Judaism is not merely to give assent to any general belief, but to
belong to Israel and share in its experiences.
_By Maimonides and by Abravanel_
EVEN Maimonides (1135-1204), who is usually represented as the chief
sponsor of the systematizing and speculative tendency in Judaism, is
far from having attached as much significance to the Creed he
formulated as the fact of its presence in the prayer book might
indicate. He himself strongly deprecates attaching more importance to
one part of the Torah than to another. "The Ten Commandments and the
Shema in the Torah," he says in the very same chapter of his
commentary on the Mishnah which contains the Creed, "are no holier
than any of the genealogies that are found in it." Albo (1380-1444)
reduces the essence of Judaism to three, yet inconsistently declares
that he who denies other articles of faith which are of minor
importance is no less a heretic than he who denies any of the
essential ones. In fact, he admits that there are as many articles of
faith as commandments in the Torah.
Abravanel (1437-1508), though an admirer of scholasticism, and
practically the last of the line of Jewish Aristotelians, considers
the thirteen Articles of Maimonides' Creed gratuitous, and as not
representative of the maturer views of Maimonides. His opinion is that
they properly belonged to the commentary on the Mishnah, which was the
work of his youth; and that as he ripened intellectually, he changed
his mind about their value. We miss them in the Code and in the
"Guide to the Perplexed," where we should most of all have expected to
find them. In the same connection, Abravanel adds that the fashion of
laying down creeds as fundamental in Judaism owes its origin to the
method employed in the secular studies which always started with
certain indisputable axioms.
The same resistance to the effort to extract Judaism from a few source
principles is encountered in Jewish mysticism. Whatever we may think
of the particular form which mysticism took on in the Jewish religion,
we cannot but regard it as the outbreak of a longing that forms a part
of all vital religion. We have good reason, therefore, to treat with
respect its opinion of the intellectualizing process of Jewish
philosophy. Although it was also addicted to speculative categories
and developed a theosophy instead of a theology, it approached Judaism
from an entirely different angle. Being impressionistic in its trend,
it was bound to look elsewhere than to abstract concepts for the core
of Judaism. To put Judaism into the form of a creed appeared to the
mystics like combining pure gold with a baser metal, in order to mint
it for circulation.
_And More Recently by Mendelssohn_
IN modern times the anti-dogmatizing tendency found a vigorous
exponent in Mendelssohn. Yet, somehow or other, he has been singled
out for attack, as though he had advocated a dry formalism, unredeemed
by any inner principle or inspiration. He is charged with having been
under the influence of the shallow deism of the English philosophers.
The truth is that Mendelssohn only repeats in his way what Judah
Ha-Levi had taught before him. He distinctly emphasizes the belief in
the existence of God, in providence and in retribution as the sine qua
non of Judaism, but he is clear-minded enough to realize that they
constitute what he calls "the universal religion of mankind," and not
Judaism.
Mendelssohn did not succeed in developing a constructive view of
Judaism, whereby it might be enabled to withstand the shock of
modernism; nevertheless, he does not deserve the treatment accorded
him because of his alleged attitude towards creeds. His position as to
the relation of creeds to Judaism is the only tenable one. He
maintains that creeds can only be of two kinds; either they oppose
reason, and should therefore find no place in Judaism, or are so
self-evident that they are not confined to Judaism. This does not mean
that to be a Jew one can believe whatever he likes, or not believe at
all. It does not mean that Judaism only demands outward conformity.
Mendelssohn was aware that certain "Hobot ha-Lebabot," Duties of the
Heart, are indispensable to Judaism. But he refused to make of Judaism
a mutilated philosophy.
_Judaism Needs Working Principles--Not Abstract Dogmas_
NO sphere of life can be maintained intelligently without some basic
principles, particularly so exalted a sphere as religion. Who counts
upon any art attaining a high degree of development by mere rule of
thumb? Is anything so characteristic of modern life as emphasis upon
the mutual interrelation of theory and practice? All our strivings to
rehabilitate Judaism are bound to prove futile unless they are made to
center about some definite conception of its aims and methods. We need
principles, yea dogmas, in Judaism as we need working hypotheses in
any great undertaking. But dogmas, in the sense of abstract
principles, regarded as immutable, are both superfluous and dangerous.
If such dogmas are nothing more than the common denominator of all
that has been identified with Judaism in the course of its history,
they are sure to be banal and colorless. If they are to be fixed and
unalterable, they are bound in time to clash with reason and
experience, and to sap the religion of its vitality. Judaism needs
principles that can help it to withstand danger, that can give it a
lease upon life. This is the criterion to be applied to any articulate
conception of Judaism. Can the principles which the text-books on
Judaism declare to be fundamental render this service? The reply is an
unequivocal No. Hence they are worse than useless.
But we cannot afford to stop at this point. Knowing what Judaism is
not, is only half-knowledge, and therefore quite dangerous. We must
apply ourselves anew to the task of pondering over the problem of
Judaism. We may indulge to our heart's content in lauding the past
when one could be a Jew without troubling his head about the question,
"What is Judaism?" We may sigh in regret for those days when a Jew
upon being asked about his religion was able to reply, "I have no
religion; I am a Jew." The danger of the entire economy of the Jewish
soul going to pieces is too imminent to permit us to lull ourselves
into that blissful unconsciousness, the praises of which Carlyle sang
quite consciously. We are treading the narrow ledge of a precipice.
Men like Zollschan, Ruppin, and Theilhaber have pointed out the awful
chasm that threatens to engulf us. It requires not a little courage to
maintain our nerve and avoid being seized with the vertigo. But
courage alone is not enough. We must take into account the narrowness
of the path and tread over it warily.
_We Must Face the Real Problem of Judaism_
WE Jews must do some very hard thinking, of a kind, perhaps, that we
have not been called upon to do before. That task dare not be shirked.
We must not give in to that tendency which breaks out whenever we have
something very difficult to do, of turning to anything except that
which we know demands peremptory attention. A task that is thus
neglected revenges itself by haunting us and upsetting whatever we
undertake. Instead of giving to the problem of Judaism the careful
deliberation that it requires, we get busy with a thousand and one
things, whereby we hope to escape the need of concentrated attention.
We have become fussy and fidgety. We are divided into committees and
sub-committees. In place of clearness of thought we have a confusion
of tongues. Our case illustrates the truth which Pascal enunciated,
that most of the evils in the world can be traced to the inability of
a person to sit in his room and think.
Without deprecating any of the undertakings to bring order out of the
social chaos in Jewish life, we must place at the present time chief
emphasis upon the serious consideration of our inner problem, the
problem of the Jewish soul and of the Jewish spirit, the problem of
Judaism. We may well envy the thousands of soldiers on the
battlefields of Europe to whom it is a joy to meet death for the sake
of their respective flags. Each of them has a cause to die for. Most
of us, by reason of our Jewish descent, find life, particularly in the
higher sense of the word, to be a keener struggle for existence than
our neighbors do. Yet it would not be half so wearing if our
difficulties were consecrated by an inspiring cause or by a thrilling
loyalty. Why need we be poverty-stricken in spirit, bereft of
everything that makes struggle sweet and suffering endurable? We must
put the very question, What is Judaism? in a new way and in a
different spirit. We must have the definite purpose in mind, of so
understanding it as to know what to do next, and to strive for that
vigorously, so as not to drift like helpless flotsam and jetsam. We
need strong beliefs which, as Bagehot puts it, win strong men, and
then make them stronger.
_Judaism Must Speak to Us in the Language of Today_
IN the Talmud we find the principle enunciated that the Torah adopted
the style of language that men were wont to use. A condition
indispensable to a religion being an active force in human life is
that it speak to men in terms of their own experience. Judaism, to be
significant to modern man or woman, can no longer afford to speak in
the language of theology. Psychology and social science, history and
human experience, have revealed new worlds in the domain of the
spirit. The language of theology might have a certain quaintness and
charm to the ears of those to whom religion is a kind of dreamy
romanticism. But to those who want to find in Judaism a way of life
and a higher ambition, it must address itself in the language of
concrete and verifiable experience.
The ideas in which Judaism was wont to spell itself out in the past
are no longer at home in the Weltanschauung of the modern man. What
prevented the Reform movement from becoming a real reformation and a
vitalization of Judaism was that it sought to adjust Judaism to a
Weltanschauung which had already begun to grow obsolete. We have to
reckon with all that has been learned in the meantime concerning human
society and the place of religion in it. When one comes to a strange
land, and has with him only the coin of his native country, he must
calculate in terms of the currency of the land he is in, if he wants
to know whether or not he has enough to live on. Can we Jews afford to
live spiritually upon our heritage? That can only be answered if we
learn what that heritage is equivalent to in the current mental coin
of the modern man. If we do not wish to be cut off from the stream of
living thought, if we do not want to be spiritually starved, we Jews
must know not so much what Judaism meant twenty centuries ago, nor
even a century ago, but what it is to mean to us of today.
[Illustration: Signature: MMKaplan]
EDITORS' NOTE.--_In articles to follow, Professor
Kaplan will give his conception of "What Judaism Is."_
The Jewish Student in Our Universities
_A Menorah Prize Essay_
BY MORRIS J. ESCOLL
[Illustration: _MORRIS J. ESCOLL (born in Russia, 1893, came to
America in 1896), graduate of Stuyvesant High School, New York (1910),
student at Columbia (1910-'12) where he won the Peithologian Medal for
a Freshman Essay; worked as farm hand; and since 1914 a student in the
Cornell College of Agriculture. The present paper is a somewhat
revised version of the Essay with which he won the Cornell Menorah
Prize last June._]
THE remarkable adaptability of the Jew to his environment has been at
once his strength and his weakness. His strength, in that it provided
a variable cloak to shelter him in storm on the one hand,--on the
other, to deck him seasonably, as it were, for the onward journey,
when days were fair; his weakness, in that it has often led him to
forget that the cloak was but raiment;--"and is not the body more than
raiment?" Of strength in storm we have had example enough for twenty
centuries--such example as is unique in history; of what is more rare,
strength in days of fair weather, we are to expect a supreme example
today, and in America, in the American Universities let us say, where
the cloak of adaptability is most free and seasonable--a supreme
example of strength, or of weakness.
_The Cloak of Adaptability_
ONE is at first reluctant to single out the Jew from his fellows at
college. He seems in no manner different from them. He studies with
them, eats with them, plays ball with them. He writes editorials for
the college paper; he competes in the oratorical contests. One, for
example, is a member of the school orchestra; another, perhaps the son
or the grandson of an immigrant from Germany, leads the cheers at the
track meet; another, himself an immigrant from Russia, plays on the
chess team and is one of the brilliant scholars in his class. This
last does, at present, have something of the stranger about him, but
before long, no doubt, his speech will have become more smooth, his
trousers will have begun to show a crease; he will have become quite
an interesting and regular figure at the various reform and ethical
club meetings at the university, and he will begin to be seen quite
frequently in the company of his gentile classmates--even in the
company of his German-Jewish cousin. Wonderful, indeed, the country
that can so readily attire its adopted children, and, as the saying
goes, make them feel at home; wonderful, perhaps, the race that,
through centuries of degradation, has kept alive, though often latent
indeed, the potentialities of equal partnership with the most
enlightened peoples of a twentieth century civilization.
What though it has no long past, America is the great land of the
future. Here let the Jew lay aside his burden of the time that has
gone and build anew into the time to come. Shall we regret, then, that
the Jewish student has taken on the polite address, the proud
carriage, the heartiness and the chuckle of his Yankee comrade? Should
he now keep the gabardine of his forefathers, yes, and the credulities
and ceremonies of a circumscribed and persecuted people? Why not
absorb that wholesome ruddiness, denied him so long, that breathes of
open American prairies, fair play, and the Declaration of
Independence?
_"The Goal of Twenty Centuries of Wandering"_
"FOXES have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of
man hath not where to lay his head." Of whom did the great prophet
speak more fittingly than of the children of his own race? Homeless
for two thousand years, persecuted, ostracized, their backs have
become bent and in the eyes of many they have become a nation of
religious fanatics and usurers, wily, unkempt. The Jewish youth of
to-day cannot look back upon his history of exile and say, as did
Æneas of old after seven long years of wandering: "It will be pleasant
to remember"--"forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit"; his trials have
been but too real and he has not recovered sufficiently to have any
desire to recall them. Blame him not then, if, when others from
obscure and semi-civilized quarters of the globe hail with pride their
ancestry, he alone, with the proudest traditions in history, will
sometimes seek to hide his descent. He still feels, moreover, some of
the old "wiliness" and "unkemptness" within himself; he thinks they
are of the Jews and of none others--and he wants to get rid of them.
He still feels some of the old usury in his bones, the clannishness,
the distrust of the world, which the squalid ghetto walls the Middle
Ages had built around his fathers have bequeathed to him, and he wants
to get rid of those. Shall we look askance at him then, if when the
American University welcomes him to her hearth--Ithaca, for example,
with her kindly professors and laughing girl students, her ball games,
her neat cottages and rolling hills that drink Cayuga's stream
beside--in the excess of eagerness he should sometimes break with,
yes, even forget his past, and dream new things? (Hills, cottages,
home and country; superfluous concepts were these to other men,
elementary satisfactions which they are born into and take for granted
as their inevitable heritage.) Eagerly, therefore, greedily, perhaps,
he sees new things; the goal of twenty centuries of wandering stands
revealed before him. The Irish have found a home in America, the
Germans, the Italians, the Poles, and why not the neediest of all, the
Jews? The American University typifies the ideals of the great
democracy where "race, creed and previous conditions" are forgotten.
Here all men forget their prejudices. All men become brothers.
_But Not Yet Are All Men Brothers_
BUT hold, have we not been expressing a wish rather than a fact? We
look into our own hearts, and strife and jealousy and racial
antagonism are still there. Can we expect that man who has but lately
begun to think of brotherhood can already feel it in his blood; that
the age-long superstition against the Jew can be obliterated with a
new geographical boundary--though that boundary be indeed serene as
the all-washing, all-embracing Atlantic? Oh, that "reality does not
correspond to our conceptions," exclaims Wilhelm Meister.
For centuries the Jews had a respected and comfortable home in Spain,
but then came the fearful Inquisition, and the ninth day of Ab 1492
saw 300,000 of them exiled out of the country they had helped grow to
culture and wealth. There was the Declaration of the Rights of Man
during the French Revolution, but then came the Dreyfus affair a
century later. There was science and enlightenment in United Germany,
but never was anti-Semitism more pronounced, more scientific than
there between 1875 and '80. In 1881 the May Laws were passed in
Russia. In 1882 there was a ritual murder trial in Hungary. Our
statutes and sciences, after all, are but ways and means, improved
ways and means, to what?--often to unimproved ends, it seems. Our
learning and knowledge are what?--but channels to educate, to lead out
(e-duco) the noble qualities in man? yes; perhaps also his jealousies
and hatreds. And thus there comes a time of doubt. The courtesies and
learning of this university life, reflects the Jewish student, perhaps
but cover up these jealousies and hatreds, make them more polite, and
all the more painful therefore. However much he will not, he sees
cliques and denominational clubs all about him: Catholic clubs,
Lutheran clubs, Jewish clubs; in the lecture room the gentiles form
their groups and the Jews form theirs; in the election of class
officers the Jews have been slighted; at the class dinner a Jew was
insulted; one fellow was refused accommodations at a student
rooming-house because he was a Jew; and the sensitive young man begins
to feel as though there were but two divisions of people at the
University after all: Jews and everybody else.
_The Perennial Burden of the Jew_
BUT it is unfair and ungrateful to speak thus of the American
University. All superstition and prejudice may not have disappeared
here; enough it is that they tend to disappear so rapidly. But what of
the large country outside the university? What of the growing Jewries
in our cities? What of the Jew in the little hamlet carrying his pack
of tinware from door to door; he is so eager to earn an honest dollar
for a wife, a daughter, perhaps for a son at college; so eager to find
him a home like that of the earlier non-Jewish immigrants who buy his
wares; yet why must he overstrain his virtues before them, break
through the ice, as the saying goes, and clear himself--why? for being
a Jew. Evidently, others are taken as good until they prove themselves
bad; the Jew is bad until he proves himself good. Should some other
Jewish trader come to the same locality and commit some wrong,
overcharge a shilling on the price of a kettle, for example, the first
Jew must be made to feel ashamed of it, for it was not the other man
who did the wrong, but the "Jew in him." Evidently, again, the Jewish
problem is not of the individual, but of the race. Must the Wandering
Jew bear a perennial burden?
But even if this problem were solved (it is possible for all the Jews
in America to be in time regarded on equal terms with their neighbors
or even to be assimilated altogether with them), what of the Jews in
Russia, in Roumania, in Galicia? How long must we wait for them to
assimilate or to become free and equal sons of a fatherland? Surely we
shall not suggest that it is well for them to continue forever an
alien people in those lands. And even if this problem too were solved,
if the Jews of Russia, Roumania, and Galicia were to become free and
equal sons of a fatherland, if the Jews all over the world were to be
taken in as brothers by their neighbors, is it enough? Are we to be
satisfied with this alone? "Hills, cottages, home and country"--is not
all this but raiment? What of the body, what of the Jewish soul?
_The Three Types of Jewish Students: (1) The "No-Jew"_
WITH his problems thus put, how shall the Jewish youth face them?
Shall he consider body and raiment equally, shall he put body above
raiment, or shall he put raiment above body and forget the body? To
put it crudely into other words, shall his ready adaptation to
American University life tend to make him less of a Jew, more of a
Jew, or no Jew at all, and thus tending, to repeat our original
thought, wherein will it be for weakness, wherein for strength? Each
Jewish student, no doubt, in varying measure, responds to all three of
these tendencies; yet, insofar as the response towards one or another
of these is more marked in certain individuals than in others, let us
group the individuals together accordingly, and for the convenience of
our discussion divide them into three separate types.
The no-Jew type is common on the campus. His presence pleases us,
perhaps even flatters us. He is carefree, boyish. He makes heroes of
the gridiron athletes; he delights in the comedy shows that come to
town; he joins his non-Jewish friends in outdoor play in that easy
laughter of theirs that bubbles over at a trifle;--and we were
beginning to think the Jew had forgotten to play and laugh. We saw him
after sundown once, single in a canoe, paddling across the wide
unruffled lake and far where purple sky and purple water seem to
commingle, and we thought we saw the primitive Indian again, the
wholesome child of nature plying those waters as of old. Sail on,
brave youth, we are glad to see thee still a lover of the wild, the
simple, the calm; we are glad there is still in the Jew something of
the wholesome child, the adventurer, the savage, shall we call it? We
are almost tempted to say we are glad to have him forget his past, to
sail thus away, as it were, from his troubled brethren, away across
the unruffled lake where purple wave and purple cloud in peace
commingle,--so long have we waited for the mind of the Jewish youth to
be youthful, for the moist gleam in the eye of a sorrowful children to
disappear.
_"Neither Fish, Nor Flesh, Nor Fowl"_
BUT not always is this drifting out of Jewish life so comely. There is
another individual in this type in whom it appears very much strained.
The first merges within the American tradition, the second obtrudes
into it; the first unconsciously, the second painfully aware of his
effort; the first because he has so much of the tradition within him,
the second, we are afraid, because he has so little. The second
individual is generally of more recent arrival to this country than
the first; he considers his Jewishness a misfortune which must be
gotten rid of. Both are, indeed, self-centred, unmindful of their
people, but the first is more boyish--and a boy should be
self-centred. Both put the raiment above the body, and in this there
is weakness; but in the first there is not much of body, the roots of
Jewish growth have found no depth or proper sap in him, and if in him
there is not strength of body, there is at least grace of raiment; in
the second there is neither grace nor strength,--he may acquire the
superstructure of American character, but where the foundation to
build it on? Where is there strength when it is ever a getting and
never a giving?
Judaism weighs most heavily upon this latter individual. He will often
deny his race, we regret to say, and play for the affection of members
of other races. But they somehow will discover his "misfortune" and
despise him all the more for hiding it. All this prejudice, he
explains, is due to "those other Jews." If they would only learn
modesty from the gentile,--not talk so, not walk so, and not keep
hanging around the professor's desk after the lecture with all sorts
of fool questions,--why then, there would be no more of "this
prejudice thing" and he could devote his time to more important
problems. (We half suspect those problems would be superficial ones.
We would also perhaps give more heed to his urging us to modesty, if
only the urging were more modest.) He may even become eloquent and
tell us that the Jews do not appreciate the generosities and liberties
of American life, that they ought to forget their old religious
superstitions and realize that in free America we don't need any
religions, for all men are brothers. (Here again we would perhaps give
more heed to his sentiment for its boundless idealism, were we not
afraid it was but a cover for boundless egotism.)
And which brotherly organization, which fraternity do you belong to up
here? We ask, not to criticize those boyish aristocracies but rather
to embarrass him, we confess, for we know he must name a Jewish
fraternity or none at all. The other fraternities are indeed
fraternal--but not to Jews, not even to those who would get away from
Judaism. We speak without malice of this individual; we regret only
that he gets so little out of the great American tradition. The
raiment becomes him badly. Speaking in slang and following the
baseball scores does not make an American. If he sells his birthright
let it be for something more than a mess of pottage. Even if he should
succeed in assimilating himself with the other races, whether it be by
the accumulation of wealth or baptism or successful denial of his
origin, yet we doubt whether he can become really happy--for he is
neither fish nor flesh nor fowl. Again, what can he receive when he
has nothing to give? And thus we must leave him, perhaps even now
laughing in the company of his non-Jewish acquaintances at some
caricature of the Jew presented for their entertainment--that is of
one of "those other Jews"--a type for which we are sorry, a coin that
is spurious and does not ring true.
_The Second Type: "An American of Jewish Ancestry"_
OUR second type considers body and raiment as of equal weight; he will
make them as one. He will become less of a Jew and more of an
American, a better American for being a Jew. Unlike the first type, he
sees a little beyond himself. Americanism is good enough for him, but
there are other Jews not in America, he realizes, and there are Jews
within America who have not reached, perhaps never can reach, his
position of comfortable participation in American life, and what of
them? There may be more pressing, more important problems in the
world, but who else will solve that particular one of the Jew if he
doesn't? He therefore will not run away from Judaism; he will try to
modify it, of course, to fit in with American progress, but, for the
sake of his people, he will stay a Jew, or better an American of
Jewish ancestry. This type is the son of the big-hearted givers among
Israel. His father subscribes generously to charitable organizations,
is a member of a Reform Temple, and owes much indeed to the
opportunities of the American republic. The son, therefore, is an
American patriot, and what though it seem at times overtaxed, his
patriotism, unlike that of the individual under our first type, is
genuine, for it is not primarily self-seeking. When he speaks of
ideals, it is not to say we have no need of religions at all, but
rather that we all in America have more or less the same belief only
that we choose to express it differently, each according to his
ancestral traditions. The three rings, says Nathan der Weise, may all
be true or all be false according to the conduct of those that wear
them. "But are there no peculiar values of conduct," we ask him,
"bequeathed by the peculiar traditions of the Jew?" "Yes," he answers,
"but those values may now be found in the cosmopolitan civilization of
America." "We are getting away from peculiar things," he further adds;
"we must learn to break down barriers and distinctions and work all
together, not as Jews or Americans or anything else, but simply as
men. Our only problem is to get the Jews treated everywhere as men."
"But aside from that," we go on to ask, "isn't there a something that
binds together certain groups of people that have had a common
history, a common religion or any such thing in common?" "Yes," he
replies, "but that something is the common intellect. The accident of
birth does not make us friends; though I must help the Jew in far-off
Russia, yet I am more closely identified with my Anglo-Saxon
classmate. For me to co-operate with the Jew simply because he is a
Jew is as logical as for me to co-operate with a man simply because he
has the same shade of brown hair that I have." Words that command our
thought--but yet it seems to us the speaker feels better than he
knows. Why then did his heart quicken when one Friday night we passed
the window of that Galician Jew, the erstwhile butt of many a jest
between us, our college second-hand clothes man, and saw the flicker
of his Sabbath candles? No flicker within the home of a brown-haired
man would move him so. And even while he is speaking to us, though the
length of our acquaintanceship is short, we detect an unwonted
relaxation in his manner, a confidence that has found understanding
and seeks to lay itself bare. Is it not because both of us are Jews?
Be that as it may, the words of this type are sincere. If he forgets
his ancestry it is because he thinks of posterity. By blending his
thoughts and aspirations with those of free and generous America, he
will bequeath to his children a happier heritage than was left him by
his forefathers. As for ideals, why call them Jewish rather than
American; what though they originated in Judea, cannot they be
distributed from America? His Zion therefore will be in Washington.
The Jewish soul and the American soul will become as one. He does not
deny the soul, then--the raiment has not been put above the body, the
flesh above the spirit; and the adaptation of this type to the
American environment can therefore make for strength, for a better
humanity.
_The Third Type: "More, Not Less, of a Jew"_
WHAT room have we now for a third type? But there does appear one
among his brethren, an extremist, who is not to be satisfied with the
promised strength of his fellows of this last type. There may be
strength among them, he thinks, but strength not enough. Greater
strength is there in becoming not a non-Jew, nor less of a Jew, but
simply more of a Jew. Judaism to him is not a mere peculiar thing, but
a peculiar great thing, and only by keeping it peculiar can he enhance
its greatness. The Jewish genius cannot blend with that of America
without loss to its individuality; however much it may borrow from
America in outer accoutrement, in "wholesome ruddiness," "fair play,"
"polite address," and so forth--(and it should borrow what it can to
improve its appearance), yet the accoutrement must remain but
raiment,--and the body is more than raiment. Apparently he is a very
narrow-minded person--and he is; yet he believes with Ahad Ha-'Am that
"greatness is not a matter of breadth only, but of depth."
We have found this extremist in the dark-eyed dreamer who came to us
but recently from a Russian university, but also in the glad-eyed
youth who wears his Americanism most gracefully, it being handed down
to him for several generations. Judaism in this case, at any rate, to
use a homely expression, does not vary with the length of the nose.
This type is small in numbers, but the Jews have never made much of
numbers, and even as we observe him we are minded of the words of
Joel, "--and in the remnant shall be deliverance." Does he shun the
American garment then? No, on the contrary, he evermore seeks it and
strives to make it attire him more gracefully. He loves the American
tradition; he has much to gather from its sunniness--his fathers had
been kept in the dark so long. But, at the breaking of day, when the
angel who wrestled with him through the night would let him go, he
will say, as did Jacob of old, "I will not let thee go, except thou
bless me"; America must bless him so that in the light of modern day
his people may once again be called "no more Jacob but Israel."
"Many and great are the gifts of the gentile world," he tells us, "but
that peculiar greatness within the character of the Jews as a people,
it has not. Some have called it religion, some morality; perhaps it is
the devotion they have evolved to the unity of things, the אחד חוחי;
perhaps it is only a certain sadness of suffering, a certain depth of
sympathy they have evolved for all suffering and sorrow, but at any
rate it is a racial momentum which our ancestors for four thousand
years have been forging and refining in the hottest fires;" and
whether it be conceit or inspiration, he adds, "and think not that we,
to-day, in the comfortable lassitude of American life, can destroy
it." The spirit is greater than the man; the Jew may be lost or be
assimilated, but the Jewish race, not yet.
_A Spiritual Vision and Aspiration_
"BUT consider," we say very plainly to him, "the great bulk of the
Jews who seem to have lost that old spirit of religion; they pray in a
language they scarce understand as though 'they shall be heard for
their much speaking'; when you want the Hebrew Bible, moreover, it
seems you must go to the gentiles, and have not these added thereto
the sublime teachings of Christ?"
"Yes," replies our Jewish friend, with more of grief than of censure
in his voice, "and to-day the Christian world is awarding the Iron
Cross for excellence in killing. And our people it has made to loathe
the name of Christ, because it was his image that was in the hand of
the priest who led the mob to massacre at the Inquisition and at
Kishineff; though all the time it was that very persecuted people that
was itself living the principles and the martyrdom of its greatest
prophet." And he continues, and tells us brusquely how he went once to
church with a Methodist young lady and how when he was rapt in the
music of a Psalm that was being sung, she whispered giddily to him:
"Don't that remind you somewhat of the one-step music?" "No," he tells
us he replied, "it reminds me that I am the only Christian in this
audience."
And we understand in his reply he was not thinking of himself alone
(for extremist though he was, he must have known there was many
another devout listener in that audience) but rather of his race, of
those very Jews of the bended backs, "wily, unkempt," who were
elsewhere chanting that same Psalm in a language, 'tis true, they
scarce understood, yet with a spiritual zeal and forgetfulness of the
"treasures upon earth" which was the very soul of the teachings of
Christ. Could his Methodist friend, could even he, with all his
university training and American ruddiness, but have the noble spirit
of his unlettered grandmother he remembered weeping so bitterly in the
old synagogue on Yom Kippur, as though weeping for the sins of all
humanity,--Rachel weeping for her children. No, it was not the
religion put on and off with the phylacteries that distinguished his
fathers; it was never the raiment, but the body. Even in the darkness
of the Middle Ages it was the _Malkuth Shaddai_, the kingdom of
righteousness, that the old Jew prayed for on his sacred days.
Narrow-minded, indeed, is this last type of Jew; but yet when rays are
concentrated to a narrow radius, the outlook through the lens may be
wide and far-reaching. We understand that he, too, thinks of posterity
as does his cousin, but only as mistress within its own household does
he believe the Jewish race can bequeath great strength to its
posterity and the posterity of the world,--not as intruder into the
home of others, nor even as their welcome guest. The Bible was the
work of a narrow, provincial Israel; the Talmud their work when
scattered among the nations.
_"To Make Strong the Spirit of the Prophets"_
"WE have made too much," concludes our young friend, "of the
cosmopolitan likenesses among nations and men; we must promote their
differences, and respect for those differences. That is in the path of
peace; it is war, as you know, that levels distinctions. The harmony
of an autumn sunset is in its many colors. Our own little handful of
people does not wish to make itself great in possessions or strong in
arms. We have ever been the meekest among men; while many a Christian
nation was taking an eye for an eve, it is we that were turning the
other cheek. Yes, we think we have outgrown that boyish fascination
for brutal brawn a little more than they. Today, Israel wishes but to
express its pent-up soul, to make strong the spirit of its prophets
and teachers, its Moses, its Isaiah, its Hillel, so that it may be
'for a light to the Gentiles, (and bear) salvation unto the end of the
earth.'"
[Illustration: Signature: Morris J. Escoll]
The Romance of Rabbi Akiba
BY GEORGE J. HOROWITZ
[Illustration: _GEORGE JACOB HOROWITZ (born in New York, 1894),
educated in the Public Schools of New York, College of the City of New
York (A. B. 1915), Talmud Torah, and Teachers' Institute of Jewish
Theological Seminary; President (1915) of Menorah Society of City
College of New York; now a graduate student in Romance Languages at
Columbia._]
AKIBA ben Joseph, deservedly called the father of Rabbinical Judaism,
was one of the most original and the most talented of all the great
galaxy of ancient Rabbis. In him was typified the great ideal of a
Jewish Rabbi--a man of heart, of hand, and of head. But Akiba is still
more remarkable for the charm and romance of his life. He is indeed
the one Rabbi with a great romance. The story of his life, stripped of
all exaggeration or literary artifice, reads more like a tale of
"knight and lady" than like the simple facts of a scholar's life. His
great love, his sudden rise from the humblest obscurity, his brilliant
intellectual and spiritual achievements, and his glorious death, make
up the successive scenes of one of the most inspiring chapters in
Jewish history.
_His Youth and Romantic Marriage_
AKIBA was born about the year 50, at a time when the Roman Empire at
its height was about to turn all its mighty forces against his people,
the little state of Judea; and he died a martyr to his faith, in about
the year 132, on the eve of the last great rebellion against Roman
domination. His origin and early years are shrouded in darkness. We
know that he was an unlettered shepherd in his youth and mistrustful
of Rabbis and their learning. His master, Kalba Sabua--so the story
goes--was one of the richest men in Jerusalem, one of the three
wealthy philanthropists who offered to prevent the famine occasioned
by the last great siege of Jerusalem.
While in the service of Kalba Sabua, young Akiba made the acquaintance
of his daughter Rachel. They were immediately drawn to one another, he
attracted by her great beauty, and she by his innate refinement and
superiority. A deep attachment soon sprang up between them. Akiba was
still an illiterate man, however, and Rachel made him promise that if
she were betrothed unto him he would go to the Beth Hamidrash to
study. In those days this was equivalent to acquiring education and
culture. To this Akiba assented and there followed a secret marriage.
When her father learned of what she had done, he became furious. He
disinherited her, and cast her off, leaving her without a roof over
her head and absolutely penniless, and he swore that as long as Akiba
remained her husband she would receive no help from her father. Then
set in a period of bitter poverty for the young pair. Akiba's heart
was rent with pain to see his young wife, who had been accustomed from
earliest youth to a home of luxury, pass her days in a miserable
hovel, with the barest necessities and sometimes even lacking bread to
eat. In winter they slept on a pallet and Akiba would pick the straws
out of her wonderfully long and beautiful hair. She was beautiful even
in her rags and tatters, and once Akiba was moved to exclaim: "Oh,
that I had a fitting ornament for thee: a golden image of Jerusalem
the Holy City!" Both indeed were nearest his heart. Once a man came to
the door of their hut and asked for some straw, saying that his wife
was confined to child-bed and he had no couch for her. "Ah, see," said
Akiba to his wife, "there are those even poorer than we. This man has
not even straw to lie on." This seeming poor man, the Rabbis say, was
none other than Elijah, who had come to comfort them in their misery.
_Struggles and Sacrifices for an Education_
THE incident did indeed give them new heart, for until then Akiba
could not summon enough resolution to go off and study while his wife
remained behind in such abject circumstances. Nor could she insist.
But now her old strength came back to her, and she reminded Akiba of
his promise: "Go thou, and study in the Beth-Hamidrash." She must have
felt undoubtedly that there were great possibilities in him, and in
truth she was not mistaken. Akiba, however, in his modesty, had no
confidence that he could master the intricate subtleties of Rabbinic
law. How could he, who had now reached forty years of age without once
attending even an elementary school, hope to make any progress at all
so late in life? One day, musing thus, as he stood by the village
well, his interest was suddenly roused by observing that one of the
stones had a deep hollow, caused probably by the drippings of the
buckets. "Who hollowed out this stone?" he asked; and he was answered:
"Canst thou not read Scripture, Akiba? 'The waters wear the
stones,'--the water, that falls on it continually day after day, has
hollowed out the stone." Immediately Akiba argued _a fortiori_ (Kal
Vahomer) with respect to himself. "If what is soft can cut what is
hard, then the words of the Torah, which are as hard as iron, will
surely impress themselves upon my heart, which is only flesh and
blood." So Akiba repaired forthwith to a _Melammed Tinokoth_, a
teacher of children, and, seated beside his own little son, he began
learning his letters. Akiba held one end of the A. B. C. board and his
son the other.
The elements once mastered, the next step was the Rabbinical academy.
Bitter poverty, however, would not permit Akiba to leave home, and he
would probably have remained in his little village for the rest of his
life, an obscure and unknown man, if it were not for his wife. It was
her noble self-sacrifice that enabled him to become the greatest Rabbi
of his time and perhaps of all time. Unknown to him, she stole out
into the market-place and sold all that beautiful hair of hers, so
that he might continue his studies. Indeed no sacrifice, no
self-abnegation, was too great for her. She sent Akiba away and for
twelve long years dwelt alone in sorrow and in want, a "living widow,"
and at the end of that period she crowned it with a renewal of the
same great sacrifice. As Akiba was crossing the threshold, home again
after twelve years of study, he overheard Rachel talking with a
neighbor. "It served thee right," said the neighbor, "for marrying a
man so far beneath thee. Now he has gone off and forsaken thee." "If
he hearkened to me," was Rachel's reply, "he would stay away another
twelve years." At these words Akiba exclaimed: "Since she gives me
permission, I will go back to my studies,"--and he went and stayed
away another twelve years. Such was the noble renunciation of Rachel,
wife of Rabbi Akiba, for his sake and for the sake of the Torah.
_Akiba's Rise to Recognition and Fame_
AKIBA studied assiduously at the schools of R. Nahum of Geniso and of
R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, both renowned teachers, who in their youth
had been favorite pupils of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai. It is
illuminating to consider Akiba's general method of study. He had the
habit, the Talmud tells us, of going alone to meditate over every
Halakah (law) that he learned. After this bit of hard thinking, as we
would call it, he usually came back with some very difficult
questions. Only when these questions were answered did he feel
satisfied that he knew the Halakah. That this thorough method of study
bore fruitful results Akiba's subsequent achievements showed. At
first, however, his genius was not evident and R. Eliezer paid no
attention to him. But one day Akiba gave him his first answer and R.
Eliezer was astounded at its profundity. Said R. Joshua then to R.
Eliezer, in a slightly modified Scriptural phrase, "Is not this he
whom thou hast despised? Go thou now and contend with him." From that
time on Akiba was acknowledged a master of Rabbinic law.
All that confused mass of traditional rules, precepts, laws,
discussions and opinions which composed the Oral Law, and which it
usually took a lifetime to master, Akiba made his own within the space
of a few years, and at an age when the mind is no longer fresh and
impressionable. Akiba's genius showed itself even more brilliantly in
his subsequent labors in the same field, which were marked by three
great achievements. These were his arrangement of the Oral Law into a
systematic code, the Mishnah (substantially as later edited by R.
Judah Ha-Nasi), his establishment of a logical foundation for each
Halakah, and his discovery and formulation of new and original methods
of hermeneutics and exegesis. To appreciate the magnitude of these
achievements, we must remember that up to and for some time after
Akiba's day, instruction in the rabbinical academies was oral. Each
teacher taught, as well as he could recall, exactly what he had heard
from the lips of his master, and his pupils in their turn did
likewise. Every great Rabbi therefore had his own set of Halakic
traditions, his own Mishnah.
The results of this system or rather lack of system were mainly two:
the reasons for many of the Halakoth were forgotten, and of the laws
that were taught an immense number were uncoordinated, confused and
often contradictory. The greatest fault, however, of these early
Mishnayoth (Mishnayoth Rishonoth) was their general lack of
arrangement. The Halakoth were usually strung together without
connection and without any logical grouping. It was Akiba who first
organized them into an orderly system. He put all the Halakoth dealing
with one particular subject in one group, and then he divided the
groups into the six general divisions that our Mishnah has today.
Besides this he introduced number mneumonics wherever possible, in
order to facilitate memorization. The second work that we owe to
Akiba's influence is the Tosephta or Supplement to the Mishnah, as
later edited by his pupil R. Nehemiah. Akiba's purpose in this
Supplement was to give explanatory matter on the Halakoth of the
Mishnah in the form of citations of cases, discussions, and opinions.
Here there was more room for originality than in the first work, for
when the reason for any law had been forgotten Akiba discovered it
again.
_"The Third Founder of Judaism after Moses and Ezra"_
THE achievement, however, in which Akiba's mind revealed itself in all
its brilliant originality, and which more than anything else delighted
and astonished his colleagues, was his new system of Biblical, or
rather Pentateuchal, interpretation, his Midrash ha-Torah. The
importance of these new methods cannot be overestimated. The Oral Law
is nothing more than the Jewish interpretation of the Torah, and
consequently new methods of Pentateuchal exegesis meant the further
growth and development of the Oral Law. Akiba thus gave Judaism the
capacity for vigorous further development. He was indeed a firm
believer in the principle that the Oral Law, even as life itself, is
always in process of evolution--"immer in Werden," as the Germans put
it--but never completed. His main exegetical principle is quite
simple. The language of the Torah is not like the language of an
ordinary book. In the Torah every syllable, every letter is fraught
with meaning. It is all essence. Hence every detail in the Torah must
be interpreted. There is absolutely nothing superfluous. It was these
exegetical methods that excited the unbounded admiration of his
fellow-rabbis. They said of him that things that were not even
revealed to Moses were revealed unto Akiba. By his preservation of the
old Halakoth in the Mishnah and by his stimulation of newer
developments with his exegesis, Akiba laid the foundations of Talmudic
and Rabbinic learning, and truly earned for himself the title of third
founder of Judaism after Moses and Ezra.
Akiba's method of teaching also was extraordinary. The order and
system that he had brought into the Rabbinic curriculum coupled with
his novel methods of exegesis rendered his lectures clear, simple and
most interesting. Multitudes flocked to hear him. With hardly an
exception all the prominent Rabbis of the following generation
attended Akiba's academy. Notable amongst them was R. Meir, who handed
down Akiba's Mishnah to R. Judah Ha-Nasi and through him to posterity.
_Happiness and Affluence_
TOWARDS the end of the twenty-four years thus devoted to study, Akiba
turned his steps homewards, accompanied by a large band of disciples,
which tradition numbers in the thousands. At the rumor that a great
Rabbi was coming, Rachel's heart was all aflutter with hope and
expectation. Perhaps it was he at last! The whole village went out to
meet him, she with the rest. When she saw that it was indeed he, she
fell on her knees before him sobbing and began kissing his feet. The
pupils surrounding Akiba wanted to push her aside, but he said, "Let
her be. What knowledge I possess and what knowledge you possess
belongs to her." When Kalba Sabua heard that a great Rabbi had come to
town, not dreaming that it was his son-in-law, he made up his mind to
go to him and have his vow absolved, for at the sight of his
daughter's misery his heart had softened, and but for his vow he would
long since have taken her back. He came to the Rabbi and the Rabbi
said to him, "If thou hadst known that her husband would one day be a
great scholar, wouldst thou have vowed?" "If he knew even one chapter
or even one Halakah, I would not have vowed," was the reply. "I am
he," said Akiba simply. At these words Kalba Sabua stared in
amazement, and then fell at his feet and begged pardon for all his
past unkindness towards both Akiba and Rachel. To make more
substantial amends he gave them half his fortune and they lived in
comfort ever after. The affluence in which Akiba henceforth lived,
contrasted with the poverty of his student days when he used to cut
wood for a living, is thus quaintly described in the Talmud: "When he
was a student Akiba used to fetch a bundle of wood every day. Half he
sold for food and half for clothing. But before Akiba departed from
this world, he had tables of silver and of gold, and he climbed into
his bed on golden ladders." His wife too had the satisfaction of
receiving from him and wearing the "Golden Jerusalem," that Akiba had
wished he could give her in the days of their poverty. Indeed the
magnificence of Rachel's jewels called forth a protest on the part of
the students of Akiba's academy. "Thou hast put us to shame before our
wives," they said, "for our wives do not possess any such precious
ornaments." "Ah, yes," said Akiba, "but she has suffered much with me
in the Torah."
_Akiba's Virile Ethics and Philosophy_
AKIBA'S philosophical speculations were no less famous than his
Halakic activities. Just about this time all sorts of hybrid religions
made up of decadent Greek philosophy and of dying Pagan creeds were in
vogue--the various forms of Gnosticism. Christianity--Jewish
Gnosticism, that is--was only one of the many perversions that Judaism
had to combat. These religions exercised a particular fascination
because they dealt largely in esoteric doctrines and in theosophic
speculation. There was great danger that Jewish minds might be led
astray, as in fact some were. Of the four great Rabbis, who the Talmud
says entered upon theosophic studies, only Akiba came through safely.
Upon ben Azzai and ben Zoma, both brilliant young students, and upon
Aher (Elisha ben Abuya) it had disastrous effects. Ben Azzai died
young. Ben Zoma went mad and Elisha ben Abuyah repudiated Judaism.
Wherefore the Rabbis never mentioned his name but always spoke of him
as "_Aher_" ("the Other").
Akiba's philosophy and ethics are revealed in the following sayings:
"Labor is honorable to man."
"They err who say I will sin now and repent after. The day of
atonement brings no forgiveness to the insincere." This saying is
strikingly similar to Dante's famous line in the Inferno: "No one can
repent and will at once."
The eternal problem why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper is
answered by Akiba in this way. The righteous are punished in this
world for their few sins, so that in the next world they may receive
only reward. The wicked on the other hand are rewarded here for what
little good they do, so that in the next world they may receive only
punishment.
"Beloved are Israel, for they are called children of the All-present,
as it is said, 'Ye are children unto the Lord your God.' Beloved are
Israel for unto them was given the desirable instrument by which the
world was created, as it is written 'For I give you good doctrine,
forsake ye not my Torah.'" Israel is therefore the Chosen People. Nay
more. In another place Akiba says, "Even the poorest of Israel are
looked upon as nobles," and even R. Ishmael agreed with him that
"Every Jew is a royal prince." Our motto to-day of "noblesse oblige"
is the same thought in a strange tongue. "By which the world was
created" means that Akiba identified the Torah with "Wisdom," which is
described in Proverbs, in that famous chapter beginning "Doth not
wisdom cry and understanding put forth her voice?" as having been "set
up from everlasting, from the beginning before the earth was."
Adapting the opening verse of John, Akiba could very well have said,
"In the beginning was the Torah and the Torah was with God," but he
certainly would not have said, "and the Torah was God."
"Everything is foreseen," Akiba goes on to say, "yet freedom of choice
is given; and the world is judged by grace, yet all is according to
the amount of work." His doctrine of "grace" and "works" was that
"grace" is acquired through works, or in non-theological language,
God's favor goes to the man of good deeds. This was in opposition to
the Christian teaching that "grace" came through faith alone. God's
justice is tempered with mercy; yet even divine mercy is dealt out
fairly, says Akiba. He had such a strong sense of right that he even
condemned the action of the Israelites in despoiling the Egyptians.
"It is equally wrong to deceive a heathen as to deceive an Israelite,"
he said. Akiba agreed with Hillel that the chief commandment of the
Torah is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Lev. XIX, 18),
which again is nothing more than an application of the principle of
justice in our dealings with our fellow-men.
_A Man of the People_
IN spite of his great fame Akiba was the most modest of men. While
still a student at Jamnia Akiba was noted for his humility. R.
Jochanan ben Nuri told how he had occasion several times to complain
of Akiba to the Patriarch and how each time Akiba took his reprimand
meekly. Nay more. Despite these reproofs Akiba was all the more
affectionate towards R. Jochanan, so that the latter was moved to
exclaim in admiration, "Reprove a wise man and he will love thee!"
(Prov. IX, 8.) Another notable example of Akiba's modesty is his
speech at the funeral of his son, which was attended by a great
gathering of men, women, and children from all parts of Palestine.
"Brethren of Israel," said Akiba, "listen to me. Not because I am a
learned man have ye appeared here so numerously. There are those here
more learned than I. Nor because I am a rich man. There are those here
far richer than I. The people of the South know Akiba; but whence
should the people of Galilee know him? The men know him; but whence
should the women and children that I see here know him? But I know
full well that ye have not given yourselves the trouble to come but
for the sake of fulfilling a religious precept and to do honor to the
Torah, and your reward will indeed be great." Practising it as he did,
Akiba did not fail likewise to preach modesty. "He who esteems himself
highly on account of his knowledge," said he, "is like a corpse lying
at the wayside; the traveler turns his head away in disgust and walks
quickly by." Again, in words almost identical with Luke (XIV, 8-11),
Akiba says: "Take thou a seat a few places below thy rank until thou
art bidden to take a higher place, for it is better that they should
say to thee: 'Come up higher' than that they should bid thee 'Go down
lower.'"
Akiba was likewise famous for his kindness and charity. He was a man
of the people. His heart was full of charity and affection for the
multitude. His interest in their welfare was so deep and genuine that
he ultimately came to be called the "Hand of the Poor." As overseer of
the poor, Akiba made many long and arduous journeys to collect funds
for their relief. It was his opinion that the funds of charity ought
not to be invested, in order that ready money might always be at hand,
should a poor man present himself. Once Akiba received some money from
R. Tarphon, for the purpose of buying some land. But instead Akiba
distributed the money to the poor. When Tarphon asked him where the
property was, Akiba showed him the verse in Psalms, "He hath
scattered, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth
forever; his horn shall be exalted with honor." Thereupon Tarphon
kissed Akiba on the forehead and exclaimed, "My master and my guide!"
_His Fervent Patriotism_
FOR us to-day, however, the most striking thing about Akiba is his
nationalism. Other Rabbis were men of great intellect, other Rabbis
were learned, modest, and benevolent, other Rabbis lived, worked and
died for Judaism, but no other Rabbi was conspicuously and so
zealously a nationalist. Akiba loved "Eretz Yisrael" passionately, not
only with the visionary fervor of the pious Jew, but with the
practical idealism of a patriot. In all his extended journeys for the
collection of alms, he took care to spread and keep alive in the
breast of his fellow-Jews the desire for the rebuilding of Zion as a
practical and immediate reality.
It was Akiba's spirit that inspired and animated the last great
rebellion against Rome. This "final polemos," as the Talmud calls it,
was preparing for a number of years. Akiba openly acknowledged Bar
Kochba, who was to be the leader of the revolt, as the promised
Messiah, as "the star that would come out of Jacob." All the great
influence, therefore, of Akiba's moral support was behind Bar Kochba's
military preparations. The Jews had indeed much to complain of.
Hadrian had broken faith with them; he had failed to rebuild their
Temple as he had promised, and now (about the year 130), to make
matters worse, he was beginning a systematic persecution of their
religion. He forbade circumcision, the study of the Torah, the keeping
of the Sabbath, the ordination of disciples, in short everything that
went to express the Jewish religion. The Jews determined upon war. But
even before the outbreak of hostilities their greatest loss occurred.
Akiba and several other great Rabbis were captured by the Romans,
imprisoned, condemned to death, and executed. Their crime was simply
that they had continued teaching the Torah in spite of the Imperial
decree.
_"Even Unto Death"_
THIS was the manner of Akiba's death. When he heard that the renowned
R. Ishmael and a certain Simon were captured, he was stirred all the
more to persevere in his teaching. "Prepare ye for death, for terrible
days are awaiting us," said Akiba to his pupils. A certain Pappos ben
Judah met Akiba assembling the people and teaching the Torah in
public. "Dost thou not fear the Government?" said Pappos. "Thou art
considered a wise man, Pappos," answered Akiba, "but verily thou art
but a fool. I shall give thee a parable to the matter. Once a fox was
walking along the edge of a stream. He saw the fishes in commotion,
hurrying hither and thither. 'Before what do ye flee?' said he to
them. 'We are fleeing before the nets of the fishermen that are cast
out to catch us.' 'Would ye be willing to come up on dry land and live
with me, even as your fathers and my fathers were wont to live?' 'Art
thou he who is called the most discerning among beasts? Verily thou
art but a fool. If even in the element that means life to us, we are
fearful of death, how much more so in the element that means our
death.' Even so are we. If even in the time that we are occupied with
the Torah, of which it is said, 'For it is thy life and the length of
thy days,' we are fearful of death, how much more so if even for a
moment we cease its study." Not many days later Akiba was captured and
thrown into prison. Pappos ben Judah also found himself imprisoned
with Akiba. "How camest thou here?" asked Akiba. "Happy art thou,"
replied Pappos, "that thou hast been taken prisoner for the sake of
the Torah; woe is me, Pappos, that I have been taken prisoner for vain
things."
When they led Akiba out to execution it was the hour of the reading of
the "Shema." Tinnius Rufus, the governor, caused his skin to be torn
off with hot irons; but Akiba was directing his heart towards
accepting the yoke of God's kingdom, that he might accept it with
love. He recited the "Shema" with a peaceful smile on his face. Rufus,
astounded at his insensibility to pain, asked him whether he was a
sorcerer. "I am no sorcerer," replied Akiba. "All the days of my life
have I grieved that I could not carry out the commandment, 'Thou
shalt love thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all
thy might,'--even unto death. But now that I am able to fulfill it
shall I not rejoice?" And with the last syllable of the "Shema"--Hear,
Oh Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is One--Akiba expired.
[Illustration: Signature: George J. Horowitz]
EDITORS' NOTE.--_This is the third in a series of
sketches of "Jewish Worthies," of which the fourth
will have "Judah the Prince" for its subject._
_HEBREWS willingly neglectful of their own inheritance
cannot hope to be of much value as Americans. Nor is
the republic interested in suppressing this or any
other valuable legacy from the past. Our "assimilative
process" is far off from being the terrible thing
which European critics sometimes charge against us. We
do reshape peoples who come to us from the old world,
but not at the cost of the things they cherish or of
the gifts they bring. Our civilization is enriched,
not impoverished, by these diverse race traits,
loyalty to which helps to make a loyalty worth having.
If the future world order is to be founded on the
harmonization of ethnic differences, there should be
place enough for such differences in our own
peace-aspiring republic._--_From an Editorial in The
Boston Herald._
Aspects of Jewish Life and Letters
_As Revealed in Four Noteworthy Books_
I
A SYMPATHETIC STUDY OF PHARISAISM[B]
AS a rule, Jewish readers approach the works of Christian writers upon
Jewish subjects with distrust. They are accustomed to find in them
either the misrepresentations of Anti-Semitic hatred or the
misrepresentations of conversionist love. The present book, based upon
lectures delivered at Oxford upon the Hibbert foundation, is a
representative of the rare group of studies belonging to neither
class. It embodies an earnest and surprisingly successful attempt to
depict justly the religious life of the Jews in the time of the
Talmud. The writer is well prepared for his task by thirty years'
devoted study of Rabbinical literature; he is known as the author of a
careful and scholarly work on "Christianity in Talmud and Midrash."
The book includes a preliminary historical sketch, a study of what the
Rabbis meant by Torah, indicating the true nature of Pharisaic
legalism, chapters on the attitude of Jesus and of Paul toward the
Pharisees, and two final chapters on the Pharisaic theology. The book
is valuable as a Christian reply to Weber, the German author of a
learned, widely-used, and thoroughly unfair presentation of Jewish
theology. Mr. Herford frankly confesses that he is an apologist of the
Pharisees, but his book is in no sense an iconoclastic attack upon the
ideas received among Christians as to the character of the Pharisees.
He freely admits, as any fair-minded Jew would, the dangers of the
Pharisaic system, but he is likewise careful to point out that these
dangers were by no means destructive of true spiritual life. It is
most refreshing to find a book of this sort included in the Crown
Theological Library, along with the erudite but anti-Jewish works of
Bousset and Harnack.
_The Truth About the Pharisees_
MR. HERFORD aims to set forth the truth about the Pharisees rather
than to present new ideas or conclusions. Nevertheless, his book
contains here and there new suggestions. His theory that the men of
the Great Synagogue were identical with the Soferim, though it has a
certain plausibility, is hardly supported by any great weight of
historical evidence. It is interesting to learn that the Synagogue
represents the oldest form of congregational worship, and is the
oldest human institution that has survived without interruption. The
parallel between the Hassidim and the Saints of Cromwell's time (p.
38) is curious. Mr. Herford has the somewhat strange notion (pp. 44-5)
that there is a sign of "mutual distrust" in the weeping of the High
Priest and the representatives of the Beth Din after the former had
taken the oath to observe the regulations concerning the Day of
Atonement. To the ordinary reader of the Mishnah the tears seem a
perfectly natural expression of the emotional strain under which all
the people labored on the great day.
It is hard to part from Mr. Herford's admirable book without quoting a
very fine tribute which he pays to the Jewish people. In speaking of
the influence of Ezra's ideals, he says (p. 55): "The Talmud is the
witness to show how some of his countrymen, some of the bravest, some
of the ablest, some of the most pious and saintly, and a host of
unnamed faithful, were true to those ideals and clung to those hopes;
and how, through good report and ill report, through shocks of
disaster and the ruin of their state, ground down by persecution, or
torn by faction, steadily facing enemies within, they held on to the
religion of the Torah."
[Illustration: Signature: D.S. Blonsheim]
_University of Illinois_
II
JUDAISM AND PHILANTHROPY[C]
SOME years ago I met a certain Russian Jew at a conference called to
discuss various problems of education. He was an immigrant who had
made his fortune through speculation in real estate, and with his rise
in fortune he had, it was evident, thrown off, one after another, the
social habits, the religious outlook, and the organization of the
daily life which were the heritage he had brought with him from
Russia. He was at that time, he told me, president of a large Jewish
congregation, whose pillars of support were men like himself. He
complained bitterly of their backwardness and illiberality. They would
not introduce an organ and refused to change the prayer book or to
secure an "advanced" rabbi. For himself, he did not care whether they
had a synagogue--I mean temple--at all. He retained no longer any of
the superstitions or narrowness of his colleagues, and if it were not
for the fact that he felt himself out of place among members of the
radically reformed temple he would have attended that long ago. He was
a member of it, of course. His wife had made him join some years ago.
It was a double expense, to be sure, but his wife wanted to be active
in the Women's Council, and the children met other nice children in
the Sunday School. He did not think anyhow that synagogal affiliation
made any difference.
"I am," he said, "a good Jew. I give charity."
The remark took me aback, yet the logical development to the point of
view that he expressed was inevitable. In an environment where the
call of ambition is generally a call toward de-Judaization, the
connection between Jews who prosper and the great masses of the
Jewish people becomes, perforce, an external and artificial one. It is
notorious that the temple has thus far had no appeal to and no message
for the Jewish masses, that its membership is recruited from the
well-to-do and the successful, and that its relation to the great
groups which are destined never to be well-to-do or successful becomes
purely a relation of philanthropy. The elements of brotherhood, of a
common consciousness and a common purpose, fade or get submerged.
Where the masses are concerned the whole corporate essence of reformed
Judaism becomes concentrated in the word "charity."
_Justice vs. Charity in the Jewish Ideal_
YET it is significant that in Hebrew there is no special word for
charity. The term צדקה (Zedakah) meant originally righteousness, and
the righteousness which the prophets advocated was the substance of
social justice. It was incorporated into the fundamental law of the
Jewish state, which differed from that of other ancient states in the
fact that its intention was to secure freedom and "life" for each
individual man. Charity, as we now understand the word, had no place
in the social conceptions of the prophets and was not acknowledged in
the Law. The three codes which are preserved to us in the Bible from
the covenant in Exodus to the extraordinarily profound legislation of
Leviticus express an evolution of the social sense founded on a right
appreciation of social justice and democracy. "Life," and its
sustenance food, and shelter were regarded as the rights of each and
every man and not as gifts from one man to another. The law concerning
the tenure of land is particularly significant for its insight into
the economic basis of social justice, and the laws concerning
indebtedness and slavery only less so. Charity appears only when the
state disintegrates. It is coincident with the decay of the social
organization and the consequent failings of the sense of corporate
responsibility, and consists substantially of the conversion of a
right into a gift. This change is registered in the new meaning which
the word "Zedakah" receives. For a state in which social justice
prevails there is no room for charity, while a social order which
involves charity is not one which maintains justice. Thus it may be
said that the prophets, because they operated in terms of the
reorganization of the whole of society and not of the incidental
correction of piecemeal evils, were humanists. Their program was
constructive and aimed at the enfranchisement of manhood. The rabbis,
on the other hand, were (relatively only) philanthropists. Their
program was remedial, and they aimed rather at the relief of suffering
than the realization and perfection of human potentialities.
To-day the term "charity" has given way to a new equivalent, with a
somewhat different connotation. This new equivalent is "social
service." That it should be urged, as Mr. Lewis urges it, upon liberal
Judaism is simply another indication of the evanescing adherence of
that sect to the corporate life of the Jewish people. Although "social
service" carries with it more of the sense of justice than the term
charity, it is still, in intention, a charitable thing. It is not a
thing done through the inevitable forms of right social organization,
but through the gracious good will of a kindly individual. It still
maintains the Christian quality of "grace" which is a condescension, a
going down, a philanthropy. It stands in contrast to _law_, which
knows no such qualities, and the call which Mr. Lewis makes to liberal
Judaists for a special kind of social service is itself a
demonstration that "liberal Judaism" thus far has little in common
with the substance of Jewish life. Indeed his whole book is a
demonstration of this fact, for of the six chapters that it contains
only one has anything to say of social service as such in the present
day, while four are analyses, not of charity, but of the law of
righteousness as it operated in the Jewish polity, both in Palestine
and in the Diaspora. Even the actual charity of the Middle Ages
carries a quality of obligation and socially ordained necessity which
is derived from the basic law of the Jewish people.
_The Hope of Liberal Judaism_
BUT to-day, while the great Jewish masses still live, more or less
adequately under the basic law and exercise such righteousness as they
may in the division of obligation which the laws of the Galuth lands
compel, the classes are divorced from its rule altogether. The call
with which Mr. Lewis closes his book,--
"We must teach the masses of our people, upon whom the
Judaism of yesterday has lost hold, that their
salvation lies in liberal Judaism, which is beginning
to find itself to-day and which will become the
Judaism of to-morrow,"
--is the best indication of this. Liberal Judaism has not touched the
minds or hearts of the masses. The radicals despise it as a
capitalistic system of compromise with the social environment. To the
rest of the working classes, it makes thus far no appeal whatever. It
is only upon the radicals that the "Judaism of yesterday" has lost its
hold, and to them liberal Judaism can have no appeal. To the rest of
the Jewish people it can be significant and really developed into the
"Judaism of to-morrow" only in so far as it can succeed in
reincorporating itself into the common life. I am an old social
service person, and I am prepared to deny categorically that such a
reincorporation is possible through social service. What is needed is
sympathetic intelligence, insight into the life and aspirations of the
masses, return of the classes to the masses, participation in their
ideals, their traditions, and their common life. It is not by a
cutting off from the past, but by a development out of it that such a
reincorporation can be consummated.
If liberal Judaism is to be a living and growing force at all, it can
become so only by accepting the inevitable conditions which govern all
life. Life is organic; religion is only one of the many organs of
human society, even Jewish society. Its health and vitality are
dependent upon the health and vitality of the social residuum. The
hope of liberal Judaism lies in a reincorporated national life for the
Jews. That alone can preserve the Jewish religion, either from
petrifying as orthodoxy through resistance against environmental
pressure, or from evaporating as reform through submission to
environmental pressure.
_University of Wisconsin_
[Illustration: Signature: H. M. Kallen]
III
THE HEBREW GENIUS[D]
THIS little volume is five years old, but its review is always timely;
and for THE MENORAH JOURNAL very appropriate. The English language is
extremely poor in popular, yet scholarly and well-written books and
essays on Jewish literature. A great many of those who are thoroughly
versed in Hebrew literature, who regard the study of the original
Rabbinic sources as a work of love if not a profession and a life
work, have not a sufficient command of English or of systematic
exposition to be able to present the spirit of these writings in
acceptable form to the lay reader. The few scientific scholars in our
seminaries and colleges who could if they chose write authoritatively
and withal in an interesting manner concerning the course of Jewish
thought during the past two or three millenia, prefer to devote their
time and energy to the more technical aspects of the subject, which
are not designed for the uninitiated reader. And the men of
journalistic calibre and inclination, even if we had them, are not the
most desirable purveyors of Jewish knowledge. The truth of the matter
is, in the words of Nietzsche, that ears are still growing for the
intelligent American Jewish people so far as Jewish literature--Hebrew
classical literature--is concerned.
The cause of the paucity of works in English on Jewish literary
subjects is really economic. There is no lack of young men among the
people of the Book whose ideal of a well-spent life is one of complete
devotion to a scholarly career in the service of our ancient and
medieval classics. But unfortunately the very young men who give
promise of presenting in a creditable manner our intellectual heritage
for the benefit of the majority otherwise occupied, have no means of
their own, and yet are not ready (as it should not be expected of them
that they should be) to take the vow of poverty and celibacy and form
a Jewish monastic order of St. Haninah. Accordingly not a few of these
choose the Rabbinic career as the most likely profession to enable
them to keep in touch with Jewish learning--more or less a
disappointed hope to the real scholar who has no other fitness for the
modern Rabbinate except his scholarship. Others are completely
side-tracked and lost to Jewish scholarship.
Thus the lack of interest in Jewish learning and scholarship keeps
promising young men away from these unpromising studies. The result is
that the field in English remains uncultivated, which reacts again
unfavorably in a diminution of interest, and the vicious circle is
complete.
_The Need of Encouragement to Jewish Learning_
I HAVE used my text in good old fashion as a pretext for a little
sermon to the intelligent lay reader of THE MENORAH JOURNAL who may be
an influential member of the American Jewish community, pointing out
that we are sorely in need of a great many such books as the present
one, treating various "aspects of the Hebrew Genius"; and they are
sure to come just as soon as there is a real demand for them. The
Jewish students in our colleges and universities whose number is
rapidly increasing have in their midst a great many talented young men
who only need encouragement to devote their best energies to Jewish
learning. These will serve as a leaven to raise the entire Jewish
community of America to a more intelligent Jewish level. What we need
is liberal endowments for Jewish chairs in our universities and for
the promotion of Jewish education generally.
And now to proceed to my proper topic: _Aspects of Hebrew Genius_ is a
very creditable volume consisting of eight well-written essays on
several topics of Jewish history and thought. Norman Bentwich
contributes an article in which he gives an interesting sketch of the
Jewish Alexandrian period of the first two centuries B. C., whose
thought activities culminated in the works of Philo, the first man in
history who attempted an amalgamation of Hebraism and Hellenism. It
was not a success so far as Judaism is concerned, as is evidenced by
the fact that he was neglected and forgotten by his Jewish successors.
He was made use of, however, by the early Christian writers in the
formulation of the Trinitarian dogma, and by early Christian
apologists and theologians in presenting the doctrines of the new
religion in a form likely to appeal to the Græco-Roman world, which
trained as it was in philosophical thought would have been repelled by
the simple narratives of Scripture and the Gospels.
_Representative Men and Tendencies in Jewish Thought_
THE next essay by M. Simon deals with the second and more successful
attempt to enrich Jewish literature by infusing into it the spirit of
rationalistic inquiry originally derived from Greece. This time, in
the ninth and tenth centuries, the scene is placed in Babylonia. The
place of the Greeks is now taken by their medieval successors, the
Mohammedan Arabs, upon whom fell a part of the Hellenic mantle, that
represented by Greek science and philosophy. The æsthetic and literary
aspects of the Greek genius were left severely alone by the Arabs. The
man about whom this sketch centers is the famous Gaon of Sura,
Saadiah. And Mr. Simon lays great stress upon his achievements in
Biblical exegesis. As the Septuagint was the first Jewish translation
of the Bible, so Saadiah's Arabic translation was the second, and it
was enriched by introductions and a commentary in which Saadiah leads
his co-religionists, the Rabbanite Jews, from the Talmud back to an
appreciation of the Bible.
The period of systematic and rationalistic effort culminated in the
legal and philosophical works of Maimonides, the greatest Jew of the
middle ages. The Rev. H. S. Lewis gives a readable and sympathetic
sketch of this pre-eminent Jewish systematizer and rationalist. He
defends him against the strictures of Luzzatto and Graetz and points
out the great influence his thinking had on Judaism and Jews of his
own and subsequent ages, and even on the Christian scholastics.
The following four essays are devoted not to representative men but to
brief and interesting sketches of tendencies in Jewish thought and
departments of Jewish literature. The Rabbinic legalistic lore of the
Mishnah and Talmud, which finds no general treatment in the volume, is
partly represented by the article of Dr. S. Daiches, who gives a
popular account of the post-Talmudic attempts to codify the immense
legal material scattered in Mishnah and Talmud and in later additions.
Maimonides' code naturally occupies an important place in this sketch,
and a novel feature is the important place assigned to Jacob ben Asher
(1280-1340), the author of the _Turim_, who superseded Maimonides and
is popularized by Joseph Caro in his _Shulchan Aruch_.
_Jewish Rationalism and Mysticism_
THE title of the next paper, written by the competent hand of Dr. A.
Wolf, versed in philosophy as well as in Jewish literature, sounds
novel; and as the author says, is the first effort of the kind so far
made. It is well known that the philosophic movement in medieval Jewry
is characterized with few exceptions by the more or less faithful
adaptation of Aristotelian thought as represented in the Arabic
translations of his works and in the compendia and expositions made by
such ardent disciples of the Stagirite as Al Farabi, Avicenna, and
Averroes. Dr. Wolf undertakes briefly and readably to indicate how
much the Jewish medieval philosophers owed to the Greek sage and what
their attitude to him was, and interestingly summarizes the
Aristotelian point of view by the one word rationalism, as
distinguished from dogmatism and mysticism. He rightly points out that
while the specific doctrines borrowed from Aristotle and read into the
Bible by his ardent Jewish disciples are for the most part obsolete,
the spirit of systematic inquiry, the use of the reason in elucidating
disputed problems, "the exalted conception of the place and function
of human thought, the hallowing of intellectual effort," which was the
product of this philosophical activity, is a gain of inestimable value
for all time.
Rationalism and dogmatism, however, do not exhaust the aspects of
Jewish thought and literary endeavor. Parallel with the development of
Mishnah and Talmud and philosophy, there is visible, at first feebly
and in the background, and later, as circumstances favored it, more
aggressively and in full view, the mystic outlook upon life and
religion in its various phases. H. Sperling in a very interesting and
sympathetic manner traces this mystic element in Jewish literature
from the Prophets of the Bible, through the "Maase Bereshit" and
"Maase Merkaba" of the Haggadah down to the Sefer Yezira and the Zohar
and its successors.
There is no treatment of Jewish medieval poetry, and the volume closes
with a brief account of the more critical and historical treatment of
Jewish literature created in the nineteenth century by such men as
Krochmal, Rapaport, Luzzatto, Zunz, Geiger and others. Rev. M. H.
Segal gives a brief but illuminating account of this latest phase of
Jewish writing, which is not yet closed, and is likely to stay with us
for a long while.
E. M. Adler contributes an eloquent introduction by way of connecting
the necessarily independent essays and emphasizing the unity which the
collection in a great measure possesses.
The volume, as we are told in the Preface, "owes its appearance to the
Union of Jewish Literary Societies" in London, and it does credit to
their earnestness and loyalty to the cause of Jewish learning. Let us
hope it may serve as an example and incentive to the revival of Jewish
interests in this country. It is well that all should read this
useful little book and many others of the kind which we hope will
follow. But it is more important that such reading shall inspire the
student with a desire to study at first hand the original depositories
of Jewish thought. For this purpose a serious study of Hebrew is
imperative. And let us cherish the hope that we may witness a revival
of, and a wide-spread interest in, Jewish literature in this country
where next to Russia the greatest number of Jews are found and where,
moreover, they enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
_University of Pennsylvania_
[Illustration: Signature: Isaac Husik]
IV
A GENERAL SURVEY OF JEWISH LIFE[E]
THROUGH his _Jewish Life in Modern Times_ Israel Cohen has made a
notable contribution to the literature of Jewish life and thought. In
a single volume of scarce 350 pages of text there is presented a
description and estimate of the Jewish position in the modern world
which may well be considered among the most comprehensive and the most
authoritative now available in the English language.
Taken as a whole, the volume is noteworthy because of three
commendable characteristics. It deals with Jewish life as it appears
in modern times, not as it should be in the light of the literature of
the ancient Hebrews. It presents Jewish life in all its important
aspects and complexities, not on the basis of the theory so widely
prevalent that religion, of all human activities, constitutes the sole
binding force and the only distinguishing characteristic of the
separate Jewish existence. Finally, it aims to picture the life of the
Jews in all corners of the Diaspora, and not their problems and
activities in a single country or section of the globe.
_Jewish Life Not Synonymous With Jewish Religion_
AN exposition of Jewish life as it is actually lived in modern times
helps to clarify a much-beclouded situation. It enables the Jew the
better to know himself; it presents to the outside world a clearer
outline of a figure who must ever, to some extent, remain "strange"
and "unknowable." Moreover, the reader's sense of proportion is
adjusted by a work which does not make Jewish life synonymous with
Jewish religion. Whether there is sufficient evidence of a biological
and anthropological character to support the claim of those who look
upon the Jews as a separate race, whether the Jewish people in their
dispersion may properly be considered as a distinct national group in
spite of the absence of a government and a territory of their own, it
is certainly difficult, in all intellectual honesty, to maintain that
the Jews are merely a religious community. One of our brilliant young
philosophers has strikingly said that a Jew can change his religion,
but that he cannot change his grandfather; nor, he might have added
can he destroy his more general antecedents, that complex of customs,
traditions and ideals which have manifested themselves in the course
of thirty-five centuries of recorded history and which create within
him an ineradicable historic consciousness. Jewish solidarity is not
grounded in religion alone, and the distinctiveness of the Jewish
people manifests itself in activities other than religion.
A work which like the present aims to present the Jew in every
important phase of life, which describes the social, political,
economic, and intellectual aspects of Jewish life, as well as the
religious, deserves commendation because of its mere scope and
completeness. But Mr. Cohen has gone further. He has not fallen into
the error of many of the spokesmen for the cultural or historical
unity of Jewry of denying or even minimizing the potency of religion
as a factor in Jewish survival. Indeed, he everywhere recognizes that
the primary or motor force in the organization of the Jewish
community, which is the concrete expression of Jewish solidarity, is
religious, springing from the desire for public worship. But while
religion is the underlying factor, it is not the only factor. There is
a sane coordination of the leading aspects of Jewish life, a clear
grasp of the relationship between them.
Finally, the work is significant because it seeks to represent the Jew
in all lands, to paint Jewish life in all its diversity. Mr. Cohen, an
Englishman intimately acquainted with conditions in his own country,
travelled extensively on the continent in preparation for his task.
But his knowledge of American conditions was derived from study of
American books and newspapers, and from correspondence, instead of
from personal experience. This accounts for such minor lapses, with
regard to American conditions, as the statement that the Jews are
"excluded from . . . the principal hotels on the east coast of the
United States" and hence "take their holiday in the well-known resorts
of central and southern Europe" (p. 110). On the whole, however, the
attempt to describe Jewish life in all its diversity, as it is lived
by Jews in all lands, is crowned with marked success, and the author
has ample justification for his claim that he has brought "within the
covers of a single book the fullest description yet attempted of all
the main aspects and problems of Jewish life in the present day."
_The Various Aspects of Jewish Life_
A MORE detailed statement of the scope and plan of the work may best
be given in the author's own words. "First, a General Survey is
presented, showing the dispersion and distribution of Jewry in its
countless manifestations, its diversity of composition in political
and spiritual respects, and the solidarity that unifies its disparate
elements. Then follow five main sections, in each of which a leading
aspect of life is investigated--the social, the political, the
economic, the intellectual, and the religious. Under the Social Aspect
are set forth the growth and constitution of the community, the
characteristics and customs of the home, social life and amenities,
morality and philanthropy, and racial and physical conditions. Under
the Political Aspect are related how one-half of the people acquired
civil equality, how the other half is still suffering in bondage, and
what services Israel has rendered to so many countries in both their
government and their defence. Under the Economic Aspect are reviewed
the different spheres of commercial, industrial and professional
activity in which Jews are engaged, the contrasts of material welfare
and predominance of poverty, and the ceaseless currents of migration
from the lands of bondage to the havens of refuge. Under the
Intellectual Aspect are considered the advance made by secular
education among the Jews, the nature of their national intellectual
products in modern times, and the contributions they have rendered to
the progress and culture of humanity. Under the Religious Aspect are
described their ecclesiastical organization and administration, their
traditional faith and observance and the growing divergences
therefrom, and then the drift and apostasy that are assuming ever more
alarming proportions. Finally, the resultant tendency of all the
foregoing manifestations is examined under the National Aspect, the
strength of the forces of assimilation and absorption is contrasted
with the inherent force of conservation, and the realization of the
Zionist ideal is urged as the most effective means of ensuring the
perpetuation of Israel" (pp. viii-ix).
The purpose of the author is thus seen to be, first, to present the
facts of Jewish life, and secondly, to offer an interpretation of
them--"to depict the variegated life of the Jewish people at the
present day in all its intimacy and intensity, and to trace the
evolution that is being produced by modern forces" (p. viii). He is
more successful in the first of these objects than he is in the
second.
His shortcomings in interpretation, however, are negative rather than
positive; they are due to omission rather than to commission. There is
inadequate consideration of the philosophy of Jewish life; external
description has crowded out internal analysis; the point of view is
too largely objective. While, for example, the conclusion is reached
that Zionism is the only permanent and adequate solution of the Jewish
problem--with which we do not disagree--insufficient stress is laid
upon the distinctive Jewish obligation in the Diaspora; the Jewish
contributions to general culture and progress which the author
enumerates with such concreteness and detail are not distinctively
Jewish contributions. Even if Zion is the ultimate destiny of the Jew,
he must, in the meantime, justify his separate existence among the
nations; if he is to remain a Jew as well as a citizen of the world,
his contribution must be that of a Jewish citizen; in addition to the
general obligation of his citizenship, he must fulfil the special
obligation of his Jewishness. But these deficiencies of
interpretation, like the inadequacies of description arising from the
impossibility of treating exhaustively so large a field within so
narrow a compass, but reflect the inherent limitations of the task set
himself by our author.
_University of Michigan._
[Illustration: Signature: I. Leo Sharfman]
JEWISH STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS
_An Excerpt from Israel Cohen's Book, "Jewish Life in Modern Times,"
pages 105-106:_
"It was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century that the
Jewish students at any of the principal seats of learning were
numerous enough to form a society of their own. The first
organization was founded in 1882 in Vienna by Jewish students from
Russia, Rumania, and Galicia, who entitled their society _Kadimah_,
which means both 'Eastward' and 'Forward,' as an indication of the
ideal of a resettlement in Palestine which they advocated. Since then,
partly as a result of the advance of Zionism and partly as a result of
the anti-Semitic attitude of the general students' corps on the
Continent, separate societies have been formed by the Jewish students
at almost every university at which they number at least a dozen, and
are now found in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Switzerland,
France, and Holland. Some of these societies owe their existence
simply to the exclusion of Jews from the general corporation, and they
adopt a passive attitude on Jewish questions, but the majority are
animated by the ideal of Jewish nationalism and actively foster the
Zionist cause. The Jewish nationalist societies in Germany are grouped
into two organizations, the 'Bund Jüdischer Corporationen,' founded in
1901, with a membership of over 600 (graduates and undergraduates),
and the smaller, 'Kartell Zionistischer Verbindungen,' founded five
years later, with a membership of 250. The Zionist students' societies
in Holland were federated in 1908, but those in other Continental
countries pursue an unattached existence. Established to assert and
promote the principle of Jewish nationalism, these corporations have
nevertheless adopted all the methods and conventions of German
corporations; they each have their distinctive colors, and they hold
'beer evenings' at which the students sing spirited songs in swelling
chorus around tables which they bang with their beer-mugs, presided
over by officers who are accoutred in a gorgeous uniform and armed
with a sword that does duty alternately as chairman's hammer and
conductor's baton. But their songs tell not of Teuton valor but of
Jewish hope, breathing the spirit of a rejuvenated people. Besides
these convivial gatherings the members cultivate the study of Jewish
history, literature, and modern problems, and also practice fencing so
as to be prepared for any duel in which they might be involved in
vindication of the Jewish name. The Jewish societies at the
universities in English-speaking countries are not, like the
Continental corps, the inevitable product of an unfriendly
environment, but voluntary associations for the study of Jewish
questions and for social intercourse. The Jewish students in England,
and to a less extent in the United States, join the societies of their
university; but their racial sympathies prompt them also to fraternize
with one another. Thus, Oxford has its Adler Society and Cambridge its
Schechter Society, whilst at both universities there is also a Zionist
Society. Moreover, in the United States, 'Menorah' societies for the
study of Jewish history and the discussion of Jewish questions have
been formed at twenty-five Universities and organized into an
Intercollegiate 'Menorah' Association with over 1000 members."
[There are now 37 Menorah Societies, with an
approximate membership of 3,000.--ED.]
FOOTNOTES:
[B] R. TRAVERS HERFORD: _Pharisaism, Its Aim and Method_. London,
Williams and Norgate; New York, Putnam. $1.50. (Any of the books
reviewed in this article may be ordered through THE MENORAH JOURNAL.)
[C] HARRY S. LEWIS, M.A.: _Liberal Judaism and Social Service_. New
York, Bloch Publishing Co. (The Lewisohn Lectures.) $1.00.
[D] LEON SIMON, Editor: _Aspects of the Hebrew Genius_. Essays by
Elkan Adler, Norman Bentwich, H. S. Lewis, S. Daiches, A. Wolf, H.
Sperling, M. Simon, M. H. Segal. London, Routledge. $1.00.
[E] ISRAEL COHEN: _Jewish Life in Modern Times_. New York: Dodd, Mead
& Co. $3.00.
The Symbolism of the Menorah[F]
BY HYMAN ASKOWITH
AFTER the severe and constantly-expanding test of nearly a decade, the
founders of the first Menorah Society may be permitted to felicitate
themselves on their choice of the name. For it was far truer of the
Menorah than it is of most organizations that the choice of a name was
of vital moment, and the founders were impressed by a number of
considerations which we can all fully appreciate even today. They were
bent upon choosing a name which would not deter any Jewish student
from enrolling under it with avidity; which would not excite
opposition from any source; which would command respect and reverence,
increasing respect and reverence, both from the University public and
the general public; which would be voluntarily adopted by similar
societies in other Universities in preference to any other that might
be suggested; and finally, a name with enough charm and euphony and
significant symbolism to stand constant repetition, to bear living
with day by day, and all the while grow in our imaginations and yield
new beauteous meaning through the years.
From a descriptive standpoint, it would be difficult to find a more
appropriate name for a University society devoted to Hebraic culture
than the name Menorah. For there is hardly another available word in
the entire range of Hebraic history and learning which is so freighted
with sentiment and so symbolic of all that Israel stands for.
_The Most Expressive of All Hebraic Symbols_
TAKEN in a general sense, it is evident that the Menorah or
seven-branched candelabrum, being the distinctive lamp or light of the
ancient Hebrews, serves more distinctively than would the classic
torch or the conventional oil lamp to represent Hebrew enlightenment.
Our aim being to spread the light of Hebraic culture, it is clearly
fitting that we should employ the Hebraic lamp. It should be more
effective, too, inasmuch as its light is sevenfold, and our efforts
are illuminated with a sevenfold splendor.
The word Menorah, it is worth noting, is among exclusively Hebrew
words the only one which would be readily understood by any
considerable number of people aside from students or readers of
Hebrew. It has been made familiar to all by the representation of the
captured Menorah on the Arch of Titus (see _Frontispiece_).
According to the Bible, the original Menorah was of divine pattern. It
was ordained by God in his instructions to Moses for the sacred
paraphernalia of the Holy Tabernacle (_Exodus_ XXV, 31 _et seq._). The
Menorah was thus among the first instruments or tokens of the Hebrew
religion, and the only one which in any sense is in our possession
today--the only one which can be perpetuated. The divine pattern is
still with us and we are repeatedly modeling new copies from it. The
Menorah is today, therefore, the most expressive of all concrete
symbols of the Hebrew race and religion.
_A Favorite Object of Metaphor and Poetic Sentiment_
A HALO of symbolism--almost kaleidoscopic in its manifold
beauty--surrounds the Menorah in Hebraic literature and tradition.
Both the single light or candle, and the distinctive combination of
seven, are the favorite objects of metaphor, interpretation, and
poetic sentiment. In the Bible the word "ner" (נר)--candle or
light, embodied, of course, in the word Menorah (מנורה)--is
used metaphorically in many significant senses. God is a
light--enlightening, comforting and honoring his people. The rational
understanding and conscience are lights which search, inform, direct
and judge us. A profession of faith is called a lamp, which renders
men shining and useful and instructors of others. The last two
interpretations certainly cast an appropriate reflection on our choice
of Menorah.
For the number 7, as we all know, the ancient Hebrews had a singular
fondness, attributing to it a magic potency. This may have arisen from
the traditional story of the seven days of Creation, and the
institution of the Sabbath--without a doubt the most important of
Hebrew institutions. This certainly enhanced the reverence for the
number 7, which soon became the most sacred Hebrew number, bearing
nearly always the connotation of holiness and sanctity or mystic
perfection. The acts of atonement and purification were accompanied by
a sevenfold sprinkling. There were seven trumpets, seven priests that
sounded them seven days around Jericho, seven lamps, seven seals, etc.
The seventh day was the Sabbath, the seventh year was the Sabbatical
(still observed to the well-earned emolument of our professors in the
Universities), and seven times seven years brought on the Jubilee. The
seventh month was the holiest month of the year (which we appreciate
now by regarding September as an auspicious month in which to return
to college studies). The number seven soon came to be used also
conventionally as an indefinite or round number, indicating
abundance, completeness, perfection.[1] Cicero calls seven the knot
and cement of all things, as being that by which the natural and
spiritual world are comprehended in one idea.
_The Manifold Symbolism of the Seven Lamps_
BE that as it may, our ancestral learned men seem to have found no end
of significant meanings in the seven lamps of the Menorah. Generally
it was held to represent the creation of the universe in seven days,
the center light symbolizing the Sabbath. Again, the seven branches
are the seven continents of the earth and the seven heavens, guided by
the light of God. According to Philo and others, the seven lights
represent the seven planets which, regarded as the eyes of God, behold
everything.[2] The light in the center, which is especially
distinguished, would signify the sun, as the chief of the planets.
With this was combined the mystic conception of a celestial tree, with
leaves reaching to the sky and fruit typifying the planets.
There would be little difficulty, of course, in extending this
symbolistic catalogue ad infinitum. We could easily and perhaps
profitably select Seven Wonders of Hebraic history or achievement,
seven great epochs in the development of Hebraic culture, seven great
leaders of the race, etc. We might also say that the seven lights
represent the seven chief studies which make up a liberal
education--the Trivium and Quadrivium of the Middle Ages,
substantially the foundation of the university curriculum of today[3].
The words יהי אור, "Let there be light," just above the Menorah on our
seal, are not only reminiscent of the first great word of God,
pregnant in meaning for humanity, but stand also for the purpose of
this Society--the relighting of the Menorah in order that it may shed
its ancient lustre and once again illumine the minds of men with the
glory and uplift of Hebraic ideals.
[Illustration: REPRODUCTION (ONE-FOURTH THE SIZE OF THE ORIGINAL) OF
THE MEMBERSHIP SHINGLE OF THE HARVARD MENORAH SOCIETY, ADOPTED IN ITS
FIRST YEAR
(1906-07)]
_The Symbolism of Palm and Olive Branch_
THE seal as originally drawn for the Harvard Menorah Society (see
accompanying illustration of membership shingle) bears two or three
other symbols which deserve a word of interpretation. Below the
Menorah appears the so-called Star of David--lately revived by the
Zionist movement as the only exclusively Jewish figure or geometric
symbol of any national meaning. Entwined below the seal proper are an
olive branch and a date palm, both of which are intimately associated
with the history of the race in Palestine. They are the two most
characteristic trees of the promised land, and provided the chief
staple foods of the Hebrews during their occupation of the country.
The olive, moreover, gave the oil with which the Menorah was lit.
There is also much fascinating symbolism in the olive tree and the
palm. Both are evergreens--standing for the persistency of the Hebrew
race. The date palm, we are told, has a slender and very yielding
stem, so that in a storm it sways back and forth but does not break;
and throughout its length it bears scars showing where leaves have
fallen off. Could anything be more beautifully expressive of the
career of the Jewish nation? Finally, the olive branch has always
stood for peace--one of the most cherished and distinctive
Hebraic ideals; and the palm has always stood for intellectual
achievement--and who would deny the palm to the race that
gave the world its Bible and all that it stands for?
[Illustration: Signature: Hyman Askowith]
FOOTNOTES:
[F] This article is based upon a paper delivered at the Seventh Annual
Banquet of the Harvard Menorah Society last May.
[1] _Cf._ Gen. vii, 2; xxi, 28-30; I Kings xviii, 43; Deut. xvi, 9;
Ezek. xl, 22; xli, 3.
[2] _Cf._ Zech. iv, 10.
[3] In the form in which this paper was read before the Harvard
Menorah Society, the following paragraphs of a more local interest
were added at this point:
"And it certainly adds to the eternal fitness of things that there
should be just seven letters in the word MENORAH, just seven letters
in the word HARVARD, and just seven letters in the word SOCIETY;--the
whole name of the society thus forming three times seven, or a
majority.
"That there is something much more Hebraic in Harvard than the mere
mechanical coincidence of seven letters in the name, is well known to
every one who is at all aware of the part played by Hebrew ideals in
the founding, organization and early history of Harvard. The fact that
Harvard took root in Hebraic culture and traditions is a welcome and
gratifying encouragement to this effort to replant the Hebraic
influence on Harvard ground."
The Decennial of the Menorah Movement
THE Menorah movement enters upon its decennial with the beginning of
the present academic year, the first Menorah Society having been
organized at Harvard University in 1906.[G] From this Society with an
original membership of sixteen, the Menorah movement has grown
throughout the country so that at the close of the last academic year
there were Societies at thirty-seven colleges and universities with a
membership of some three thousand. Every Society has arisen upon the
initiative of the students themselves, inspired by a desire to pursue
the objects embodied in the Menorah. In January, 1913, the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association was formed for the purpose of
mutual encouragement and co-operation among the several Societies, and
also to carry out enterprises beyond the scope and power of any
individual Society--such as the publication of THE MENORAH JOURNAL.
On the threshold of the decennial, and especially since the present
number of the JOURNAL will come into the hands of many new students
and readers, it may not be amiss again, in brief terms, to review the
purposes of the movement.
_The Three-Fold Purpose of the Menorah Organization_
THE Menorah Societies have been organized by the students in response
to their desire first of all to know more about the history,
literature, religion--in a word, the culture and ideals of the Jewish
people, and the conditions and problems which confront the Jews in the
world today. Being thus educational in primary purpose, every Menorah
Society is open to all the members of its university who have an
interest in Jewish life and thought. And inasmuch as the great
majority, if not all, of the students who have such an interest in
Jewish knowledge and Jewish aspirations are themselves Jews, the
Menorah organization cherishes the second purpose of strengthening the
Jewish idealism and _noblesse oblige_ of the Jewish students, so that
by understanding and carrying forward their Jewish inheritance they
may become better men and women by becoming better Jews. And from this
moral aim there flows still a third purpose, that of patriotic
service to the Republic; for by enriching the common treasury of
American culture and ideals with the spiritual resources of the Jewish
people, the educated Jews of the country may serve America to the
profoundest degree. Animated thus with the spirit and broad purposes
of our universities, the Menorah Societies have been warmly welcomed
and generously assisted by the university authorities.
_The Distinction Between Menorah and Other Student Societies_
THE purposes of the Menorah movement will appear in greater relief
by comparison with the objects of other types of Jewish
organization--social, political, religious--that have arisen at our
colleges and universities. The Menorah Societies are all-inclusive,
non-partisan, non-sectarian. Hence they are to be distinguished in the
first place from the exclusive social organizations, such as the Greek
letter or Hebrew letter fraternities. Being rather educational in
spirit and purpose, the Menorah Societies make no social test for
membership, nor do they pursue any convivial activities except such as
are deemed desirable for the most agreeable and efficient pursuit of
the Menorah objects. Again, the Menorah Societies are clearly
distinguishable from the Zionist Societies, which were united last
June in the Intercollegiate Zionist Association of America; whereas
the Zionist Societies are devoted to a specific political program in
confronting the so-called Jewish Question, the Menorah Societies,
being non-partisan, are neither Zionist nor anti-Zionist, but
perfectly free and open forums for the discussion of all points of
view. The Menorah membership consists of men and women of divers
convictions, as well as of those who have not yet made up their minds
but come to the Menorah for enlightenment and inspiration. Finally,
just because the Menorah appeals to every student who has a liberal
interest in Jewish life and thought--to every Jewish student
particularly, whatever his present beliefs and ideas--the Menorah
Societies are not to be regarded as specifically religious
organizations. Therefore the observance of religious services and
practices is left to those students who desire them, individually or
in appropriate organizations, such as the Jewish Students'
Congregation organized recently under reform auspices at the
University of Michigan. The Menorah Societies are neither reform,
conservative nor orthodox but broadly inclusive of all elements.
_The Catholicity and Comradeship of the Menorah_
INDEED, next to the Menorah idea--the sum of Menorah purposes--the
peculiar strength of the Menorah Societies lies in this catholic
spirit which determines the Menorah "open door." Thereby the Menorah
Societies are enabled to perform more and more an incidental but most
important service apart from the objects to which they are formally
dedicated. With the growth of various Jewish organizations in our
universities--which, whatever the opinion as to their value and
propriety, tend to divide the Jewish students rather than to unite
them--a most important service performed by the all-inclusive Menorah
Societies is to bring the students together, in spite of their various
differences, on a common high plane. As stated over a year ago in the
Association's book on _The Menorah Movement_: "Where, as in almost all
large universities, there are Jewish students of diverse antecedents,
it is one of the most important functions of a non-partisan
organization like the Menorah Society to bring all classes and parties
together upon an academic plane, in order that they may learn each
other's points of view, in order that their prejudices against one
another which are founded on misunderstanding and snobbishness may
wither away, and in order that they may pursue in generous comradeship
the knowledge of their common tradition and the hope of their common
future."
_The Graduate Phase of the Menorah Movement_
IT is becoming increasingly evident, moreover, that such a unifying
force is called for outside of the universities among the graduates
and other educated Jews; and it is hoped that through the graduate
phase of the Menorah movement, this need may be subserved by graduate
Menorah groups in various communities. To quote once more from _The
Menorah Movement_: "Such graduate Menorah organizations, while
academic and non-partisan in their nature, like the university Menorah
Societies, might yet, if properly constituted and conducted, be of
practical as well as of ideal service to their communities. They could
bring together, upon the lofty basis of Jewish idealism, men of
different views in the community, who approach practical Jewish
problems in different, sometimes in mutually antagonistic, ways.
Devoid itself of any sectarian or fraternal or political bias, a
graduate Menorah organization should be ideally fitted to serve as a
kind of intellectual clearing house of the Jewish community, and thus
promote on all sides a deeper understanding of one another, a clearer
vision of the common problems, a greater concord in Jewish life."
In any event, it is hoped during the present year to bring the
graduates and other public-spirited Jewish citizens into closer touch
with the activities and aspirations of the students. At the fourth
annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association to be
held during the coming midwinter recess, the idea of graduate Menorah
committees and other forms of possible graduate association with the
Menorah movement will be carefully considered.
_The Year Ahead_
IT may be added that at this Convention, which promises to be the most
important thus far held by the Menorah Societies, there will also be
given a full review of the activities of the Menorah organization
since its inception and a survey of the present opportunities and
demands for Menorah work throughout the country. More and more
emphasis will be laid upon the quality of accomplishment of every
Menorah Society; upon the active participation by all Menorah members
in one phase or another of Jewish study and labor; and, in general,
upon an even greater utilization of the lectures, libraries, study
courses, and other means provided for the accomplishment of Menorah
ends.
In this terrible time for Jewry, amid the general catastrophe, when
hundreds of thousands of Jewish young men are offering their lives
heroically in the contending armies, the members of the Menorah
Societies in this favored country cannot but enter upon the new year
with a solemn sense of added responsibility. More than ever in this
decennial year of the Menorah movement is intellectual and moral
consecration to Jewish ideals demanded of Jewish students in America.
Henry Hurwitz, _Chancellor_
I. Leo Sharfman, _President_
FOOTNOTE:
[G] It should be noted that in 1903 a Jewish literary society was
founded at the University of Minnesota which was later changed to a
Menorah Society and is now one of the constituents of the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association.
Menorah Notes and News
=The International Students' Reunion=
THE Intercollegiate Menorah Association was represented at the
International Students' Reunion, which was held in connection with the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco, the
University of California, and Leland Stanford University, under the
auspices of Corda Fratres Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs, from
August 16th to 21st, 1915. Intercollegiate Vice-President Milton D.
Sapiro read a paper at the session in the Civic Auditorium, San
Francisco, on "The Purposes of the Menorah Movement," submitted by the
Chancellor. Dr. Horace M. Kallen, of the University of Wisconsin,
delivered a discourse at the session at Stanford University on "The
Hebraic Spirit." The following is an abstract of his address:
_Dr. Kallen on "The Hebraic Spirit"_
"A people's spirit is its character, considered not as a cluster of
qualities, but as a spring and form of action--action that expresses
itself in social institutions, in political and economic organization,
in art, in religion and in philosophy; in short, in all that
expressive part of human life we call culture. A people's culture is
organic. However varied its form and media, the varieties springing
from a single source possess an identical and unique quality which is
the quality of that source. They express and reveal it, as generative
power, a force of creation, having good or evil bearing upon the
residual civilization. The process of such revelation is a people's
total history; just as the process of revelation of an individual's
character is his total biography. To find the Hebraic spirit we must
seek its substantial development in the culture and ideals of the
Jewish people--in the unfoldment, in the history of their common
attitude toward the world and toward man, in their theory of life.
"The Jewish theory of life involves three fundamental conceptions,
interdependent, and forming a unit which has no near parallel in
civilization.
"The first of these conceptions defines the nature of God. What is
significant about it is the fact that it makes no distinction between
God and Nature. God is Nature and Nature is God. The two are related
to each other as a force and its operation, and what difference there
exists between them is a difference in completeness and
self-sufficiency, not in kind. God reveals himself thus in and as the
cause of Nature, the whirlwind, the process of life and decay, the
development of history. His essence is Change, Force, Time. There is
hence no Hebrew word for eternal; God's attitude is everlasting. That
is, that which changes yet retains its identity, as a man changes from
infancy to manhood, yet retains his identity.
"God is one, all-inclusive, everlastingly creative. In consequence,
there exists a real distinction between God and man, such that the one
cannot be defined in analogy with anything human. Neither wisdom, nor
goodness, nor justice apply to him; yet the goodness, wisdom and
justice of man depend upon him. Man is a finite speck set over against
divine infinitude. His life is a constant struggle for survival with
forces which have each an equal claim on divine regard with man. Man's
salvation, herein, consists in knowing these facts, in understanding,
using them, and guarding against them. The fear of the Lord, sings the
chorus in Job, is the beginning of wisdom, and to depart from evil is
understanding.
"To depart from evil is to act as a social being, to be righteous.
Righteousness is acknowledgment of the value and integrity of other
persons. It is the application of justice in all fields of human
endeavor, particularly in fundamental economics. Thus the three
historic constitutions of the Jewish state, the Covenant, Deuteronomy
and the Levitical code, are all directed toward making impossible
other than natural inequalities within the state. Their intention is a
social democracy; and all Jewish law, departing from this fundamental
intention, aims, under various conditions, to realize it. The
prophets, from Amos to Isaiah, preach it; and men like Ferdinand
Lassalle, Karl Marx, Jean de Bloch, simply enhance their tradition.
"The Hebraic spirit carries the principle of democracy beyond the
individual to the group. Men having a common ancestry, history,
culture and ideals, living a common life, have definite contribution
to make to civilization as a group. They constitute a nationality and
the principles of justice that apply among individuals must apply
equally among nationalities. Hence Hebraism, through its prophets,
formulates the conception of an internationalism, consisting of a
co-operative democracy of nationalities, under conditions of universal
peace. The great Isaiah, who flourished in the fifth century B. C., is
the first to formulate this national vision. His people have never
departed from it. In terms of it, they have been the foremost
protagonists of a constructive internationalism, in every land and at
all times. Recently, as they have begun to find that their service to
civilization as a people grows more and more impaired by the Diaspora,
they have formulated a program of national reconcentration in
Palestine, and of the free development there of Hebraic culture and
ideals such as all European peoples carry out in their own homelands
of their culture and ideals. This program is called Zionism. It is the
practical and most expressive incarnation of the Hebraic Spirit."
=California Menorah Society=
THE California Menorah Society met on Monday evening, August 30th, for
its first meeting of the college year. There was an attendance of 125.
Mr. Louis I. Newman gave a short talk on the aims of the Menorah
movement. Milton D. Sapiro, first President of the California Menorah
and now the second Vice-President of the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association, spoke on the history of the movement, tracing the
development of the Menorah idea and the formation of the
Intercollegiate body; and in closing he presented Stanley Arndt, now
President of the Society, with a bronze Menorah, which is to be handed
down from President to President each year. President Arndt, in
accepting the Menorah, said that it suggested the great problem that
the Jews are now facing. The great question at the present time is
whether this Menorah will be a mere symbol of the past glories, the
past achievements of the Jews, whether it is to be a mere monument of
a dying race, or the living emblem of a living race, the soul of a
living people. As an exponent of the latter doctrine, he introduced
Dr. Horace M. Kallen of the University of Wisconsin, Intercollegiate
Menorah Lecturer.
Dr. Kallen spoke on "The Jews and the Great War." He pointed out that
democracy in its essence was the liberation of individuality; that by
being most one's self, a person or a nation does the most for his
neighbors. First of all, therefore, we should know ourselves. Dr.
Kallen then took up the condition of the Jews in Russia. He discussed
the frightful persecutions there as the result of a great anti-Jewish
conspiracy to cover up the graft, the corruption and the inefficiency
of the government. He spoke on the great drive of the Jews from the
Pale by the military authorities and then the drive back again by the
civil authorities. This, he pointed out, involved not only a Jewish
problem, but a great international one besides. The second phase of
the Jewish question was that of a free Jewish life in Palestine. There
the Jewish colonists have practically an autonomy of their own; they
have established a Jewish stage, Jewish art, Jewish music; and the
colonies were founded upon a social democratic basis, upon the same
fundamental conceptions of social democracy that the Hebrew Prophets
had preached. Dr. Kallen concluded with a plea for the Jew's double
responsibility. The Jew commits a crime hot only as a citizen but as a
Jew. The Jews who in length of service to the world are surely an
aristocracy must carry this responsibility.
In the discussion which followed, Professor Simon Litman of Illinois,
who was present, took part.
A Menorah prize of $50. was announced at this meeting. The judges will
be Professor William Popper and Dr. Martin A. Meyer of the Semitics
Department of the University, and Judge Max Sloss of the Supreme Court
of California.
A musical program, followed by an informal reception to the new
members, completed the evening.
N. M. Lyon, the Treasurer of the Intercollegiate, formerly of
Cincinnati, is now a student at California and a member of the
California Menorah.
=Dr. Kallen on the Pacific Coast=
BESIDES his address at the opening meeting of the California Menorah
Society and other informal talks with the students, Dr. Kallen
delivered a series of three addresses at the University of California,
under the auspices of the Department of Philosophy, on the general
subject: "The Hebraic Tradition in Europe." On August 31st, he
lectured upon "The Rise and Significance of the Hebraic Tradition"; on
September 1st, "Hebraism and Democracy"; and September 2nd, "Hebraism
and Art."
On August 30th, Dr. Kallen met a company of graduates and other
public-spirited Jewish citizens in San Francisco at luncheon and
explained the purposes and activities of the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association.
Dr. Kallen addressed the Menorah Society of the University of
Washington in Seattle on August 14th, on "The Jewish Question and the
Great War." He also met at a dinner a company of graduates and other
public-spirited Jewish citizens in Seattle, and explained to them the
purposes and activities of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association.
=Dr. Harry Wolfson of Harvard=
HARRY AUSTRYN WOLFSON, the author of the articles on "Jewish Students
in European Universities," published in the first two numbers of the
Journal, has been appointed Instructor in Jewish Literature and
Philosophy at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard
last June in the field of Semitic Philology, his thesis subject being
"Crescas on the Problems of Infinity and Divine Attributes."
During the ensuing year he will give the following courses:
Post-Biblical Hebrew, Jewish Aramaic, Jewish Literature and Life From
the Second to the End of the Seventeenth Century, and An Introduction
to Medieval Jewish Philosophy.
=Cornell Summer Meeting=
ON August 8, 1915, the Cornell Menorah Society held a meeting for the
summer students. There was an attendance of about 50, both Jews and
non-Jews. Rev. Dr. H. P. Mendes, of New York, gave an address on
"Bible Ideals in Modern Times," and Professor Frank Carney of Denison
University, Professor of Industrial Geography in the Cornell Summer
School, spoke on "The Inorganic Basis of the Hebrew Contribution to
the World." Professor W.A. Hurwitz of Cornell spoke briefly on the
scope of the Menorah movement, and Dr. L. L. Silverman played Kol
Nidre on the violin.
=Hunter Menorah Society=
THE Menorah Society of Hunter College, in New York City, begins its
third year with a marked increase in the enthusiasm and the number of
its members. A program dealing with various phases of Hebrew culture
has been planned for the regular monthly meetings, comprising lectures
on the Bible, the Talmud, Medieval Hebrew Poetry, Modern Hebrew
Literature, Hebrew Music, and Hebrew Art. In addition, the Society
hopes to present a pageant and a reception to freshmen in February
(for Hunter College admits two classes during the year). The lectures
will be preceded by refreshments, and the singing of Hebrew songs by
the Menorah Glee Club.
Besides the regular monthly meetings, the Society is organizing
courses in conversational Hebrew, Bible Study, and Zionism--the first
to meet weekly, the others on alternate weeks.
It is also hoped to have a general informal meeting every week to
discuss modern Jewish problems in connection with the reading of
various newspapers and periodicals.
=College of the City of New York=
THE Menorah Society of the College of the City of New York closed its
activities during the past year with a very interesting meeting held
on May 20, 1915. Rev. Dr. H. Pereira Mendes spoke on "Jewish Ideals of
Peace," and he was introduced by the new President of the College, Dr.
Sidney Edward Mezes, who presided. Dr. Mezes has come to City College
from the University of Texas, and it is gratifying to note that he had
already been made familiar with the Menorah work through the Texas
Menorah Society.
The new year was opened with a forum meeting on September 21st, in the
Menorah alcove, when the Chancellor addressed a number of new men as
well as old, upon the significance and the increasing scope of the
Menorah movement. The week beginning October 3rd will be known as
"Menorah Week" at the College. On Monday, October 4th, the study
circles will meet for the first time; on Tuesday there will be another
meeting of the Menorah forum; on Wednesday a semi-annual smoker will
be held in the City College Club; and on Thursday, Mr. Marcus M.
Marks, President of the Borough of Manhattan, will deliver a lecture
to the student body under the auspices of the Menorah Society.
=Fourth Annual Convention=
IMPORTANT matters touching the development of Intercollegiate
activities, the work and membership of the constituent Societies, the
association of graduates with the Intercollegiate body, the problems
and plans of THE MENORAH JOURNAL, will be among the subjects presented
for discussion and decision at the Fourth Menorah Convention, to be
held during the coming mid-winter recess. The precise days and place
of the Convention will shortly be decided by the Administrative
Council, in accordance with Article II, Section 4, of the
Intercollegiate Constitution. In addition to the business sessions
there will also be a formal dinner and an academic session devoted to
the reading of papers by eminent scholars. It is hoped that a large
number of Menorah men and women from all parts of the country will be
able to attend. Further details will be published in the next number
of the JOURNAL.
=Informal Gathering of Menorah Officers=
ON June 21, 1915, there was an informal gathering at the headquarters
of the Intercollegiate Association, 600 Madison Avenue, New York City,
of Menorah officers who happened to be in New York. There were
present, besides the Chancellor, President I. Leo Sharfman,
Vice-President Abraham J. Feldman, and Secretary Charles K. Feinberg
of the Association, President Stanley Arndt of California, President
Jacob Rubinoff of Pennsylvania, ex-President Leon J. Rosenthal of
Cornell, ex-President George J. Horowitz, President Moses H. Gitelson,
Treasurer Herman I. Trachman of College of the City of New York,
President Bernard J. Reis of New York University (Washington Square),
ex-President Samuel Sussman of Columbia, President Sarah Berenson,
Vice-President Babette Reinhardt, Treasurer Minnie Weiss, and
Secretary Ernestine P. Franklin and ex-Secretary Julia Mitchell of
Hunter, and Dr. H. M. Kallen of Wisconsin.
There was informal discussion of the activities of the various
Societies, the progress of THE MENORAH JOURNAL, the program of the
next Intercollegiate Convention, and the development of the graduate
phase of the Menorah movement.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
This text uses both today and to-day. Also used were Roumania and
Rumania.
THE MENORAH JOURNAL
[Illustration]
VOLUME I December
No. 5 1915
Frontispiece: Theodor Herzl Etching by Hermann Struck
The Menorah THEODOR HERZL
The Present Crisis in American Jewry ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER
Our Spiritual Inheritance IRVING LEHMAN
Adam Prometheus, and Other Lyrics LOUIS K. ANSPACHER
Sholom Asch: The Jewish Maupassant PERCY B. SHOSTAC
A Menorah Prize Essay
Liberalism and the Jews JOSEPH JACOBS
What Is Judaism? MORDECAI M. KAPLAN
University Menorah Addresses
Activities of Menorah Societies
* * * * *
=PUBLISHED BY THE INTERCOLLEGIATE MENORAH ASSOCIATION=
=600 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK -:- -:- -:- 25 CTS. A COPY=
INTERCOLLEGIATE MENORAH ASSOCIATION
For the Study and Advancement of Jewish Culture and Ideals
OFFICERS
Chancellor
HENRY HURWITZ
600 Madison Ave., New York
President
I. LEO SHARFMAN
University of Michigan
First Vice-President
ISADORE LEVIN
Harvard University
Second Vice-President
MILTON D. SAPIRO
University of California
Third Vice-President
ABRAHAM J. FELDMAN
University of Cincinnati
Treasurer
N. MORAIS LYON
University of California
Secretary
CHARLES K. FEINBERG
New York University
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL
Boston University: Maurice Horblit
Brown University: Ismar Baruch
Clark University: Max Smelensky
College of the City of New York: G. J. Horowitz
Columbia University: M. D. Hoffman
Cornell University: Leon J. Rosenthal
Harvard University: Ralph A. Newman
Hunter College: Sarah R. Friedman
Johns Hopkins University: Millard Eiseman
New York University: Charles K. Feinberg
Ohio State University: Samuel Lesser
Penn State College: J. K. Miller
Radcliffe College: Anna Rogovin
Rutgers College: Louis B. Gittleman
Tufts College: Philip Marzynski
University of California: Louis I. Newman
University of Chicago: David Levy
University of Cincinnati: Abraham J. Feldman
University of Colorado: Morris Baskin
University of Denver: Jacob Butcher
University of Illinois: Sidney Casner
University of Maine: Lewis H. Kriger
University of Michigan: Jacob Levin
University of Minnesota: Moses Barron
University of Missouri: J. L. Ellman
University of North Carolina: Albert Oettinger
University of Omaha: Jacques Rieur
University of Pennsylvania: Jacob Rubinoff
University of Pittsburgh: A. Jerome Levy
University of Texas: H. J. Ettlinger
University of Washington: Roy Rosenthal
University of Wisconsin: H. M. Kallen
Valparaiso University: Florence Turner
Western Reserve University: Benjamin Roth
Yale University: Reuben Horchow
AND THE OFFICERS
Office of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
600 Madison Avenue, New York
THE MENORAH JOURNAL
_Published Bi-monthly During the Academic Year By_
_The Intercollegiate Menorah Association_
_"For the Study and Advancement of Jewish Culture and Ideals"
600 Madison Avenue, New York_
_Editor-in-Chief_
HENRY HURWITZ
_Associate Editor_
I. LEO SHARFMAN
_Managing Editor_
H. ASKOWITH
_Business Manager_
B. S. POUZZNER
_Board of Consulting Editors_
DR. CYRUS ADLER
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
DR. LEE K. FRANKEL
PROF. FELIX FRANKFURTER
PROF. ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER
PROF. RICHARD GOTTHEIL
DR. MAX HELLER
DR. JOSEPH JACOBS
DR. KAUFMANN KOHLER
JUSTICE IRVING LEHMAN
JUDGE JULIAN W. MACK
DR. J. L. MAGNES
PROF. MAX L. MARGOLIS
DR. H. PEREIRA MENDES
DR. MARTIN A. MEYER
DR. DAVID PHILIPSON
DR. SOLOMON SCHECHTER
HON. OSCAR S. STRAUS
SAMUEL STRAUSS
JUDGE MAYER SULZBERGER
MISS HENRIETTA SZOLD
FELIX M. WARBURG
DR. STEPHEN S. WISE
* * * * *
VOLUME I DECEMBER, 1915 NUMBER 5
=CONTENTS=
PAGE
_Frontispiece_: THEODOR HERZL _From an Etching by Hermann Struck_
THE MENORAH _Theodor Herzl_ 261
_Translation by Bessie London Pouzzner_
THE PRESENT CRISIS IN AMERICAN JEWRY _Israel Friedlaender_ 265
OUR SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE _Irving Lehman_ 277
ADAM PROMETHEUS, and OTHER LYRICS _Louis K. Anspacher_ 282
SHOLOM ASCH: THE JEWISH MAUPASSANT _Percy B. Shostac_ 285
_A Menorah Prize Essay_
LIBERALISM AND THE JEWS _Joseph Jacobs_ 298
WHAT IS JUDAISM? _Second Paper_ _Mordecai M. Kaplan_ 309
UNIVERSITY MENORAH ADDRESSES 319
INTERCOLLEGIATE MENORAH NOTES 322
ACTIVITIES OF MENORAH SOCIETIES 324
INDEX _to Volume I of THE MENORAH JOURNAL_ 333
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_Copyright, 1915, by The Intercollegiate Menorah
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[Illustration: signature: Dr Theodor Herzl
_From an Etching by Hermann Struck, Autographed by Theodor Herzl._
_Reproduced from the Original by Courtesy of the Berlin Photographic
Co._
_Frontispiece_
THE MENORAH JOURNAL
_December, 1915_]
THE
MENORAH JOURNAL
VOLUME I DECEMBER, 1915 NUMBER 5
[Illustration]
The Menorah
BY THEODOR HERZL
_Translated from the German by Bessie London Pouzzner_
DEEP in his soul he began to feel the need of being a Jew. His
circumstances were not unsatisfactory; he enjoyed an ample income and
a profession that permitted him to do whatever his heart desired. For
he was an artist. His Jewish origin and the faith of his fathers had
long since ceased to trouble him, when suddenly the old hatred came to
the surface again in a new mob-cry. With many others he believed that
this flood would shortly subside. But there was no change for the
better; in fact, things went from bad to worse; and every blow, even
though not aimed directly at him, struck him with fresh pain, till
little by little his soul became one bleeding wound. These sorrows,
buried deep in his heart and silenced there, evoked thoughts of their
origin and of his Judaism, and now he did something he could not
perhaps have done in the old days because he was then so alien to
it--he began to love this Judaism with an intense fervor. Although in
his own eyes he could not, at first, clearly justify this new
yearning, it became so powerful at length that it crystallized from
vague emotions into a definite idea which he must needs express. It
was the conviction that there was only one solution for this
_Judennot_--the return to Judaism.
When this came to the knowledge of his closest friends, similarly
situated though they were, they shook their heads gravely and even
feared for his reason. For how could that be a remedy which merely
sharpened and intensified the evil? It seemed to him, on the other
hand, that their moral distress was so acute because the Jew of to-day
had lost the poise which was his father's very being. They ridiculed
him for this when his back was turned--many even laughed openly in his
face; yet he did not allow himself to be misled by the banalities of
these people whose acuteness of judgment had never before inspired his
respect, and he bore their witticisms and their sneers with equal
indifference. And since, in all other respects, he acted like a man in
his senses, they suffered him gradually to indulge in his infatuation,
which a number of them soon began to call by a harsher term than _idée
fixe_.
He continued, however, with characteristic persistence to develop one
idea after another from his fundamental conviction. At this time he
was profoundly moved by several instances of apostasy, though his
pride would not permit him to betray it. As a man and as an artist of
the modern school, he had, of course, acquired many non-Jewish habits
and his study of the cultures of successive civilizations had left an
indelible impress upon him. How was this to be reconciled with his
return to Judaism? Often doubts assailed him as to the soundness of
his guiding thought, his "idée maîtresse," as a French thinker calls
it. Perhaps this generation, having grown up under the influence of
alien cultures, was no longer capable of that return which he had
perceived to be their redemption. But the new generation would be
capable of it, if it were only given the right direction early enough.
He resolved, therefore, that his own children, at least, should be
shown the proper path. They should be trained as Jews in their own
home.
Hitherto he had permitted to pass by unobserved the holiday which the
wonderful apparition of the Maccabees had illumined for thousands of
years with the glow of miniature lights. Now, however, he made this
holiday an opportunity to prepare something beautiful which should be
forever commemorated in the minds of his children. In their young
souls should be implanted early a steadfast devotion to their ancient
people. He bought a Menorah, and when he held this nine-branched
candlestick in his hands for the first time, a strange mood came over
him. In his father's house also, the lights had once burned in his
youth, now far away, and the recollection gave him a sad and tender
feeling for home. The tradition was neither cold nor dead,--thus it
had passed through the ages, one light kindling another. Moreover, the
ancient form of the Menorah had excited his interest. When was the
primitive structure of this candlestick fashioned? Clearly the design
was suggested by the tree--in the centre the sturdy trunk, on right
and left four branches, one below the other, in one plane, and all of
equal height. A later symbolism brought with it the short ninth
branch, which projects in front and functions as a servant. What
mystery had the generations which followed one another read into this
form of art, at once so simple and natural? And our artist wondered to
himself if it were not possible to animate again the withered form of
the Menorah, to water its roots, as one would a tree. The mere sound
of the name, which he now pronounced every evening to his children,
gave him great pleasure. There was a lovable ring to the word when it
came from the lips of little children.
On the first night the candle was lit and the origin of the holiday
explained. The wonderful incident of the lights that strangely
remained burning so long, the story of the return from the Babylonian
exile, the second Temple, the Maccabees--our friend told his children
all he knew. It was not very much, to be sure, but it served. When the
second candle was lit, they repeated what he had told them, and though
it had all been learned from him, it seemed to him quite new and
beautiful. In the days that followed he waited keenly for the
evenings, which became ever brighter. Candle after candle stood in the
Menorah, and the father mused on the little candles with his
children, till at length his reflections became too deep to be
uttered before them.
When he had resolved to return to his people and to make open
acknowledgment of his return, he had only thought he would be doing
the honorable and rational thing. But he had never dreamed that he
would find in it a gratification of his yearning for the beautiful.
Yet nothing less was his good fortune. The Menorah with its many
lights became a thing of beauty to inspire lofty thought. So, with his
practised hand, he drew a plan for a Menorah to present to his
children the following year. He made free use of the motif of the
eight branching arms projecting right and left in one plane from the
central stem. He did not hold himself bound by the rigid traditional
form, but created directly from nature, unconcerned by other
symbolisms also seeking expression. He was on the search for living
beauty. Yet, though he gave the withered branch new life, he conformed
to the law, to the gentle dignity, of its being. It was a tree with
slender branches; its ends were moulded into flower calyxes which
would hold the lights.
The week passed with this absorbing labor. Then came the eighth day,
when the whole row burns, even the faithful ninth, the servant, which
on other nights is used only for the lighting of the others. A great
splendor streamed from the Menorah. The children's eyes glistened. But
for our friend all this was the symbol of the enkindling of a nation.
When there is but one light all is still dark, and the solitary light
looks melancholy. Soon it finds one companion, then another, and
another. The darkness must retreat. The light comes first to the young
and the poor,--then others join them who love Justice, Truth, Liberty,
Progress, Humanity, and Beauty. When all the candles burn, then we
must all stand and rejoice over the achievement. And no office can be
more blessed than that of a Servant of the Light.
The Present Crisis in American Jewry
_A Plea for Reconciliation_
BY ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER
[Illustration: _ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER (born in Russia, 1876), attended
the Universities of Berlin and Strassburg (Ph.D., 1901); called to the
Jewish Theological Seminary in 1903, where he is now the Sabato Morais
Professor of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. Professor Friedlaender
is not only the author, editor, and translator of a number of
scholarly works but his wide observation of Jewish life in various
countries, coupled with his broad historic knowledge, have enabled him
to write and speak on present Jewish problems with exceptional
authority and insight, as for example in his new book, "The Jews of
Russia and Poland." His lectures before Menorah Societies have been
particularly stimulating and have made him a great favorite with
University students._]
VARIOUS occurrences of recent date have revealed a rift in American
Jewry which if not healed in time is likely to result in a permanent
schism. The agitation centering around the question of a Jewish
Congress is not the cause of this rift; it is rather an effect or a
symptom betokening the profound difference of opinion and sentiment
which at present divides the Jews of America. In the realignment of
American Jewry which this struggle is calling forth, the Zionists and
the non-Zionists of this country--the former centering around their
local organization, the latter represented by the American Jewish
Committee--have been taking opposite sides. Those of us whose Judaism
is broad enough to embrace with equal loyalty the ideals of Zionism
and the interests of American Judaism, cannot but view with the
deepest concern the possibility of a permanent conflict between these
two sections of American Jewry, a conflict fraught with the gravest
consequences, not only for the Jewish cause in this country in general
but also for the Zionist movement--a conflict, moreover, in which no
victory achieved by either side can be anything but a Pyrrhic victory.
The situation is one that demands careful thought and delicate action.
Only a few of us are in a position to influence the course of events
by acting, but many of us may help to clarify the situation by
thinking. A correct diagnosis is an indispensable preliminary to a
cure, and it is only by finding out whether the issues underlying the
present struggle represent a chronic and perhaps irremediable
conflict, or are rather the effect of an acute and therefore curable
misunderstanding, that a proper solution may be discovered and
proposed. It is from this point of view that an attempt is here made
to analyze the present situation in American Jewry, to trace the
causes which have produced it, and to point out the consequences which
are unavoidable unless a remedy be applied in time.
_The Two Issues in American Jewry_
TO my mind there are two fundamental issues which separate the two
groups in American Jewry from one another. They may be expressed in
the following terms: 1, _Diaspora versus Palestine_; 2, _Religion
versus Nationalism_.
Without any desire to lose myself in philosophic subtleties, I shall,
for the sake of brevity, adopt the Hegelian language and explain the
development of these issues on the principle of _Thesis_, _Antithesis_
and _Synthesis_, i. e., of the initial prevalence of one extreme, of
its yielding subsequently to the opposite extreme, and of the final
harmonization of the two in a higher unity, combining the essential
features of both. I shall endeavor to point out that the Synthesis
forms the ground on which both parties may cooperate, without
sacrificing an iota of their respective convictions.
The first issue, expressed in the formula "Diaspora versus Palestine,"
hinges on the question as to whether the Jewish people finds its best
opportunities for development in the Diaspora, i. e., as an integral
part of the nations in whose midst it lives, or, away from the other
nations, as a separate entity, on its own soil in Palestine.
_The Rise and Fall of "Diaspora Judaism"_
WHEN modern Jewry, after the isolation of centuries, suddenly emerged
from the Ghetto to seek a place in the sun in the midst of the
Christian environment, the thesis adopted by it was _Diaspora_.
Consumed with the desire for emancipation, for sharing the benefits
and attractions of the new life around them, the Jews discarded the
hope for an independent national existence in Palestine, which had
been their lode-star throughout the ages. _Diaspora_ as opposed to
_Palestine_, and as exclusive of it, became the slogan of emancipated
Jewry. The Jewish religion was refitted to harmonize with this new
striving for material and cultural progress. Reform Judaism arose, the
main object of which was to break down the previous separateness of
the Jews; and the theory of a "Jewish mission" sprang into life, not
as a spontaneous growth of Jewish tradition, but as a forced hothouse
product of practical life--a theory which proclaimed that an isolated
Jewish existence in Palestine was subversive of the very essence of
Judaism, that the mission of the Jewish people was to propagate
monotheism among the nations of the earth, and that this mission could
only be carried out in the Dispersion, in the midst of the nations
which were to be the objects of that mission.
As time progressed, however, the "Diaspora" thesis gradually lost its
force. Emancipation failed to fulfill the ardent hopes attached to it.
The nations refused to allow the Jews to participate fully and
unrestrictedly in the general life of the country. Anti-Semitism,
manifesting itself in the crude form of hatred, or under the subtle
guise of prejudice, turned, in many cases, the liberties previously
granted to the Jews into a scrap of paper. On the other hand, the
dangers of this extreme Diaspora Judaism, at first little thought of,
began to loom larger and larger. The rush for emancipation threatened
not only to disrupt the unity of the Jewish people throughout the
world, which had been maintained during the ages of suffering and
persecution, but it also led large and important sections of Jewry to
assimilation, that is, to complete absorption.
_The Antithesis "Palestine" and Its Inadequacy_
AS a protest against the thesis "Diaspora," its opposite came to life,
the antithesis "Palestine." Political Zionism sprang into being,
loudly proclaiming that emancipation was a failure; that Judaism had
no chance of life in the Dispersion, and that the only salvation of
Jewry lay in being transferred to Palestine. _Zionism or assimilation_
was the alternative placed before the Jewish people. All efforts of
Jewry, as the last attempt to escape annihilation, were to be focused
on the obtaining of a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine.
All Jewish endeavors in the Diaspora were deprecated, because
consecrated to a cause which was foredoomed to failure.
It was not long before the antithesis, too, began to reveal its
deficiencies. The difficulties of reaching the Zionist goal very soon
proved far greater than had been anticipated in the blissful ecstasy
of the Zionist honeymoon. The ultimate consummation of the national
hope receded further and further before the longing gaze of the Jewish
people, and no longer held out an immediate remedy for the pressing
needs of suffering Jewry. The conviction also gradually gained ground
that, even under the most favorable of circumstances, Palestine could
only harbor a fraction of the Jewish, people, and that the vast bulk
of Jews would still remain in the lands of the Diaspora. Zionists who
were looking reality in the face could not accept the view of the
extremists, who were ready to save a small portion of the Jewish
people at the cost of abandoning to its fate the enormous majority
thereof.
_Opposing Ideals Fused Into Spiritual Zionism_
AS a result, a new formula asserted itself: Diaspora _plus_ Palestine.
It was the combination between the two extremes of Diaspora existence
and Palestine existence. This synthesis, generally called Cultural or
Spiritual Zionism, proclaimed that Palestine was indispensable for
the continuation of Judaism, for it was the only spot where the spirit
of Judaism, undisturbed by conflicting influences, could develop
normally and unfold all its hidden possibilities, and the only bond of
unity which could save the scattered members of the race from falling
asunder into disjointed fragments. The Diaspora, on the other hand, as
the dwelling place of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people,
had problems of its own which clamored equally for solution.
Hence the Jewish task became a double one: the Jews in every country,
while participating to the full in the life of their environment--for
the return to the Ghetto was neither desirable nor possible--had to
endeavor to secure a maximum of elbowroom for the development of their
own section of Jewry, while as part of universal Israel they had to
keep up their contact with the Jews throughout the world and labor
with them for the realization of the common Jewish hope, that of a
spiritual center in the historic land of Judaism. _Diaspora without
Palestine_ was impossible, because without the refreshing breath of a
healthy Jewish life in Palestine it was bound to wither and dry up.
_Palestine without the Diaspora_ was equally impossible, because it
lacked the backing of the people as a whole, and was in danger of
becoming a petty and obscure corner in the vast expanse of the Jewish
Dispersion, a sort of Jewish Nigeria.
This synthesis was not a pale cast of thought, the flimsy product of
an imaginative brain. It had its prototype in the actual facts of
history. For during several centuries preceding the dissolution of the
Jewish state, Palestine was the spiritual center of Judaism, in the
sense just indicated. The Jews outside of Palestine were superior, not
only in numbers, but also in wealth and influence, to those of
Palestine. The Jews of Egypt, and the same applies to other countries
of that period, were closely associated with the cultural and material
aspirations of their environment. Philo was one of the most
illustrious representatives of the Hellenic culture of his age; these
Diaspora Jews even found it necessary to translate the Holy Writings
into Greek. Yet they were, at the same time, loyal to Palestine. They
paid their Shekel, they made their annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem,
and looked upon the Holy Land as the spiritual center of all Jewry.
_The Second Issue: Religion vs. Nationalism_
THE other fundamental issue on which Jewish opinion is divided is
closely associated with the preceding one; it hinges on the formula
_Religion versus Nationalism_. From its earliest beginnings down to
the time of modern emancipation, Judaism represented an indissoluble
combination of nationalism and religion. Though ultimately intended to
appeal to the whole of humanity, Judaism was essentially a _national_
religion. Its bearer was a national community which zealously guarded
its racial purity, and its external manifestations assumed the forms
of a national life. Again the Jewish people was, first and foremost, a
_religious_ nation. Its sole reason for existence was, in the belief
of every one of its members, "to know the Lord" and to make Him known
to others. A Jew who did not believe in the fundamentals of the Jewish
creed or who did not observe the fundamentals of the Jewish ceremonial
was as much of a monstrosity as the Jew who denied the common racial
descent of the Jews in the past, or their common national destiny in
the future.
The departure of the Jews from the Ghetto and their entrance into
modern life marked a turning point also in this direction. Filled with
the desire of becoming part of the nations in whose midst they lived,
modern Jews were ready, and thought they were compelled, to deny the
national character of Judaism. The Jews were now labelled as Germans
or Frenchmen of the Mosaic persuasion, who were divided from their
fellow-citizens by the purely spiritual affiliations of religious
faith--the same affiliations which divided the Christian population.
Here, too, Reform Judaism was quick to meet the demands of practical
life. It began to chop off all the elements in Judaism which betrayed
a national character, both in the domain of doctrine and of practice,
though it halted half way, and down to this day still acknowledges, in
flagrant contradiction with its own theory, a number of rites and
ceremonies which bear an unmistakable racial imprint.
This transformation of Judaism, or rather this transformation of
Jewish terminology--for, in many cases, it was merely a question of
terms--was greatly stimulated by the development of nationalism in
Western Europe, where the structure of the modern state excluded, or
was thought to exclude, a diversity of nationalities, while the
principle of religious toleration left enough room for a variety of
religious beliefs. As a result, those Jews who lost their religious
affiliations were bound to feel that they were outcasts in the
religious community of Israel: they became either _konfessionslos_ or,
by a curious perversion of logic and conscience, became members of the
dominant faith.
_The Rapprochement of Religionists and Nationalists_
THE thesis "Judaism as Religion" was followed by the antithesis
"Judaism as Nationalism." It is interesting to observe that the
antithesis came from the Jews of Eastern Europe who, in their
overwhelming majority, were adherents of strict orthodoxy. Those Jews
of Russia and Poland who had drifted away from their religious
moorings were neither psychologically nor physically in a position to
abandon Judaism: psychologically, because they were too strongly
saturated with Jewish culture and Jewish associations to tear
themselves away from the influence of Judaism; physically, because
they were excluded from participating in the life of the environment
and were forced to remain within the fold. Living as the Eastern Jews
did in compact masses, they found it easier, both in theory and in
practice, to emphasize the national aspect of the Jewish community. As
a result, a doctrine sprang up which looked upon Jewry as an
essentially racial or national entity, in which religion was merely
one of the many passing phases of its historical development. If among
the champions of the thesis "Religion" there were Jews who celebrated
the Ninth of Ab as a holiday because it marked, in their eyes, the end
of Jewry as a nation, there were, among the others, the adherents of
the antithesis "Nationalism," Jews who arranged entertainments on the
Day of Atonement, as a public protest against the religious character
ascribed to Judaism.
Here, too, however, the synthesis was gradually paving its way, and
the formula "Religion _plus_ Nationalism" was supplanting the thesis
"Judaism as Religion" and the antithesis "Judaism as Nationalism." The
religionists, that is, the believers in the purely religious character
of Judaism, began to realize the devastating effect of their doctrine
on Jewish life and development, while the nationalists, without
sacrificing their convictions--for religion, least of all sentiments,
can be forced on modern men--began to appreciate the overwhelming
influence of the Jewish religion as a historic factor in the life of
the Jewish people, and were ready to acknowledge the difficulty and
the danger of squeezing an officially nationalistic Jewry into the
narrow frame of the modern _Nationalstaat_.
This mutual _rapprochement_ resulted, gradually, in a tacit
agreement--an agreement far more durable than a legal compact, because
founded on sentiment rather than on law--which implied the recognition
of Judaism as composed of Religion and Nationalism, but left
sufficient room to include the two extreme types of Jews: those whose
loyalty to Judaism was entirely fed from the fountain of religion, and
those whose devotion to Judaism was altogether grounded in race
consciousness.
_The Growth of Diaspora Judaism in America_
THIS development, which may be traced in various countries of modern
Europe, nowhere assumed such huge proportions and such striking
manifestations as it did in America. The struggle, hinging on the two
opposite doctrines, was nowhere else so well defined and nowhere else
fraught with so many tangible consequences as in America, for the
reason that American Jewry, as no other Jewry in the world, was made
up of two different elements, sharply divided in their traditions and
associations, as well as in their mental and psychological complexion.
The Jews hailing from the lands of emancipation in Western Europe, who
are conventionally, though not quite accurately, designated as German
Jews, brought over with them the theses _Diaspora_ as against
_Palestine_, and _Religion_ as against _Nationalism_. The immigrants
from Eastern Europe, the children of the Ghetto, who with equal
inaccuracy are termed Russian Jews, carried with them the antitheses
_Palestine_ as against _Diaspora_ and, as represented by the
extremists among them, _Nationalism_ as against _Religion_. The
fanatics of Diaspora Judaism and of Judaism as a pure faith are to be
found exclusively among the "German" Jews. The radical adherents of
Palestine and of Jewish nationalism are recruited entirely from the
ranks of "Russian" Jews.
These issues were of particular and immediate significance for the
Jews in this country; for America has, in less than one generation,
become the second largest center of the Jewish Diaspora, and bids fair
to become the first, instead of the second, within another generation.
No other country in the world offers, even approximately, such a
favorable combination of opportunities for the development of a
Diaspora Judaism, as does America: economic possibilities, vast and
sparsely populated territories, freedom of action, liberty of
conscience, equality of citizenship, appreciation of the fundamentals
of Judaism, variety of population, excluding a rigidly nationalistic
state policy, and other similar factors. It is no wonder, therefore,
that in no other country did Reform Judaism, as the incarnation of
Diaspora Judaism, attain such luxurious growth as it did in America.
It discarded, more radically than in Europe, the national elements
still clinging to Judaism, and it solemnly proclaimed that Judaism was
wholly and exclusively a religious faith, and that America was the
Zion and Washington the Jerusalem of American Israel.
_The Opposition: The Palestinian Sentiment of Russian Jews_
ON the other hand, the emigrants from Russia brought the antithesis on
the scene. They quickly perceived the decomposing effect of American
life upon Jewish doctrine and practice, and they became convinced more
firmly than ever that Diaspora Judaism was a failure, and that the
only antidote was Palestine and nothing but Palestine. The
nationalists among them beheld in the very same factors in which the
German Jews saw the possibilities of a Diaspora Judaism, the chances
for organizing Jewry on purely nationalistic lines. Nowhere else,
except perhaps in Russia, can be found a greater amount of Palestinian
sentiment, as well as a larger manifestation of a one-sided Jewish
nationalism, than is to be met with in this country.
This conflict of ideas became extraordinarily aggravated by numerous
influences of a personal character. The division between the so-called
German Jews and the so-called Russian Jews was not limited to a
difference in theory. It was equally nourished by far-reaching
differences in economic and social position and in the entire range of
mental development. The German Jews were the natives; the Russian Jews
were the newcomers. The German Jews were the rich; the Russian Jews
were the poor. The German Jews were the dispensers of charity; the
Russian Jews were the receivers of it. The German Jews were the
employers; the Russian Jews were the employees. The German Jews were
deliberate, reserved, practical, sticklers for formalities, with a
marked ability for organization; the Russian Jews were quick-tempered,
emotional, theorizing, haters of formalities, with a decided bent
toward individualism. An enormous amount of explosives had been
accumulating between the two sections, which if lit by a spark might
have disrupted the edifice of American Israel, still in the process of
construction.
_The Promise of Union and Harmony_
AND yet, not only was the conflict averted, but the impending struggle
gave way to hearty and extensive cooperation, such as cannot be
witnessed elsewhere in the whole Jewish world (one recalls
particularly the analogy of England) where East and West seem never to
meet. As the two sections came into closer contact with one another,
they learned to understand one another and to appreciate their
respective points of view. This cooperation was not founded upon the
flimsy framework of political expediency. It was grounded in that
synthesis of Jewish life which combines in a higher unity the
essential elements of the doctrines formerly believed to be exclusive
of one another. The German Jews, while emphasizing the needs of
Diaspora Judaism and anxious to build up its largest manifestation in
America, learned to appreciate the quickening and ennobling effect
upon the Diaspora of a normal Hebrew life in Palestine, and became
interested in the regeneration of the Holy Land. The Russian Jews, on
the other hand, though laying particular stress on the possibilities
of Judaism in Palestine, put their shoulder to the wheel and were
ready to assist in rearing the great structure of Judaism in America.
The so-called religionists, while looking upon Judaism as a faith,
were yet disinclined to repudiate the purely nationalistic Jews, whose
enthusiasm and devotion they admired even though it flowed from a
source they did not officially acknowledge. The so-called
nationalists, basing their Judaism on race consciousness, realized
that a common foundation of Judaism in this country could only be laid
along the lines of religious affiliation.
This cooperation found tangible expression in the recent participation
of American Jews in the upbuilding of Palestine, a participation which
one will vainly look for in a similar group (I am not speaking of
isolated individuals) in other countries. The same desire for a better
understanding was further embodied in the movement toward Kehillah
organization, which, though centering around the Jewish religion,
still clearly implied the national element in Judaism.
There was every reason to hope that this cooperation, which had been
so happily inaugurated between the two sections, would become more
intimate and more extensive, and that the interaction of the
heterogeneous elements of American Jewish life would resolve itself
in a great and strong harmony. America bade fair to become an ideal
Jewish center, where the practical wisdom of emancipated Jewry and the
idealistic intensity of Ghetto Jewry would be merged in one united
Jewish community, fully conscious of its duty as the future leader of
the Jewish Diaspora and acknowledging its indebtedness to the center
of all Jews in the land of our Fathers.
_The Old Conflict Revived_
SUDDENLY, however, a reaction seems to have set in, which threatens to
disrupt the harmony hitherto prevailing. This reaction, which is
fraught with grave consequences for the future of American Judaism no
less than for the Zionist movement, dates from, or at least coincides
with, the struggle centering around the Haifa Technikum. This is not
the place to enter into an analysis of that momentous issue. It is
enough to state that the bond of unity was disrupted with rude hands,
and the old conflict hinging on the issues of Diaspora and Nationalism
broke out with new fury. Again we see Diaspora Judaism pitched against
Palestinian Judaism, and Religion against Nationalism. Reason has
given way to passion, and discrimination to generalization. The Jews
of the new Palestine, who have given of their life-blood to the
rejuvenation of our homeland, are sweepingly declared to be
"anarchists," while, on the other hand, American Jews who, with
single-hearted devotion, have been the builders of the great Jewish
center in the New World, are contemptuously sneered at as
"assimilationists."
In this mood of distrust and prejudice, American Jewry was overtaken
by the great crisis resulting from the World War, and the disharmony
prevailing between the two factions soon found tangible expression in
the struggle over a Jewish Congress. The two elements of American
Jewry were clearly divided on the issue: the German or native Jews,
represented by leading members of the American Jewish Committee, were
opposed to the calling of a congress, while the Russian or immigrant
Jews, speaking largely through the Zionist organization, clamored for
it.
From what has preceded I believe it may be safely concluded that this
demand for a congress on the one hand, and the opposition to it on the
other, are not rooted in diametrically opposed and deeply implanted
theories of Judaism but are rather the expression of different moods
or temperaments. The immigrant Jews who were directly concerned in the
war, since its horrors affected their homelands and the kin they left
behind, and who were impulsive and sentimental, felt the burning need
of crying out in their despair, and were ready to face the
consequences which might result from this outcry. The native Jews,
whose sympathy with their far-off brethren, profound though it was,
could hardly, in the nature of the case, be more than indirect and
whose accustomed reserve and self-restraint enabled them to judge the
issues more calmly, shrunk from the risks which in their opinion were
implied in an open protest of the Jewish people before the inflamed
public opinion of the non-Jewish world. It is not my intention, nor is
it my function, to render judgment in so momentous an hour on an issue
concerning which Jewish opinion is diametrically yet honestly divided.
But it is necessary to point out that whichever side may be in the
right: serious as may be the dangers of holding a congress or not, the
dangers involved in a split over this question are incalculably more
serious. Such a split may not only result in permanent and perhaps
irreparable injury to the Jewish cause in America and to the Zionist
movement in this country, but may also, by aligning the two sections
of American Jewry against one another, spell nothing short of disaster
to the Jewish people as a whole. The stakes involved in this conflict
are infinitely greater than the issue which has given rise to it.
_The Structure of American Judaism Endangered_
SO far as American Judaism is concerned, the practical results of this
strife between Zionists and non-Zionists in America,--to leave aside
all theoretical considerations,--may prove to be fatal. It will reopen
the gap between the two elements of American Jewry which had been
almost filled. The work of American Judaism has been done by both
elements. Prominent non-Zionists and even anti-Zionists have
frequently and gratefully acknowledged the debt which American Israel
owes to the cooperation of the Zionists. The institutions of American
Jewry depend to a large extent for their existence upon the
non-Zionists, who may now by the force of reaction be driven into
anti-Zionism. But the progress of these institutions just as largely
depends upon those who are Zionists. The withdrawal of the Zionists
from American Jewish work--and such withdrawal may become a moral duty
for the Zionists who are loyal to the movement and respect their
convictions--might mean a complete standstill in the life of American
Jewry. Perhaps there are a few among us who are skeptical about the
fate of American Judaism, and who therefore see no harm in hastening
its disintegration. But those of us who are profoundly concerned about
the future of the two and one-half million Jews who are now in
America, and of twice that number who may one day be here, cannot but
view with the utmost anxiety the danger of wrecking what promises to
become the greatest Jewish center in the history of the Jews since
their dispersion.
As for the Zionist movement, one cannot help doubting whether Zionism,
even if it succeeded in defeating its opponents, would thereby obtain
its object. I am not speaking of the very considerable material injury
which the movement will suffer from the indifference and hostility of
the other side. I am rather thinking of the dangers incurred by
Zionism itself if, having repulsed the so-called classes, it becomes
a one-sided movement of the masses. Of course, no Zionist can be
otherwise than deeply gratified by the prospect of Zionism becoming a
cause of the people, but unless it manages to preserve the balance of
power within the Jewish community, it will be exposed to risks from
another source. Zionism is beset with so many difficulties that it
dare not burden itself with problems extraneous to it. The injection
of political or economic issues into the movement is fraught with
incalculable consequences for the future of the movement in this
country. These issues are so extensive in their bearings and so vital
in their manifestations that if superimposed on the delicate structure
of Zionism they may crush it, never to rise again.
Zionism must, therefore, remain neutral. While including all Jews, it
dare not identify itself with any section of them. It dare not be
either a movement of the classes or of the masses. While holding
scrupulously aloof from the issues which divide modern Jewry as part
of modern humanity, it must keep its eye fixed on one point, the
securing of a Jewish center for the Jewish people as a whole, in which
the ills that afflict humanity may be cured in the prophetic spirit of
justice and righteousness.
_A Plea for Peace and Cooperation_
THE practical conclusion of these considerations is clear. It is a
plea for reconciliation, for a return to that Synthesis which was on
the point of becoming the common ground of all American Israel.
American Judaism needs peace to carry out the great task confronting
it. Zionism is no less in need of peace in order to gain the hearts of
those whose hearts are still Jewish. The very possibility of a
conflict has bred a spirit of suspicion and unfriendliness which falls
like a blight upon every attempt at united action. The non-Zionists
may succeed in defeating their opponents; they can never dispense with
Zionism which is a driving force in American Jewish life. The victory
may perch on the banners of the Zionists but they can never forego the
assistance of the non-Zionists who still form the backbone of American
Jewry. Representing the common longings of the Jewish people
throughout the world, Zionism should serve as a leaven, quickening and
stimulating the Jewish activities of this country, and rescue them
from the greatest danger of Diaspora Judaism, the danger of
provincialism, of falling away from the main body of universal Israel.
In the particular situation confronting us Zionism ought to assert the
claims of Palestine, in addition to those of the Diaspora. But the
Zionists cannot replace the present agencies of American Jewish life,
nor can they dispense with the cooperation of the non-Zionists. Such
cooperation, based on the synthesis _Palestine plus Diaspora_, would
be of equal benefit to both parties. Zionism and non-Zionism have only
one real enemy: it is Assimilation, which preaches the suicide of
Judaism. But all those who are concerned about the preservation of
Judaism, in whatever shape or by whatever means, have the right to be
recognized, if not as fellow workers in Zion, at least as fellow
workers in Israel.
_The Supreme Test for the Jews of America_
LASTLY, if cooperation and harmony between the Zionists and the
non-Zionists be permanently needed for the welfare of American
Judaism, they are needed a thousandfold now when the catastrophe which
has overwhelmed the ancient centers of Jewry has turned the eyes and
the hopes of the whole Jewish world toward the Jews of this country.
Ever since the Jews of Russia, fleeing from the wrath of the
oppressor, began to wend their steps toward these hospitable shores,
thoughtful European Jews have been looking upon America as the future
center of the Jewish Diaspora. And as time progressed, as the numbers
and the energies of the Old Jewish World assembled more and more in
the New, American Jewry has been steadily advancing toward this
exalted position of Jewish hegemony. But what, in the natural course
of events, might have been the fruit of slow and gradual ripening, has
now been thrust upon us as the sudden result of the World War.
Crippled European Jewry is now looking, and will look more and more,
to the Jewry of America not only for comfort and support, but also for
light and leading, for spiritual advice and guidance, and the Jewry of
America, the only Jewry of consequence unscathed by the world
struggle, cannot but assume the responsibility.
Nor is the Jewry of America at liberty to choose. There is an ancient
Jewish legend which, with a subtle touch of sarcasm, tells us that
when the Lord, having descended upon Mount Sinai, was about to bestow
the Torah upon the Jews, the latter, shrinking from the obligations
imposed by it, made an attempt to refuse the proffered gift. Thereupon
the Lord lifted the mountain over their heads and angrily exclaimed:
"If ye accept my Law, well and good. If not, ye shall be crushed on
the spot!" And the Jews, yielding no less to the promptings of duty
than to the dictates of wisdom, quickly recanted and declared: "We
will do and obey!" American Jewry will either be the leader of Jewry
or it will not be. Let it fail to respond to the great call of
history,--and it will unfailingly relapse into the obscurity and
sluggishness of its former parochialism. This great world crisis will
be either the making or the unmaking of American Jewry, and no Jew
whose mind is unclouded by the ephemeral passions of party strife can
do aught except ardently pray that the Jews of America may emerge in
triumph from their supreme test.
[Illustration: Signature: Israel Friedlaender]
Our Spiritual Inheritance
BY IRVING LEHMAN
[Illustration: _IRVING LEHMAN (born in New York, 1876), educated at
Columbia (A.B., 1896; A.M., 1897; LL.B., 1898). Justice of the Supreme
Court of New York; associated with a number of Jewish institutions,
including the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Y. M. H. & Kindred
Associations. Justice Lehman has taken a particularly keen interest in
Jewish University students, and as Chairman of the Graduate Menorah
Committee since the formation of the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association, he has been generously helpful in promoting the ideals
which the Menorah movement embodies. Devoted Jew and public-spirited
American, his personal example has been an inspiration to Menorah men
all over the country._]
IF a Jew of the Middle Ages, or even a Jew living to-day in almost
medieval conditions in Poland, were present to-night,[A] he would
certainly say, "What sort of a conference of rabbis is this, at which
a layman is presiding, another layman is to speak on 'The Religion of
the Hebrews,' and a third layman is to speak on a social movement?"
To the old-time Jew a conference of rabbis meant a conference of men
learned in the law and its authoritative interpretation in the
Talmud--men whose duty it was to teach this law and who would confer
among themselves upon the application of its abstruse and technical
rules to the daily needs of their congregations. But they could
recognize no questions and no problems not fully covered by that law;
consequently they could recognize no right in any person not an
authority on that law to take any part in such a conference except to
ask for the advice of the rabbis appointed to teach the law. That was
the attitude of our ancient leaders, and it met with the full and
unqualified approval of the Jewish laymen, because it fulfilled all
the requirements of our medieval condition. Until recent times we were
a people apart, living among the nations of the world, but not a part
of them. We had no right to join in the general civic life. Our life
consisted in the memory of a national past and in the dreams of a
national future. So far as the present was concerned, we were perforce
interested only in the maintenance of our identity and in the
preservation of our ancient law, so that we might be in a position
some day to realize our dreams and to reëstablish our national state,
founded on this ancient law. Deprived as we were of all right to live
in the present, we could justify our existence and continuance as a
separate people and a separate religion only by laying stress on the
importance of our ancient law, and striving to hand it down, pure and
unaltered, to future generations. Therefore in those days the rabbis
were naturally our only leaders, and their right to leadership
depended solely upon their knowledge of the law. The observance of the
Torah embraced all the limits of the life of the Jew.
_New Opportunities and New Obligations_
TO-DAY all this has changed. The Jew of to-day is living in the
present, and the observance of the minutiæ of Jewish law is to the man
active in civic and business life of slight if any importance.
Inconceivable as it would be to a medieval Jew that at a conference of
Jewish rabbis a layman should preside and laymen should make formal
addresses, it would be equally inconceivable to such a Jew that among
the laymen who might make such addresses, there could be a professor
at a great university, a worker in the general social activities of
the city, and a judge. These changed conditions, this wide life now
opened to the Jews, have produced new problems, and we demand of our
rabbis, if they are indeed to remain the teachers and leaders in
Israel, that they help us solve these problems.
As soon as opportunities were offered to us, we eagerly grasped them.
We are too eager, too ambitious, too practical a people to continue to
live in dreams of the past and visions of the future, when the present
is thrown open to us. We have definitely and forever discarded the
concept that we are a peculiar people, the "chosen of the Lord," in so
far as that concept cuts us off from free participation in the life of
the nations among which we live, or from serving in the cause of the
general advance of humanity. We have demanded the opportunity to
exercise civic rights, and as those rights have been granted, we have
recognized that the opportunity confers also an obligation--the
obligation to exercise those rights in no narrow spirit, but for the
benefit of the whole people of which we are now a part.
_Why the Jew Remains a Jew_
AS a result of this change, we no longer take our Judaism for granted,
but day by day perforce are asking ourselves three questions: What
does Judaism mean, and why are we Jews? Will the maintenance of
Judaism be of benefit to the countries in which we live and to
humanity at large? How can Judaism be maintained, since now we not
only live among the nations of the world, but the individual Jew has
become a part of these nations?
We have discarded, as I have said and as I firmly believe, the
ancient concept that Judaism means membership in a peculiar people,
the chosen of the Lord, except possibly in the sense that we have a
peculiar obligation imposed upon us to demonstrate to the world the
power and worth of a spiritual ideal. We Reform Jews have discarded
the view that in any literal sense the Lord revealed himself unto
Moses and gave unto him the tablets of stone. The words "Hear, O
Israel, the Eternal is One, the Lord is One," are still dear to us,
but many who call themselves Jews deny even the existence of a
personal God. Why then do we still remain Jews, why do not those
so-called Jews, who deny the existence of the Lord, frankly join the
ranks of so-called universal philosophers while the rest of us join
the Unitarians?
The answer comes not only from our heads, but from our hearts. Most of
us could not renounce Judaism because deep down in our consciousness,
aside from reason or logic, we know we are not as other men; we know
we are Jews. We hear the cry of the suffering in Belgium and we answer
to that cry because we are men and nothing human is alien to us,--but
when we hear the cry of the suffering Jew in Poland and Palestine,
then the true Jew answers that cry as the cry not only of a fellow
human being, but as the cry of a brother.
_A Nation Founded on a Spiritual Ideal_
IS Judaism then a matter of race? Are we after all and regardless of
our beliefs and special obligations, a peculiar people, perhaps even a
separate nation? The answer to this question lies, I think, in the
study of our history. For centuries past the Jew has been persecuted,
driven from one country to another, despoiled, massacred, and at best
despised and forced to live in the Ghetto clothed in the badges of
disdain. All of this the Jew has suffered and yet survived and kept
his religion intact; willing at all times to remain a man apart
because he knew that in the past the Jews had been a nation founded on
a spiritual ideal; because his tradition taught him that on the slopes
of Mount Sinai, the Lord had entered into a covenant with his
fathers--and not only with them stood there that day, but also "with
him that was not there that day" but who came after them; and that by
virtue of this covenant, Israel became unto the Lord a kingdom of
priests and a holy people; and because the value of this tradition,
the force of this spiritual ideal was greater to him than the
security, the right to live and work freely among his fellow men,
which he could have obtained only by discarding his Judaism.
During all the centuries since the dispersal, the Jews have had a
common history, a common tradition, a common spiritual ideal, and they
have survived by reason of the force of this common inheritance. It is
this common inheritance of a past founded on a spiritual force that
to-day, in my opinion, constitutes Judaism.
_America Demands Adherence to our Spiritual Ideals_
RACIAL Judaism is in one sense, but in the sense of a race that has
stood for a spiritual ideal and is bound together by traditions of the
value of that ideal, and not simply a race that is bound together by
ties of common descent. At all times and in all places a Jew meant not
merely a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not merely a
descendant of the people who once ruled over the promised land, but
one who considered himself bound by the covenant of his fathers, at
least to the extent that he would be true to his spiritual ideals,
whatever these ideals might be. Judaism is in that sense a racial
religion, but it is and at all times must be a religion and not simply
a race. True, we now differ among ourselves as to the content of our
religion. True, many of us now deny that that covenant which has kept
alive our race and religion was ever in fact made, but we cannot deny
our history and our past. We cannot deny that by virtue of the
tradition of that covenant our fathers considered themselves under a
peculiar obligation, and that by virtue of that tradition they sought
to become a kingdom of priests and a holy people.
That tradition at least is our own heritage, and he only is a Jew who
recognizes the force of spiritual ideals, and by virtue of that
inheritance also for himself assumes the obligation involved in being
a member of a nation of priests and a holy people.
If that spiritual concept and not merely race constitutes the basis
and the essential content of Judaism, then surely the question of
whether the maintenance of Judaism will be a benefit to the country in
which we live answers itself. In all civic matters we must work and be
as one with our fellow-citizens, but America demands that each citizen
give to its service the best of which he is capable.
Since Judaism means the recognition of a peculiar obligation imposed
upon us by our past; since Judaism is founded upon a spiritual
ideal,--adherence to our ancient faith and endeavor to live up to our
past must be to us a source of greater moral and spiritual
strength--strength that we must bring to the service of our country.
_The Spiritual Value of a New Zion_
OUR problem then becomes really one of how we can maintain Judaism and
keep it alive now that it has become a part and not as formerly the
whole of our lives. Some say that this can be done only by recognizing
that we are not simply a racial religion but actually a nation, and
that we must reëstablish that nation and its capital upon the hills of
Zion.
This is neither the time nor the place to discuss such a matter. For
myself, I wish to say that if in the country where through our fathers
the world first learnt the value of spiritual ideals, where it was
prophesied that "the law shall go forth from Zion and the word of the
Lord from Jerusalem--" and "nations shall no longer lift up sword
against nations neither shall they learn war any more," a community of
Jews shall be again established who shall represent and contribute to
the fulfillment of the prophecy, such a community would be from a
spiritual standpoint a living force to keep Judaism alive throughout
the world.
"_Nationally We Are Americans and Americans Only_"
BUT I wish also to state that I cannot for an instant recognize that
the Jews as such constitute a nation in any sense in which that word
is recognized in political science, or that a national basis is a
possible concept for modern Judaism. We Jews in America, bound to the
Jews of other lands by our common faith, constituting our common
inheritance, cannot as American citizens feel any bond to them as
members of a nation, for nationally we are Americans and American
only, and in political and civic matters we cannot recognize any other
ties. We must therefore look for the maintenance of Judaism to those
spiritual concepts which constitute Judaism.
And it is the duty of our rabbis in the present just as it was in the
past to lead us and strengthen us in our Judaism. A conference of
rabbis to-day properly recognizes that Judaism consists no longer in
the minute observances of the law; that the Jewish people are asking
for the inner meaning of their religion, and not for dry formulas. In
all humility as a layman, I say to them that the Jewish people again
needs to be taught that what the Lord requires of them is "to do
justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with their God."
[Illustration: Signature: Irving Lehman]
_I AM very much pleased with the excellence of The
Menorah Journal, which grows better with every number.
It is conceived in a fine spirit and has a high
educational value for the Jewish young men in the
universities throughout the country._
_The American spirit and the Jewish spirit are in
entire accord, in fact they supplement one another.
The Puritan ideals of democracy which lie at the
foundation of our Government were derived principally
from the Jewish ideals of democracy, and I cannot
imagine any American being less an American for being
a good Jew. On the contrary, he will be a better
American for being a good Jew, more ready at all times
to make every sacrifice for his country in peace and
in war.--Hon. Oscar S. Straus, in a Letter to The
Menorah Journal._
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote A: This address was delivered at the opening session of the
Eastern Conference of Reform Rabbis, Temple Emanu-El, November 7,
1915, at which Justice Lehman presided.]
Lyrics
BY LOUIS K. ANSPACHER
[Illustration: _LOUIS K. ANSPACHER, poet and playwright, whose most
recent plays, "Our Children" and "The Unchastened Woman," have won
recognition for him as one of the most original and powerful
dramatists of the present day. Born in Cincinnati in 1878, and
educated at City College of New York, and Columbia University (A.M.,
LL.B.), he occupied the vestry pulpit of Temple Emanu-El, New York,
for several years, and has lectured on ethics and the drama. A volume
of his poems, to be published soon, will show more completely the
depth and resourcefulness of the lyric power revealed in the
accompanying verses. The portrait is from an oil painting by
Franzen._]
Adam Prometheus
I
In olden books 'tis written,
That he that would discern
The secret'st truth of things
Lost paradise eterne.
He was the first that fed
On fruit that knowledge brings;
Exiled from joys, he fled
And flaming swords did burn
Behind his path, which led
To miseries.
II
Great God, vouchsafe me truth:
For I am one that smitten
With the deep mystery of things,
In learned lore uncouth,
Out of pure wonder sings
In harmonies.
III
Great God, forfend the tooth
Of deep remorse, and stings
Of joys that I did spurn:
Oh, spare the gnawing ruth
Of memories' torturings,
Yea proudly did I turn
From earth to snatch at wings
To soar and ne'er return
To life's lees.
IV
Great God, I too am cursed;
A destiny from birth,
Of all dread fates the worst,
Drives me unrestful, flings
Me from my Eden bliss,
Over a barren earth,
To impious search for things
Whose heart is an abyss.
I too am one that clings.
In lust for a knowledge kiss,
Upon my knees.
V
Great God, I've given o'er
My paradise of ease,
Allowed my soul to soar
To mysteries high or deep
At the world's core;
Oh, quench its ardent thirst,
Its hunger, God, appease:--
Or if Thou dost ignore
The soul that Thou hast nursed,
Then smite me as I leap,
And let Thy rages roar
On me as in the first
That fell on sulphur seas.
Yea, down Hell's sliffy steep
Thy molten lightnings pour
Till darkness be immersed;
Yet know I will not creep
Though all Thy thunders burst
In penalties.
My Psalm of Life
I cannot grow as men would have me grow,
By ordered plodding to a life complete;
Climbing the path with slow and heavy beat
Of tedious footsteps from the world below.
I cannot like a visible circle flow
Until by measured compass I can meet
The place I started from with weary feet.
That proudly point the obvious path they go.
Ah no,--mine be the instinct given to trust
That all will in the outcome fall aright.
Like a migrant swan still wandering since I must,
I'll fill a life's full cycle in my flight:
Though I soar into the clouds or sink to dust,
My orb will come around; I'll reach my height.
The Vocal Memnon to the Sphynx
The sands of time drift round me, and within
There is the knell of passing and decay:
The sun-smit vastness of the world doth weigh
Upon my riddling soul like hidden sin,
And bids it speak. Thou desert art my kin!
I crumble to thee, waning day by day;
But I am cursed with questions that betray
The end of life before death's hours begin,
My eyes are staring, yet their sight is blind.
My ears are hollow, yet they hear no sound.
My knees are buried and my body sinks.
The stars weave fates that they themselves unwind,
Traversing the same cycles round and round;
While I sit gazing at the silent Sphynx.
[Illustration: Louis Anspacher]
Sholom Asch: The Jewish Maupassant
_A Menorah Prize Essay_
BY PERCY B. SHOSTAC
[Illustration: _PERCY B. SHOSTAC, born in 1892, in New York City,
where he attended the Ethical Culture School and High School; graduate
of the University of Wisconsin (1915), where he was an active member
of the Wisconsin Dramatic Society and contributed frequently to the
Wisconsin Play-Book. He is now teaching English at the University of
Kansas. The present Essay was awarded the Wisconsin Menorah Prize for
1915._]
I
THE MAN AND HIS WORK
IT was in the little parlor of a four-room New York flat. The room was
furnished sparsely: a table and a few chairs of bamboo, a long row of
books on the yellow floor along one wall, some Chinese ornaments and
plants, a few Russian embroideries, a rich Persian covering on the
couch, and candles--many candles burning and flickering on their rest
of saucer or glazed clay candlestick. Our hostess seemed part of her
room; she was a Russian Jewess, decidedly Oriental in type, rare in
her beauty and still more rare in her personality and charm.
Sholom Asch sat opposite me smoking his cigarette and sipping his
coffee--a big man of thirty-five, with broad shoulders and a frame
sturdy and substantial; thick black hair, a high forehead, a
characteristically Jewish nose, a firm mouth, a little black
moustache, and deep brown eyes--eyes that at times would seem to be
unaware of anything surrounding them, yet one felt that they saw
everything and understood everything. His complexion was that of a
ruddy boy, yet his large handsome features had the sensitiveness which
classed him unmistakably as an artist.
He was talking in Yiddish. His voice was soft and his sentences
followed each other in musical cadence and beauty.
* * * * *
"YES," Asch was saying, "he was the best Jew I ever met. I always
think of him as 'The Light of Damascus.' I was in Damascus last year.
The most beautiful city in the world! The houses on the winding
streets are centuries old. The people seem older than the houses. For
hours I stood in the market-place watching the camels and the asses
pass by. Some had the dust of the desert on their feet and some had
mud and dirt. Each went slowly on its way with its turbaned rider
sitting still as a figure of stone on its back.
"Through the kindness of a friend we entered a house on one of the
strange streets. Like most of the old houses its front was plain and
unattractive. We went through a court and on to a balcony overlooking
an enclosed garden. Such a garden I had never seen! It seemed a
picture transported from the 'Thousand and One Nights.' In the center
was a fountain of extraordinary workmanship, so inlaid with gems that
after the water had gushed out it seemed to splash down again in a
shower of ruby and amethyst. About the fountain were palms and fig
trees. The flowers were more wondrous than the jewelled water or the
many-colored mosaics of the walls and arches.
"On the grass sat a grey-bearded Mohammedan. He smoked his hookah in
silence. Suddenly we heard voices. Three young women came from the
house and bathed in the fountain. Their lord and husband sat stoically
and smoked. They laughed and played in the splashing waters. And as I
watched this old man and these beautiful women, I thought myself back
in the ancient Damascus, in the city that I had thought was dead for a
thousand years.
* * * * *
"THAT evening I was walking in the city. Suddenly I saw a light before
me. To my surprise it was an electric bulb--the only one in Damascus.
It was fastened to the head of a donkey and illuminated a painted
advertisement attached to his back. By following the wires I found
they led to a large wholesale warehouse. It hurt me to find this
electric light in Damascus. I was still more hurt when I found that
the man who had installed it was a Jew, a Russian Jew who had come to
the city some years before.
"The next day I visited a shop where hammered gold and silver, for
which Damascus is famous, was sold. With the permission of the
proprietor I went upstairs to the workroom. What I saw there I shall
never forget.
"I found myself in a long but very narrow room, dimly lighted by a few
dirty windows. In two long rows in front of two long tables sat fifty
or sixty little girls huddled so close together that they touched one
another. Each child was bent over the table and each held a little
hammer. She was tapping on a piece of metal. The tapping was
never-ending--a sharp clicking sound like the falling of hail. The
children never spoke nor smiled. Near me sat a little girl. She was
not more than eight years old. Her hammer had stopped tapping and her
eyes were closed. She was asleep. The girl next to her, evidently her
elder sister, seeing the foreman approach, pinched the child sharply.
She opened her eyes and dully began her tapping. As I left this room
of darkness my eyes were wet with tears.
"I found out that only little girls were employed in this industry:
that they began when eight or nine years old. When they were sixteen
they usually were dead from the metal that had entered their lungs.
The children were mostly Jewish, for you must know that when the Jews
become part of a slow Eastern civilization they sink yet lower and
become yet more phlegmatic and listless than the people among whom
they have settled. I was indignant and asked if nothing was being done
to remedy this terrible evil. Then I was told that there was one man
who was devoting his life to freeing these children. It was the Jewish
merchant who used the only electric light in Damascus. He gave every
cent he earned to this work. He maintained an industrial school for
Jewish children and was trying to interest the Jews of the world in
the movement. And then I blessed this man's electric light. I think of
him always as 'The Light of Damascus.'"
* * * * *
AND thus Sholom Asch talked. I cannot reproduce his words; I have only
tried to give the spirit of them. He talked in the finished style of a
Maupassant, with all the imagination and all the strength of that
great master. I saw then, before I had read his work, that his title
of "The Jewish Maupassant" was not extravagant. And I saw also that
here was an artist with human sympathy immeasurable, and yet not
lacking sensuous imagery and elemental strength and beauty.
Sholom Asch was born and brought up in a little town in Poland,
Kuttnow, near Lodz. His father was a merchant on a small scale. He
bought sheep and oxen from the peasants and shipped them to be
marketed in Lodz, in Germany, in France. He rode about the country and
sometimes took Sholom with him, whom he loved especially because he
studied so well. Sholom liked the sheep and the cattle, and he loved
the melancholy Polish landscape--mystic, fearful.
His father was a healthy, normal, honorable Jew; not fanatical but
deeply religious. He was philosophic toward life, he cared nothing for
money and was content without it. His mother, on the other hand, was
nervous and worldly. She was dependent on the externals of life and to
her no money was misery. There was a big house with much food, many
new clothes, much hospitality, and many big brothers and sisters;
something like eleven children. The ceremonies of the Jewish faith
were observed beautifully, the holidays kept happily. There was
substance and spirit.
* * * * *
AND Sholom absorbed this atmosphere of the old religious rites, and
the paganism of the cattle and nature, and spoke little. When he was
six he was sent to the Jewish school. This was in session from eight
in the morning until five in the evening. He and the other children
used to watch the sun shine on certain spots and know the time. How
they waited for the moment of freedom, little knowing how well one of
their number was to picture for the world each intimate emotion and
thought of their imprisoned souls.
One day a peasant came to his house and Sholom went with him on his
wagon. That was a wonderful day; he played hookey. The next day the
rabbi, who believed in corporal punishment, expressed his views on the
matter of absence.
Asch was extremely clever at learning the Talmud and the old history
and philosophy of the Jews. He learned to reason from the Talmud and
to-day he says, "Art is logic. There must be an 'Urkraft' (elemental
strength) behind a man's work." And if there is one outstanding
characteristic of Asch's work, it is this elemental, this passionately
strong and elemental vein.
Max Reinhardt, whom Asch calls "Ein Dichter im Theater," loves Asch
dearly. In his Deutsches Theater, the most artistic and best equipped
theatre in the world, he produced Asch's _God of Vengeance_. This was
a marked success and is still a most popular play in Germany, Russia,
and in the Yiddish theatres of New York. Asch was only twenty-four
years at this time. From this play he made much money and a whole
village was made happy an entire summer.
Since then his income from his writings has increased steadily. Much
of his work is now translated into Russian and German, but as yet not
into English. The income from his translations far exceeds that from
his Yiddish publications, and he is able to support his wife and four
children in ease and comfort. Although he has been to America a few
times during the last six years, it is only several months ago that
his wife and children arrived from Poland and he settled here
permanently.
* * * * *
AN important happening in the history of Jewish literature occurred in
the beginning of April. Perez, the intellectual father of the new
movement, died. Asch and Perez were deep friends. Of all living
writers Perez has had most influence on Asch, both as writer and as
man. When Asch brought him his first story, Perez gave him a volume of
his poems. He said of Asch, "A bird is breaking through the shell--who
knows, is it an eagle or a crow?" It proved to be an eagle. Perez was
a revolutionist, a poet, a dramatist, the defender of the weak, the
inspiration of the talented. A little story of his, "Bonchi the
Silent," about a Jewish workingman who never complained and who took
all his misfortunes as a matter of course, whose desires and hopes
were so thoroughly crushed out of him that on reaching Heaven and
being asked by God to request what he desired most, he said, "I want a
piece of white bread every Friday"--that story, more than any one
influence, caused the formation of the "Bund of the Russian
Revolution." It made the _intelligenzia_ of Russia feel that it was
their duty to teach the workingman to demand the earth.
And now since Perez's death, on Asch's shoulders has fallen the
responsibility of being the greatest Jewish writer living to-day. He
is assuming the added duty of revolutionist as well as artist. For the
serious Jewish writer is a sort of rabbi to his people. Ethically he
stands for the old Jewish ideals. To these Asch has added the beauty
of paganism and the vision of anarchistic communism.
In Paris once he came to a meeting of Zionists. He spoke against the
Zionist idea and was not listened to with great deference. Another
writer, Abraham Raisin, coming in shouted, "Hear! Listen to a great
Jew." Asch was given the floor and finished the speech.
Asch feels that only now is he beginning to drop his Jewish past as
material for his work. He is going out into the future: he is becoming
impressed with a vision of the America to be--the ideal democracy. And
his work is showing it. He is planning a poetic industrial drama, he
is finishing a gripping war play. His deep understanding of the
industrial slavery of our times is shown wonderfully in his novel,
_Motke the Scamp_, which is now appearing in serial form in the New
York Yiddish _Forward_. He begins with Motke's infancy. His mother's
milk is sold to the rich man's baby; Motke is cheated of everything.
Picture after picture of sordid Polish ghetto life follows--intermixed
with wood and river sunshine as only Asch can do it. One feels the sun
resting eternally over all, while man with his laughter and tenderness
and pain struggles toward perfection.
* * * * *
ASCH is becoming an exposer and a prophet, but with great beauty of
style and purity of emotion. He is decidedly modern, decidedly
Russian, decidedly Hebraic, and eternally universal. He is bringing
the message of beauty and freedom to the American Yiddish working man.
Asch is not a socialist; he is a real individualist. With a sincere
contribution to the happiness of the world he believes that every
human being is entitled to all the joy of the world, no matter what
form his contribution may assume; shirts, street cleaning, cooking, a
painting, dishes, a poem. He does not preach eight hours and a dollar
more, he demands joy in labor. He wants people to play--to be happy at
their work. He demands freedom in one's personal life and beauty in
mind and body. He is an industrialist plus an artist.
Asch has traveled through Russia talking on various subjects to Jewish
gatherings, not for money but for love of his race. He has visited
Palestine, but with a keen interest in the growth and development of
the Jew--not from a nationalistic standpoint but from a world point of
view.
And this is why he admires America--because it brings to him a vision
of a perfect race, the result of the mixture of all races,
perpetuating the fine traits of all. He is immensely interested in
the public school. He believes in democracy and thinks we have it in
America.
For artists, however, he says this country is not good. The newspapers
in Europe, he says, print what Tolstoi eats and how he sleeps. Here
Rockefeller is the national hero. The artist here lacks artistic
obstinacy; he succumbs to money, he leaves starvation and his _Kunst_.
* * * * *
ASCH loves Shakespere above all other writers; he is his master. For
months he went each night to the Berlin theatres and often, with his
eyes shut, would listen to the words and cadences of Shakespere's
lines. _Hamlet_ he considers the greatest play ever written.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ are two of his
favorites. From the ghost scene in _Hamlet_ he can trace Maeterlinck
and all the modern mystics. He says that Shakespere is universal in
his appeal and that his work in translation, when done by a master
like Schlegel, takes on the peculiar flavor of the tongue and people
into which it is translated and loses none of its intrinsic worth.
He loves Gogol and Tolstoi. _Faust_ is one of his favorite dramas. He
loves the old masters Greco and Rembrandt; among the moderns, Cézanne,
Puvis de Chavannes, Manet. In opera he does not care for Wagner, but
he is very fond of _The Magic Flute_, of _Madame Butterfly_, of
_Pagliacci_. He loves music and the theatre. Asch reads in many
languages, German, French, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, and a little
English. But to everybody he talks in Yiddish. He has no ear for other
languages except English, which he says is like his mother tongue!
In the spring Asch goes out to the country and works, in the summer he
loafs, in the winter he lives among his friends. He writes all the
time, being chock full of energy--for work, for love, for friendship,
for happiness. As he says, "I am thankful to God for three things:
first that he gave me life, second that he gave me my talent, third
for my love for you" (this to whomever the lady happens to be).
Like all the artists he is erratic, original, attractive, all-seeing.
But unlike most he has much strength of character and a brilliant
logical faculty that makes him check up his personal relations. He has
much affection in him and a great honesty and integrity which wins him
admiration and respect, and he has many friends among many kinds of
people in many parts of the world.
Sholom Asch is a philosopher, a novelist, a poet, and a dramatist. He
loves the clouds and the sea, he truly loves mankind. Always through
all he writes one feels a deep and elemental strength, an elemental
belief in nature and truth. He is not ahead of his time; he is rather
an interpreter and inspirer of his own day. This makes him the happy
person that he is. He is greatly honored in Russia and in Germany, and
by all writers in Europe.
II
ASCH AS A NOVELIST AND SHORT-STORY WRITER
WITH this brief sketch of Sholom Asch the man, I shall turn to a
consideration of a few of his most important works. As Sir Walter
Raleigh, the eminent English critic, has said, the best way to form a
judgment of an author is to quote his good passages. Accordingly I
have been as liberal as space would allow in my insertion of
translated passages. The most recent works, mentioned in the early
part of this essay, I shall not treat, as it was impossible for me to
procure them at the time of writing. I shall take up each work
individually before making generalizations.
* * * * *
_DIE Jüngsten_ is a novel by Asch in which he tries to portray the
character and the influences at work on the younger generation of Jews
in Russia. The plot can be simply set forth. The younger generation is
represented by five characters of three social classes. Mery Lipskaja
is the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish manufacturer--in other words,
she is of the middle or bourgeois class. She has completed her
_gymnasium_ (high-school) education and has absorbed the prevalent
ideas about women and emancipation, and a desire for higher education,
for a broader life, for St. Petersburg. Kowalski is an artist. He,
like Mery, is not interested in the class struggle; all that vitally
concerns him is his art and "living." David and Rahel Lazarus are the
children of a physician who is giving his life to the people of the
"Grube" or ghetto. They have grown up among the suppressed and
impoverished Jews and they are filled with the spirit of the
revolution; David actively and Rahel passively. Mischa, the cousin of
Mery, is a member of the middle class. He has become aware of the
conditions in the Grube and his struggle lies between his middle class
environmental influence, which includes his love for Mery, and his
desire to join the revolution.
At the beginning of the novel Mery has just returned from the
_gymnasium_. She is oppressed and dissatisfied with her provincial
surroundings and longs to go to the university at St. Petersburg.
Mischa, in love with Mery, has also just completed work at the
_gymnasium_, and they plan to go to St. Petersburg together. The
artist Kowalski now comes to the little south Russian village and soon
Mery is in love with him. Mischa is much distressed and suffers
greatly. Kowalski leaves, promising to meet Mery at St. Petersburg.
The second part of the novel opens with Mischa and Mery in St.
Petersburg. The climate does not agree with Mery and Mischa arranges
that they go to a Finnish village. Here they grow very dear to each
other and Mischa is about to propose when Kowalski melodramatically
appears. Kowalski and Mery now give expression to their love. Mischa
returns to St. Petersburg but cannot pursue his studies because the
revolutionary disturbances have closed the university. Kowalski and
Mery return to St. Petersburg soon after and are admitted to the
bohemian life there. Kowalski meanwhile has become famous. The lovers
gradually grow apart and when the revolution breaks out Mery returns
to her home for safety, leaving Kowalski never to see him again.
Mischa has returned home also. After a massacre of the Jews in the
Grube in which Rahel, the sister of David, is outraged, he sees that
in marrying her lies his only means of becoming one of the Jews whom
he was so desirous of helping. So despite the fact that he still loves
Mery and she is now willing to be his wife, he marries Rahel. Mery
after a period of restlessness in the little town returns to St.
Petersburg to join the bohemian group there.
* * * * *
THE outstanding excellence of the novel lies in its characterization.
The characters live before us and we see the workings of their minds
and emotions with remarkable clarity. The mental struggles of Mischa
between his love for Mery and his desire to help the oppressed Jews,
always inhibited by inherited powerlessness to act; the carefree,
art-centered, egotistical Kowalski; the adolescent romanticism and
sympathetic insight of Mery; the cynically idealistic and
self-sacrificing Dr. Lazarus--these constitute the real substance and
artistic worth of the book. The pictures of contemporary Russian
Jewish life are of marked interest, especially to the western reader.
The following passages are descriptive of the Grube or ghetto and
characterize the condition of the poorer Jews in the towns throughout
Russia:
"The sun seldom shone into the valley. Old people lost
their vision early and the percentage of child
mortality was enormous. But even those who remained
alive under these conditions were weak, sick, half
crippled people; impoverished figures with crooked
legs, large heads and weak arms crept through the
streets.
"And in spite of everything the inhabitants never left
their grave (Grube) and made no attempt to find a
better, more healthy home. A sort of sick love bound
them to their unfortunate homes, and like a curse it
rested on each who was born in the valley--that he
could not free himself from it and that until the end
of his days he must eke out his sad existence there."
After the massacre Mischa walks through the Grube:
"The murmur of prayers re-echoed to his ears. From the
little windows of the synagogue came the soft gleam of
candles. He entered. Deep as in a cellar, as miserable
and abandoned as themselves, lay the little house of
prayer of the wretched inhabitants of the Grube. The
walls were bare. The Ark of the Covenant was hung with
only a piece of coarse linen. In front of the broken
'altar' stood an old man in a torn prayer shawl and
prayed before the small penny candles. The room was
full of worshippers, all inhabitants of the Grube.
Their prayer was a groaning, and sighing, and
screaming, out of tormented hearts. It rose up to the
low ceiling and hung over them all like a heavy black
cloud."
And then Mischa knew his people:
"He felt his strength to bear everything; sorrow and
misery and persecution. He saw his people doing the
work of servants through the centuries, from the
farthest past to the present day. He saw the bare
walls of the synagogue, the wretched Ark of the
Covenant, he heard the sad melody of their prayers
which grew to despairing screams. . . . He had the
feeling that he was with his people in a large ship.
For eternities this ship was on a voyage of searching.
It landed at harbors always new and strange: Egypt,
Palestine, Babylon, Arabia, Spain, at Turkey, at
Holland and Russia. And to-day is also a test day for
the Jews. And also this day will end, and many, many,
but the ship will always sail on, will carry them all
to new harbors into the farthest future."
* * * * *
BEFORE leaving _Die Jüngsten_, I cannot refrain from translating two
passages concerning Kowalski--the first his longing for the open
country after his long stay in St. Petersburg, and the other his
remarks on clouds:
"St. Petersburg had become sickening to him. For
loneliness he longed, for solitude. Solitude, with his
brush behind the mountains, in the deep woods. To see
every day sun, mountains, and water! The water that
pushes blocks of ice before it, and to see the cloud
shadows which camp on the wide snow fields. To live
again in the little room with his comrade the
Lithuanian peasant with whom he studied in the
academy! To have no money. To eat bread; much good
black bread with honey which his comrade's father
would send from the village. For whole days to wander
about and paint clouds!"
Mery discovers him at work, and looking at his painting he says:
"Everything is clouds--the warmth that I feel, the
warmth-- . . . and do you see the pride that such a
cloud has, the pride, the formality? 'The cloud is no
small thing,' my fat professor used to say. It is no
small thing to paint a cloud, for then one must feel
eternity. As lovingly as a girl's body must one model
a cloud. And warmth and pride must come to expression.
To paint a cloud means to step into Heaven, into the
middle of Heaven and to see a new world which we do
not know here at all. Such a nobody as I wishes to
paint a cloud, a Heaven--wishes to have seen God and
create Him anew with his little art! That is an
impudence, isn't it?
"There you see what I have painted. It is nothing--it
is worthless--something is lacking." He looked
amusedly at the picture. "Love is lacking. So it is as
my professor with the fat belly loved to say, 'To
paint a real cloud one must love.' Yes, yes, to be
able to create something good one must be in love
or--do you know what? Or to feel a great sin in one's
soul. Yes, yes, with a burning sin in one's heart one
can create big things. When one has entirely
fallen. . . ."
* * * * *
_BILDER aus dem Ghetto_ is a series of sketches dealing with Jewish
life. Many Jewish characters are pictured in dramatic situations but
with very little plot. The characters are all poor; fishmongers,
children of the Ghetto, a Jewish farmer, two mothers, an old married
couple. A few typical plots follow.
"Ein Eilbotte" is really a prose poem describing a sunrise, a storm,
and the reappearing sun--more properly perhaps a series of paintings,
of symphonic word canvases. Let me translate the opening passages:
"Behind the town ruin which stands on a small hill
like a national monument, flaming and fiery rises the
red of the morning and floods with its glow the gray
clouds that hang in the horizon. It brings a son of
the sun into the world. The day tears itself from the
lap of the mother Night.
"In the little town life is beginning to stir. Here
and there one sees a peasant wagon on which the dew
drops of the night are still hanging. Here and there a
Jew, eyes heavy with sleep. The show windows and house
doors are for the most part locked. For many of the
inhabitants the day has not yet begun. . . . This day
shall be like yesterday, like to-morrow."
A storm rushes over the woods. The storm comes like a
mighty giant that wishes to swallow the world or it
seems as though God himself were spreading out His
black mantle: "The end of the world! Neither heaven
nor earth, neither beginning nor end! Black, ominous,
dull, empty. . . . Suddenly Heaven opens for a
second. . . . A blinding light has torn the clouds.
Stabbed by a flaming dagger the giant dies--a confused
moaning fills the air. It rains." But the storm passes.
"The Heaven is clear and blue as if nothing had happened.
The air is clearer and purer, the earth washed clean
by the water."
* * * * *
"DIE Mutter." It is in a little Hebrew school in a small town in
Russia. The rabbi has gone to say the evening prayer, leaving the
small boys to study. Instead they begin to talk of various subjects.
Mothers are discussed and each boy praised his most highly. One pale
little chap with large eyes says, "My mother also . . ." and then stops.
One of the boys laughs uncontrolledly and then there is an
embarrassing silence. The teacher returns. The little Josek, however,
cannot keep his attention on the book:
"The 'crazy Trajna' stands life-like before him. Out
there at the well she stands. . . . He sees her
plainly. . . . All too well he knows that dirty
sun-burned face plowed through by a thousand wrinkles,
those great blood-shot eyes with the swollen, sore
lids. . . .
"He remembers her, yes, he remembers. . . . He was
still a little boy then, when the teacher carried him
to school in his arms. He cried then and hung tightly
with both hands to the apron of his mother.
"Mother! . . . this woman his mother?"
And so the emotions of the boy are set forth in memories telling us of
his mother before she was insane and now, when she is known to all
the village as the "crazy Trajna." The time when he found her insane
is described. It was raining and he was hurrying home from school.
Suddenly he sees his mother near his father's house:
"There at the corner she stands. . . . Trembling for cold
she seeks protection under any roof. . . . The boy stands
as rooted to the ground, without turning his gaze from
her. The water flows in streams from his coat. She has
turned her glassy eyes on him. Slowly as though
following some inner force she comes closer to him. He
is not able to move from the spot; something
unspeakable gleams in those glassy eyes. . . .
"Now he feels in her the mother. . . . His heart beats as
though to break. Always closer to him she comes. A hot
wave of blood flows through all his limbs and rises to
his head. He trembles as in fever.
"Suddenly all fear leaves him. He assumes a waiting
position and looks directly into her eyes.
"Now she stands close before him. She looks at him.
Away! These eyes! this look! He wishes to fall weeping
into her arms. . . . To weep, yes, to weep . . . to weep
and to kiss.
"He is in the impulse to carry out his purpose when
she suddenly takes his hand. With a quick push he
tears himself from her embrace and runs away as
rapidly as he can.
"It seems as though she ran after him with
outstretched arms and blowing hair, always faster and
faster, always grasping more heavily. It seemed to him
as though he heard her terrible voice, hoarse with
weariness, calling 'Joselle,' 'Joselle' . . ."
The father has taken a new wife and the "crazy Trajna" is no longer a
member of the household but is driven about the streets. And as he
leaves the schoolroom this evening, Josek is consumed with indignation
and sorrow and resolves not to flee from his mother the next time he
meets her. On his way home he meets her. The tears flow from her eyes;
when she embraces him he again runs away. But that evening he steals a
plate of meat from his home and brings it to her. That night he does
not sleep. The next noon, coming home from school he sees Trajna
standing near the well surrounded by street urchins:
"One pulls her bonnet from her head. Another jerks at
her apron. A third tears the prayer book from her
hand. Some boys cry loudly,
"'Hurrah! The crazy one, the crazy one!'
"She looks at her son in surprise. Josek can stand it
no longer; he goes to his mother and with his fists
drives away the urchins that torment her.
"They have run away. Without saying a word Josek
reaches out both his hands. His face is deathly pale.
His eyes gleam with fever. The boys laugh. . . . Their
loud calls press themselves to his ears. . . . Another
moment and the hands of his mother reach around him as
in a cramp.
"The 'crazy one' hugs him, kisses him, now laughing,
now crying. Suddenly she clutches him and begins to
dance with him. 'Hurrah! Hurrah! The crazy one is
dancing with her son!'
"Josek casts a confused glance at the urchins. He
draws himself together, tears himself from the embrace
of his mother with a quick movement and runs away. He
does not even think of the cap which remains in her
hand.
"Even from a distance he hears the calls, 'Hurrah!
Hurrah! The crazy one dances with her son!'"
* * * * *
"DER Wunderrabbi." He is a very stupid shepherd boy. He will not learn
his Hebrew lessons nor prayers. When in the fields he often feels near
to God--and whistles. He is taken to the synagogue on a holiday. His
parents are ashamed of him. He cannot repeat the prayers from the
prayerbook, yet he feels a great desire to praise God. To the
consternation of his parents he walks to the altar, and placing two
fingers in his mouth he voices his praise in a loud, shrill whistle.
"All stand as though struck by lightning. Who dared to
whistle in this holy place? The father is about to
grasp the boy and lead him out, the people clench
their fists threateningly. But the rabbi turns from
his place at the east of the synagogue and asks in a
loud voice, 'Where is the saint? Where is the
miracle-worker who destroyed the evil forces hanging
above us, who bored through heaven that our prayers
might easily penetrate the black clouds to the throne
of God?'
"There is no sign of the miracle-worker. He has
slipped out of the house of prayer and with his shoes
and stockings over his shoulder is running as fast as
he can toward the village."
* * * * *
"EIN Jüdisch Kind." She is about to be married but will not comply
with the Talmudic law requiring married women to cut off their hair
and wear wigs. She loves her hair and will not part with it. She is
married. Weeks go by and her husband is ostracised. He and his wife
have become more and more estranged and they speak to each other
hardly at all. One day he comes home and with loving words induces her
to let him cut off her black braids.
"When Chanele awoke the next morning, she looked at
herself in the mirror that hung opposite her bed.
Terror seized her and she thought that she had become
mad and that she lay in the hospital. On the table
near her bed lay the dead braids. The soul that had
lived in these braids when they were on her head was
dead, and they reminded her of death . . . She hid her
face in both her hands and heart-breaking sobs filled
the quiet room."
And there are other "Wortbilder" which I shall not treat. This book of
sketches shows Asch at his very best. For the form--one without plot
dealing with character and nature description--is decidedly fitted to
the elemental, passion-laden flow of his style. It is a great wonder
to me that these gems of artistic word portraiture have not yet been
translated into English. In my opinion they rank equal in worth with
the similar work of Daudet, Maupassant, Tchekoff and Turgenieff.
* * * * *
_DAS Städtchen_ is also a book of sketches. In this, however, the
different high points--the Sabbath eve, the holidays, the marriage
ceremony and others in Russian Jewish village life, are treated.
Character is not emphasized, although one man appears through all the
sketches. The book does not come up to _Die Bilder aus dem Ghetto_.
Asch is essentially a dramatist. In his sketches, in his novels and in
his stories, the dramatic point of view is not lost. His plays
consequently always move, are always full of action and tense
situation. The same elemental strength and purity of emotion that is
found in his prose is always present in his dramas. In the concluding
part of this essay, I shall touch upon five of his plays in the order
of their importance.
EDITORS' NOTE--_The third and concluding part of Mr.
Shostac's prize essay, dealing with Shalom Asch as a
Dramatist, will appear in the next issue._
_THOSE of us in England who know how much harshness
and injustice the Jews have had to suffer will join in
your hopes that after the war some means may be found
of permanently ameliorating their lot. You may feel
the more sure of our sympathy in this because, as you
know, England is the European country in which, since
Oliver Cromwell sanctioned their return nearly three
centuries ago, the Jews have been best treated, being
freely admitted to all posts of power and honor, and
not exposed to any sort of social disparagement. They
have held places in our Cabinets and been among the
most eminent lawyers and judges. Such a one was Sir
George Jessel, the famous Master of the Rolls. We have
no more patriotic citizens, nor more generous
benefactors to works of charity and to public purposes
supported by private liberality. With those members of
the race who have suffered injustice or violence in
other countries, there has always been a warm sympathy
in Great Britain._--_Viscount Bryce, in a Letter to The
Menorah Journal._
=Liberalism and the Jews=
BY JOSEPH JACOBS
[Illustration: _JOSEPH JACOBS (born in New South Wales in 1854), one
of our leading scholars and men of letters; managing editor of the
Jewish Encyclopedia; author of many authoritative books on Jewish
subjects, including "Jews of Angevin England," "Studies in Jewish
Statistics," "Jewish Ideals," etc. The present article is adapted from
a chapter in Dr. Jacobs' forthcoming book which will deal
comprehensively with the contribution of the Jew to modern progress._]
THE eighteenth century was the era of the "benevolent despots," like
Frederick II, Joseph II, Catherine II, who adopted the ruling
principle of the Welfare-State--that the object of government should
be the good of the people--but considered that it could only be
carried out for the people, not by them. The weakness of the principle
consisted in the difficulty of securing a heritable succession of
capable benevolence, and the collapse of Prussia at Jena and of Joseph
II's well-meant but unreflective reforms led, in the nineteenth
century, to the triumph of the principle first enunciated in America
and carried out in France--of government for the people by the people.
The transition to the next stage, from religious toleration to
religious liberty, is marked, as regards the Jews, by the tolerance
edict of Joseph II, in 1781, which for the first time threw open
service in the army to the Jews and placed them to some extent on the
same level with other dissenters from the State-Church of Austria.
But this was still toleration and not liberty, and it was soon cast
into the background by the full religious liberty granted by the
French Revolution in 1791, in imitation of the American constitution
of 1787, which entirely separated State and Church. The granting of
full religious liberty to the Jews had previously been advocated by
Mirabeau, and though Rousseau's influence, which was all-important in
the Revolution, still retained a touch of Genevan intolerance, Jews
came within his religious requirements for citizenship by their belief
in Providence and in future rewards and punishment. It has to be
remembered that in spirit, if not in will-power or influence, Louis
XVI was of the school of the benevolent despots, and it was he who
signed the edict of November 13, 1791, which for the first time in
European history placed Jews on the same level as the adherents of all
other creeds as regards civil and political qualifications. Holland
was appropriately the first country to grant the same religious
equality to its Jews.[B]
The French Revolution, from our present standpoint, is the more
remarkable inasmuch as it is the only great European movement on which
Jews had absolutely no influence, direct or indirect, owing to their
inappreciable numbers and insecure position in the chief centers,
Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles. The Revolution principles spread into
the neighboring countries with the advance of the French arms. In
Venice, the walls of the original Ghetto, from which all the rest
received their name, fell at once on the entry of Napoleon's troops.
No wonder they welcomed with fervor the victories of the French
troops; we can catch, in Heine, echoes of the enthusiasm with which
Napoleon was acclaimed the Liberator.
_Napoleon's Recognition of the Jews_
NAPOLEON'S own attitude was not so uniformly friendly to Jews. On his
way back from Austerlitz in 1805 he learnt at Strassburg of the wide
distress caused in Alsace by the exactions of certain Jewish usurers
in that province, and on his return to Paris issued edicts directed
against the Alsatian Jews, restricting their usurious activity. It is
fair to add that these enactments were obviously directed against the
usury of the Alsatian Jews, and not against the Jews in general, since
they were specifically declared not to apply to the Jews of Bordeaux
in the South or Northern Italy, then under Napoleon's control. It
would indeed have been against the whole tendency of his career to
have made the Jews an exception to that principle of the "carrière
ouverte aux talents," which was the key-note of his whole policy, as
it is logically to all war-lords. It was by no accident that similar
indifference toward the creed of their soldiers, or civil servants,
was shown by William the Silent, Wallenstein, Cromwell, William III,
and Frederick the Great.
Napoleon's attention having thus been drawn to the Jewish Question, he
proceeded with characteristic energy to solve it by summoning to Paris
a representative assembly of the Jews of France, Germany and Italy,
who should determine on what terms Jews could be admitted into a
modern Country-State, which had been freed from the shackles of the
medieval Church-State and only recognized a certain prerogative in the
Church to which the majority of Frenchmen belonged (the Concordat of
1802). After summoning an assembly of Jewish Notables for a
preliminary inquiry, in 1806, a more formal Sanhedrin was summoned in
the following year, to which twelve test questions were
submitted,--among them, whether the French Jews could regard France
as their Fatherland and Frenchmen as their brothers, and the laws of
the State as binding upon them. Further points were raised as to
polygamy, divorce, and mixed marriages; other questions related to the
position of Rabbis and the Jewish laws about usury.
All these problems were decided to the satisfaction of Napoleon,
though some of them aroused much searching of heart among the more
strictly orthodox. The outcome legally recognized that there was
nothing in Jewish law or faith which prevented its adherents from
being legitimate and full members of a modern State which, at that
time, practically recognized Catholicism as the State-Church. The
significance of the decision was far-reaching not alone for the Jews
but for the whole European State system; it was a practical
recognition that the Country, not the Faith, was the foundation of a
nation and thus gave the final blow to the conception of a
Church-Empire, which had upheld the contrary principle. It was not
without significance that simultaneously the Emperor of Austria agreed
to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.
_Liberalism Draws the Jews to Its Ranks_
BUT though the Jews had had no influence on the French Revolution and
no share in Napoleon's revolutionary reorganization of West Europe,
the benefit they reaped from both movements was second only to that of
the serfs. For the Jews and the serfs were the two most oppressed
classes under the feudal system still surviving. And so the Jews
imbibed with enthusiasm the libertarian principles of the Revolution
and the "open career" administration of Napoleon. They threw off with
avidity most of the shackles which prevented their joining in general
European culture, and Jewish parents of means immediately began giving
their sons and, what is more, their daughters, the secular education
which would adapt them to the careers now seemingly open to them, as
publicists, lawyers, and civil servants. When the reaction came, under
the Holy Alliance, with its attempt to revive the Church-State and the
closed career of prerogative, Jews everywhere in Western Europe joined
the Liberal forces, from whose triumph alone they could hope for a
dispersal of the clouds which once more obscured the sun of liberty in
which they had basked for a few short years. Jews soon ranked among
the intellectual leaders of continental Liberalism, and from 1815 to
1848 exercised an appreciable influence on the course of public
opinion. In particular a brilliant band of Jewish litterateurs in
Germany helped to mediate between French Liberalism and German public
opinion, and practically led the movement known as Young Germany,
which opposed the cosmopolitan tendencies of the eighteenth century to
the narrow nationalism of the Reaction and advocated the Revolution
principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as against the
revival of the claims of Authority and Privilege by the Holy Alliance.
Boerne and Heine, Hartmann and Saphir, Jacoby and Karl Marx, are
recognized by friends and foes alike as among the leading influences
which led ultimately to the downfall of Metternich and his school.
_The Salons of Jewish Women and Their Liberalizing Influence_
THEY were aided in their Liberal tendencies by a remarkable group of
emancipated Jewesses, who introduced into Germany the vogue of the
political Salon after the manner of Madame Roland and Madame de Staël.
They were mostly from the Berlin Circle, which had arisen around Moses
Mendelssohn, and carried his tendencies towards rationalism and
culture to extreme limits. His two daughters Dorothea and Henriette,
and their friends Henriette Herz and Rahel Lewin, created salons to
which were attracted some of the more liberal spirits of the cultured
world of Berlin. Dorothea Mendelssohn ultimately married Friedrich von
Schlegel and became one of the Muses of the German Romantic School.
Publicists of distinction like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich von
Gentz formed, with Dorothea and others of her circle, a "Bond of
Virtue" (Tugendbund) which according to all appearance was named on
the principle of _locus a non lucendo_. Rahel, "the little woman with
a great soul," as Goethe called her, was even a more striking
personality. She numbered, among her friends, men of such different
types as Schelling and Schleiermacher, the Prince de Ligne, and
Fichte, Schlegel and Gutzkow, Prince Louis Ferdinand, Frederick the
Great's nephew, and Fouqué, Gentz, and the Humboldts, and she finally
married Varnhagen van Ense. She was the first to appreciate, in its
full extent, the multiform genius of Goethe, and helped the rise to
fame of Boerne, Heine, and Victor Hugo. She was undoubtedly the most
striking personality among the women of her age in Germany, and she is
nowadays regarded as one of the chief forerunners of the Feminist
movement.[C]
These salons had an air of cultured Bohemianism, which attracted many
men of rank in Mid-Europe who were beginning to be repelled by the
exactions of social gathering in which all associations were
determined by armorial bearings. A similar salon was held in Vienna by
Baroness von Arnstein, in whose mansion all the diplomats of the
Congress of Vienna met as on neutral ground. Such gatherings, while
helping to liberalize good society in Mid-Europe, also brought the
position of Jews to the notice of the ruling classes and, in many
cases, aroused a determination to repair their wrongs. You cannot
accept a man socially yet refuse him the most elementary rights
politically.[D]
_The Liberal Leadership of Heine and Boerne_
THE Revolution of 1830 brought into European prominence the two most
brilliant members of Rahel's coterie, Ludwig Boerne and Heinrich
Heine. Both had made their mark as litterateurs in the preceding
decade, but Boerne's "Letters from Paris" and Heine's "French
Conditions" (contributed to the _Augsburger Zeitung_) drew the
attention of all liberal Germany to the new hopes aroused by the
downfall of the absolutist monarchy in France. Henceforth they were
the dominating voices in arousing among the German Liberals the hope
of similar liberty, while in France itself they helped to make known
to French culture the deeper currents of German thought and
literature. In particular their brilliant wit and incisive sarcasm set
the tone for the feuilleton literature of all Mid-Europe. By their
very isolation they were enabled to regard men and affairs with a
certain detachment, and both wrote with an iridescent insolence which
can only be described by the Jewish technical word _Chutzpah_.
Treitschke complained of their frequent irreverences and flippancies
but in both respects Heine, "the wittiest Frenchman since Voltaire,"
was merely following in the footsteps of his predecessor, and Boerne,
like Diderot, knew that the most effective weapon against authority is
sarcasm.
Under the leadership of Heine and Boerne a whole school of liberal
journalists arose in Germany and Austria, many of them Jews like
Saphir and Hartmann, and they gave a tone to Mid-European journalism
which has lasted to the present day. They thus helped to
internationalize Liberalism of the French form, with its rather vague
and indefinite strivings after liberty, equality, and fraternity, as
contrasted with the Liberalism of the English type dominated by Jeremy
Bentham, which aimed at constitutional, economic, and social reforms
of a definite character. Young Germany, as represented by Heine and
Boerne, left the latter type of Liberalism severely alone.
Yet in the struggle for constitutional liberty, which led to the
revolutions of 1848, Jews took a considerable part on the more
practical side. Everywhere during that critical year Jews had a hand
in the upheaval against absolutism.[E]
_Among the Conservatives: Stahl and Disraeli_
BUT Jews were not altogether unrepresented among the Conservative
forces, counting indeed two of the chief leaders, F. J. Stahl in
Prussia and Benjamin Disraeli in England. Disraeli's is the better
known name, but it is probable Stahl was equally influential. Stahl is
described by Sir A. W. Ward in the Cambridge Modern History, xi. 395,
as "the intellectual leader of the conservative aristocratic party and
the most remarkable brain in the Upper Chamber. . . . He largely supplied
the ruling party with the learning and wealth of ideas on which to
found their claims. Their organ was the _Kreuzzeitung_, and the party
was called by its name." Bluntschli calls him, "after Hegel the most
important representative of the philosophical theory of the State. He,
in many ways, advanced political science by his dialectical and
critical ability in founding new points of view." (_The Theory of the
State_, p. 73). But Stahl's historic influence will probably rest on
his connection with Bismarck at the formative period of his career,
when the future chancellor was also a member of the _Kreuzzeitung_
party.
Disraeli's career and influence is far better known and need not be
further adverted to in this place. The fact that both were converts
has little significance from our present point of view, since many of
the Jewish leaders on the Liberal side had also adopted Christianity.
It is more pertinent to remark that one cannot trace their
conservatism to their Judaism since there was everything in the Jewish
position of their time to range Jews on the Liberal side. Stahl and
Disraeli are, therefore, to be regarded merely as examples of Jewish
ability. There is nothing specifically Jewish in their influence
unless we regard the socialistic strain in Disraeli's conception of
"Young England" as a part of the Jewish sympathy with the "under dog,"
which can be attributed to their own experiences and to the traditions
of the Prophets.
_The Contribution of the Jews to Socialism_
CERTAINLY we find a strong Jewish participation throughout the
socialistic movement which, from its inception up to the present day,
has been largely dominated by Jewish influences. Although modern
socialism can be traced back to St. Simon, the whole movement would
have collapsed at the death of the master but for the organizing
ability of Olinde Rodrigues and the religious enthusiasm of his
brother Eugene. A practical turn was also given by their cousins,
Isaac and Jacob Pereire, who, as bankers, had thought out the best
means of carrying out the principles of the school into practical
life. An extension of the facilities for banking would lower the rate
of interest and therefore leave more to be distributed to the workers,
while the development of railways would reduce the cost of
transportation and thus lower the cost of living and raise real wages.
Accordingly the Pereires devoted themselves, with religious
enthusiasm, to creating the Credit Foncier, and later the Credit
Mobilier, and were the chief agents in developing the railway system
of Northern France, incidentally making themselves multi-millionaires
in the process, though they never lost their enthusiasm for the
socialistic ideals.[F]
Most of these left the St. Simonian Church when it diverged into the
sexual vagaries of Enfantin, though one of his creeds was, "I believe
that God has raised up Saint Simon to teach the Father (Enfantin)
through Rodrigues." Felicien David the musician, however, accompanied
Enfantin on his epoch-making journey to Egypt, during which he
implanted the idea of the Suez Canal in the minds of Mehemet Ali and
Ferdinand de Lesseps, and Gustave d'Eichthal devoted his enthusiasm
and energies to creating, out of the ideas of St. Simon and Enfantin,
a new religion which should revert to the socialism of the Prophets,
while denying or ignoring, like them, any other life than this. It is
said that he consulted Heine as to the best means of founding such a
religion. "Get crucified and rise again on the third day," was Heine's
caustic reply. The socialistic tone of J. S. Mill's _Principles of
Political Economy_, which differentiates it from its Ricardian
predecessors, is undoubtedly due in large measure to his intercourse
with d'Eichthal. Enfantin's vagaries, while they destroyed any direct
practical outcome for St. Simonism, drew wide attention to its views,
and Jews helped to spread them throughout Europe, Moritz Veit
performing that function in Germany, and M. Parma in Italy. The
cosmopolitan position of Jews is seen at its best in such
propagandism, and it is not surprising that they should have been
attracted by views of which the kernel is in the Prophets of Israel,
whom indeed Renan, in his _Histoire d'Israel_, brilliantly
characterized as socialistic preachers.
The later stages of socialism in Europe were, as is well known,
dominated by Karl Marx, who based upon Ricardo's "iron law" of wages
the imposing edifice of _Das Kapital_, for long the gospel of advanced
socialism. The brilliant Ferdinand Lassalle introduced its principles
into German politics, and the most recent stages of German socialism
have been controlled by the opportunism of E. Bernstein, while among
its most prominent leaders have been V. Adler and Paul Singer.
_The Struggle for Political Emancipation_
THIS participation of Jewish intellect and sympathies with the Liberal
current in European politics made Jewish emancipation a part of the
Liberal creed throughout Europe. Jews were fighting for themselves in
fighting for the general liberties, and their position in the
forefront of the struggle was thus justified by the representative
principle at the root of modern Liberalism. Jewish disabilities were
the last stronghold of the old Church-State conception, and the
struggle on the side of the Reaction to retain this fundamental
principle was the more intense. If Jews were granted full civil and
political rights it could no longer be contended that Christianity was
a fundamental principle of the State (or, as the English _obiter
dictum_ put it, "Christianity is a parcel of the common law"). Hence
the extreme violence of the defense which seems, at first sight, out
of all proportion to the interests or numbers involved. Thus the
struggle was as embittered in Switzerland as anywhere, though the Jews
there only constituted a handful, and the traditions of the country
were in favor of toleration.
From this aspect the fight in England is typical. As soon as the
Catholics had obtained emancipation in 1828 (the Jews had stood aside
in order not to complicate the question), Jewish emancipation became
part of the Liberal creed, and the struggle was waged in Parliament,
or rather in the House of Lords, for the ensuing thirty years. England
was the home of toleration, and her Toleration Act, passed as early as
1689, formed the third stage in the European progress towards
religious liberty. Yet the more conservative elements in English life
fought against the removal of Jewish disabilities because it meant the
visible proof of the secularization of English politics. It is perhaps
characteristic that the Tory resistance was mainly broken down by
Disraeli, of Jewish, and by Lord George Bentinck, of Dutch, descent.
_The High Tide of Liberalism_
WITH Jewish emancipation in England Liberalism reached its acme about
1860. Complete civil and religious liberty was gained for Jews
throughout Western Europe during the next decade,--in the German
confederation and in Switzerland, 1866, in Austria and Hungary, 1867,
and in the German Empire, 1871, while even in Spain the expulsion
order was practically repealed and toleration, if not liberty, was
given to Jews there in 1869. By that time Liberalism, both in the
French sense of liberty and equality before the law and in the English
sense of constitutional government and free-trade, had gained its
fullest triumph and had spent its force. Its negative work had been
most valuable; it had freed the human spirit from intolerable shackles
and thrown into the lumber-room the clogging survivals of medieval
feudalism. But to the human spirit thus freed it had little
instruction to give of a constructive kind; its slogan seemed to be,
"Go as you please," or, to use its own formula, "laissez faire,
laissez aller." It was rather superficial in its treatment of national
and social forces and made no appeal to the more generous imaginative
emotions. It was inevitable that a reaction should set in if only to
fill the void. Nationalism which had given vitality to France under
Napoleon, and in Spain, Russia and Prussia had brought down his
downfall, was opposed to Liberal cosmopolitanism. Protection to native
industry, which had, only for a moment and in England, lost its hold,
replaced free trade, and the strong individualism of "Manchestertum"
was drowned in the rising flood of Collectivism, whether in the more
formal guise of socialism or in the vaguer tendencies of philanthropy.
In none of these currents of opinion had Jews a prominent voice
except, as we have seen, in the latter, though there they were mainly
effective in opposition and criticism.
_Bismarck and the Forces of Reaction_
ALL these tendencies, which may roughly be summed up as the
Counter-Revolution, found a home in victorious Prussia and a voice in
Otto von Bismarck, its representative statesman. As we have seen, his
views on the nature of the State had been influenced in his formative
period by F. J. Stahl, and his socialistic sympathies may possibly
have been aroused by Ferdinand Lassalle, but he was of too independent
a character to submit much to external influences, and the tendencies
he represented, Junkertum and Militarism, were entirely opposed to
Jewish Liberalism. For some fifteen years he found it convenient to
work with the National Liberal party, to which all German Jews
belonged, and among whose leaders the most prominent were two Jews,
Eduard Lasker and Ludwig Bamberger. But in 1878 he broke with the
party and let loose the forces of "Anti-Semitism" as a means of
discrediting them. The movement, thus encouraged by Bismarck, soon
spread to Austria and was transformed in Russia into the pogroms of
1881. In France the Royalists and Jesuits conceived hopes of reviving
the Church-State and adopted anti-Semitism as a means of discrediting
not alone Jews but also Protestants and other opponents of
Catholicism. Their adherents, the French nobility, were especially
embittered against the Jews by the bankruptcy of the Union Générale, a
banking establishment in which all their money had been placed in the
hope of wresting the control of French finance from the hands of the
Rothschilds. Their chief hope lay in getting control of the General
Staff, by filling its posts with young men of noble birth, trained by
Jesuits. In order to attain this they schemed to remove all Jews and
Protestants from the Staff and thought they had found a rare chance in
their perverse persecution of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Their scheme
recoiled on their own heads, and the final result of the Dreyfus
Affaire was to break the alliance of clericalism and militarism, at
least in France.
The Dreyfus Affaire was specially significant as bringing into play,
at one time, all the forces that have given vitality to anti-Semitism.
The New Nationalism, based not on Country but on Race and fostered by
chauvinistic anthropologists as well as historians; the revived
Church spirit, which sees in the National Church not so much the
guardian of Christian truth as a spiritual bond of national unity; the
New Collectivism which sees in capitalism the chief anti-social force,
and the revived militaristic spirit which glorifies war as the
regenerator of the nation; all these movements combine to regard the
Jew--considered as alien, infidel, capitalist, and pacificist--as the
representative enemy. All the reactionary forces regard a revival of
the medieval Church-State as both the means and the end of their
strivings, and naturally find the position of the Jew, both
theoretically and practically, one of the chief stumbling-blocks in
their way.
_Church-State versus Welfare-State_
IT remains to be seen whether the ideals of religious and political
liberty, which have been gained through so much blood and tears, will
be preserved intact against the rising forces of the Reaction and
Counter-Revolution which are, at bottom, an attempt at a revival of
the Church-Empire. The slogan "One God, one king, one people," has
again been raised, and armies that are nations in arms are in movement
to the cry. Anti-Semitism is largely the result of this reaction, and
while it is dominant in the councils of certain nations Jews must once
more take up their rôle of martyrs to the wider truth. Nowadays
however they do not fight alone, and it is scarcely possible that in
Western Europe and in lands dominated by Western European ideals they
can be reinterned into their ghetti. But the Colossus of the North
still retains the medieval ideal of the Church-Empire, and while that
controls Russian State policy Jews will have to suffer, in All the
Russias, indignities and disabilities from which they have been freed
in the lands of true civilization and religious liberty.
The ideal of the unified Church-State has been shattered by the
assaults of modern criticism and the growth of true religious liberty.
But the conception of all the citizens of a compact territory animated
by the same ideals still retains its attraction; only the unification
nowadays is with regard to the goal rather than to the roads that lead
to it. In other words, the Welfare-State (interpreting Welfare as
spiritual as well as material) is taking the place of the Church-State
of the Middle Ages and of Reformation times. What then is to become of
the separate churches or religious bodies which are found in profusion
in modern States? That is the sole ecclesiastical problem which the
modern statesman has to face. Except among the extreme parties, such
as the Ultramontagnes, the obvious solution would seem to be that
given by the modern Federal constitution in which each State (in this
case Church) has a corporate life of its own over which it has
autonomous control, except in any case where this conflicts with the
general Federal ideals. The Jewish Synagogue may rightly claim its
place among these churches within the State as having its part in
promoting the general welfare.
_The Rôle of the Jews in European Progress_
OWING to their medieval disabilities Jews, though sharing as we have
seen in the higher life and in the commerce of Europe, were yet kept
in a kind of enclave in each of the European nations, and thus acted,
both intellectually and economically, as a separate body with
distinctive tendencies caused by their isolation and disabilities.
Accordingly we are able to estimate roughly the part taken by the Jews
as a body in the various movements which have made European
civilization what it is to-day. In all these movements (except
possibly one, the French Revolution) the Jews have contributed towards
European culture while sharing in it themselves. Their monotheistic
views and liturgic practices were the foundation of the medieval
Church, both in creed and deed. By their connection with their
brethren in the East and their tolerated existence, both in Islam and
in Christendom, they helped towards that transmission of Oriental
thought, science and commerce, which had so large an influence on the
Middle Ages and led on to the Renaissance and the Reform, in both of
which movements Jews had their direct part to play. So, too, in the
struggle for religious liberty and in the different stages of
toleration which lay at the root of political liberty, Jews had their
part to play, and when freed from their shackles by the French
Revolution took a leading rôle both in Nineteenth Century Liberalism
and in the Collectivism which has now replaced it.
But when fully emancipated, Jews no longer acted in the European world
of ideas collectively but as individuals, often choosing opposite
ideals and in most cases applying the talents thus let free to objects
apart from the general political or religious movements of the time.
Great as has been the influence of Jews in their collective capacity
on the development of European thought and culture up to the present
day, it is possible that their influence as individuals, during the
past fifty years, has been even more extensive though less
discernible, owing to the absence of any general direction to Jewish
intellectuality.
[Illustration: Signature: Joseph Jacobs]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote B: It is perhaps worth while remarking that one of the most
prominent leaders on the Jewish side in Holland, Herz Bromet, had
lived as a free Burgher in Surinam for a long time, and that the
example of America, especially New York State, was adduced in favor of
the movement. (Graetz xi, 230-1).]
[Footnote C: See Ellen Key, "Rahel Lewin."]
[Footnote D: Similar salons were held later by distinguished Jewesses
like Countess Waldegrave, in London, and Madame Raffalovitch in Paris;
and the Rothschilds have, throughout, made their houses centers of the
most cultured influence.]
[Footnote E: No adequate or connected account has yet been given of
the part taken by the Jews in the revolution of 1848. Incidentally a
good deal of information is contained in the last volume of Georg
Brandes, _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature_, vi, "Young
Germany."]
[Footnote F: They got their altruistic tendencies from their family
connections. Their uncle Jacob Rodrigues Pereire (1750-80) was the
first teacher of deaf mutes.]
[_The second in a series of articles on The Meaning of Judaism_]
What Is Judaism?
BY MORDECAI M. KAPLAN
WHAT is Judaism if not an ethical monotheism? The answer is that it is
not an "ism" at all, despite the last syllable in its name. It is a
living soul or consciousness; it is the soul or consciousness of the
Jewish people. We are not interested in names, and we should not
quibble about terms; it is reality that we are after. We want to know
what is involved in being a Jew and living a Jewish life. The main
reason for our finding fault with the usual presentation of Judaism is
that it does not enlighten or inspire us. If the term Judaism does not
direct our minds at once to the living energy that operates in the
Jewish people, if it has not the power to launch us upon the stream of
Israel's active thought and spiritual striving, then it is a word
without content, and had better be deleted from our vocabulary. We did
well enough without it until very recently, and should it prove an
insuperable obstacle to the solution of our spiritual problems, we
shall have to throw it into the scrap-heap of obsolete terminology. We
shall begin to call our religion "Jewishness" instead of Judaism. The
former designation has at least the advantage of connoting
consciousness, and nothing is so important for understanding the
essence of any religion as the identification of it with a form or
state of consciousness. If Jewishness will mean to us Jewish
consciousness and not merely "gefillte fisch" or some other Jewish
dish, it will serve our purpose.
Let us not lose sight of the main issue in these discussions. We Jews
refuse to have our life quest confined to the satisfaction of our
material needs. Our souls are hungry; and whether we call it
Jewishness or Judaism, what we want is religion that will help us get
our bearings in the world, that will keep down the beast in us and
spur us on to worthy endeavor in the field of thought and action.
Under normal conditions we should find all this in the faith of our
fathers. But, unfortunately, all that most of us know about that faith
is what we acquired from some old-fashioned "rabbi" who taught us when
we were small children and who made us recite Hebrew by the page. At
home our parents would insist upon our conforming to routine
observances and ceremonies which meant nothing to us. When we grew
older and occasionally asked questions about the Bible, we met with
cold and evasive replies. No wonder that later on, when we entered
the academic world, we grew accustomed to look upon Judaism as out of
touch with the realities of life, and far removed from the elemental
needs that agitate the masses of active, enterprising humanity. We
could see no connection between the few humble ceremonies in our homes
or in our synagogues with the social, political and industrial
problems upon which was riveted the attention of the men of light and
leading. To most of us the faith of our fathers seemed little more
than a medley of needless restraints, other-worldliness, and hostility
to all progress.
_Religion Indispensable to the Human Race_
BUT a change has come over us. We have begun to realize that Judaism
could not have transformed the spiritual history of mankind, as it
did, if it were the negligible and insignificant thing we thought it
was. We have been unable to discern its true character, because we did
not know how to probe beneath the outward and often unattractive
surface which it presented to us in the limited circle in which we
moved. We have begun to surmise that the Jewish life we are familiar
with is nothing more than a devitalized fragment of what, under
auspicious circumstances, becomes a life that is spiritually
healthful, joyous and invigorating. We have at last learned to take
into consideration the inevitable difference in mental scope and
outlook that must mark two generations, one of which had its life
formed amidst the oppressive atmosphere of Eastern Europe, and the
other in the bracing atmosphere of America. This being the case,
nothing could be more unreasonable than to expect that the spiritual
heritage be transmitted from father to child with ease and
naturalness. But who is in a better position to smooth out the
roughness and overcome the angularities--father or child? Should we
demand of our elders, who are burdened by numerous cares, and whose
lives are for the most part hurried and difficult, that they adapt
themselves to our attitude of mind? Is it not meet that we, who still
retain the plasticity of youth, make advances? Without surrendering an
iota of our own individuality we might cultivate that sympathetic
insight that would reveal the inestimable worth of our spiritual
heritage. Not merely reverence for the past, but a regard for our own
future prompts us to achieve a proper understanding of Judaism.
It is well to realize at the outset that the problem of religion is
not confined to the Jews alone. Every great world-faith experiences
nowadays the throes of transformation and readjustment. Mistaking them
for the final struggle, the believer wrings his hands in despair over
the impending doom, and the doubter contemplates a religionless future
with a great deal of glee. But both will be disappointed in their
reckoning. Religion, as we shall see, is entirely too inherent in
human life to be dispensable. The belief that it has served its
purpose in the evolution of the race, and that it can only survive as
a troublesome vestige in the organism of human society, is based upon
a misunderstanding of its function. In view of the deeper insight into
human nature that has been acquired of late, as a result of the
progress made in psychological and social research, there is good
reason to believe that a better understanding is not far distant.
These investigations have not merely led to new theories about
religion, but have essentially changed the method of approach. They
have rendered superfluous the subtleties and refinements of
metaphysical arguments. A new reservoir in human nature has been
tapped, and discovered to be the inexhaustible fount of religion.
_The Adaptation of Judaism to Changing Conditions_
THIS new way of looking at the problem of religion gives promise of
helping us also to get a better comprehension of Judaism. We shall
find by means of it that there is much more substantial nourishment to
the faith of our fathers than can be obtained from the tabloid form in
which the textbooks mete it out to us. The previous article on "What
Judaism Is Not"[G] did not argue that Judaism could forego such
doctrines as the unity of God, the brotherhood of man and similar
principles, or that it should glory in remaining vague and
inarticulate. The main objection to the ordinary way of conceiving
Judaism was that it lacked the means of preventing its teachings from
degenerating into dull platitudes. But if Judaism is essentially the
self-consciousness of the Jewish people, these doctrines will be
viewed as some of its characteristic expressions. As such they
forthwith become instinct with life. To be a religious Jew,
accordingly, means not merely to profess the unity of God in cold
philosophical fashion, but to live over again by means of thought and
symbol the divine intuition, the backslidings, the temptations, the
defiance, the threats, the tortures and the final victory implied in
the "Shema Yisroel." The Jew who does not thrill with exaltation when
he sings the world's most stirring paean, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is
our God, the Lord is One!" is either ignorant or has the blood of a
fish.
Whether Judaism is an ethical monotheism or the consciousness of
Israel is not merely an academic question. These two conceptions
represent widely divergent ways of dealing with the practical problems
of self-adjustment to the novel situation with which Judaism is
confronted. Whether the one or the other view shall prevail will make
a difference in the fight for existence. We protest that if Judaism
will be armed with nothing stronger than the conventional platitudes,
it must succumb. By knowing itself for what it really is, Judaism will
muster new heart and strength. The need for self-adjustment is not of
today; Judaism has been going through that process ever since it saw
the light. But during the past hundred and fifty years, Judaism has
been wrestling with the problem of self-adaptation which both the
redistribution of Jewry and the incursions of materialistic secularism
have called into being. In this comparatively short period of a
century and a half, Judaism has lived through all that the other
religions have experienced within the last three or four centuries. If
we were to compare the different stages in the process of Jewish
self-adjustment we should find them analogous to those through which
European religion in general has passed. These different steps in the
process seem to have been unavoidable because they are the concomitant
of the natural development of the human spirit. A review of the
salient phases in the self-adaptation of religion to the changing
conditions of life and thought will throw light upon the significance
of that vital method of viewing Judaism which has of late worked its
way into Jewish life--for the most part unawares.
_The Storm and Stress Period in Religion_
WHEN we refer to the self-adjustment of religion to modern conditions,
our concern is not with the vast hinterland of ignorance and
superstition that is still inhabited by large numbers of the
unthinking of all creeds, Jewish as well as Christian. The destiny of
religion is, primarily, in the hands of those who are in the vanguard
of intellectual progress, and as long as its place in their lives is a
problematic one its future is uncertain. Since the days of the
Renaissance, religion has practically been busy adjusting itself to
the ever enlarging human experience. It was otherwise during the
middle ages, when the men of intellect threw the weight of their
influence on the side of tradition and authority. They devoted their
mental powers to the support of truths that were accepted at their
face value without further scrutiny and analysis. All the resources of
intellect were spent in interpreting the few facts they had in their
possession. Many centuries elapsed before the cry was raised for more
facts; but when, at last, the cry was answered, and new knowledge
concerning the world in which men lived began to pour in, the
foundations of tradition were shaken. Since then the religion of the
intellectuals has no longer been marked by the naiveté and
self-assurance of its earlier years. Its existence has been one of
storm and stress. It has resisted all attempts to crowd it out from
the new world that man has conquered for himself, and in order to be
accorded a place in that world it has submitted to considerable change
and self-adjustment. We may note three distinct stages in these
efforts of religion to accommodate itself to life, corresponding in a
large measure with the great thought movements of the eighteenth, the
nineteenth, and the twentieth centuries respectively.
The first stage in the process was the rationalistic. With Copernicus
and Galileo defeated by the Vatican, with Descartes having to defend
his orthodoxy, it seemed to the English and French philosophers of the
eighteenth century that the only way man could save his spiritual
nature from falling a prey to animalism or materialism was by
consigning to destruction the special forms in which religion existed
in the established faiths. The dreamers and the visionaries of that
day, who were moved by a sincere desire to further man's higher life,
entertained the hope that natural religion would revive with the
downfall of revealed religion. But human events have taken a different
turn. Life does not adapt itself to preconceived logical systems. The
rationalistic method of adjusting religion to life failed because it
was based upon a false reconstruction of the rise and growth of
religion. However logical and plausible such a reconstruction might
have appeared, the fact that it could not be verified by study and
observation of religious phenomena invalidated the practical
inferences drawn from it.
_The Failure of the Rationalistic School_
ALTHOUGH by that time science had made sufficient strides to know how
futile it was to reconstruct fact by means of reason, the territory of
religion was still considered exempt from the need of resorting to
experience. The thinkers of the rationalistic age were to a certain
extent still under the dominance of the medieval regard for abstract
reasoning, and applied it to man's spiritual existence. They reasoned
thus: The human being is naturally gifted with an intuition that
enables him to discover for himself the truth about God and his
relation to the world. If man had only been left alone and had not had
the stream of his ideas muddied by outside interference, he would have
continued professing a religion that would have been both pure and
simple. But human depravity did not permit the natural religion of
primitive life to continue. The fanatics with their delusions and the
priests with their love of power distorted man's primitive faith in
God. They invented dogmas and practices by means of which they could
hold the masses in subjection. In course of time these extraneous
elements came to be looked upon as the main content of revealed
religion. The various established faiths and revealed religions were
little more than wilful fabrications that were bound to crumble before
the onslaughts of reason. Thus, by bringing the established cults into
disrepute, men like Voltaire and Hume hoped to restore religion to its
original state of purity and simplicity, bare of all artificialities
of forms and institutions.
However superficial the rationalistic method may appear to us, nothing
but supercilious ingratitude could prompt us to disparage the service
it has rendered. The rationalists are the men to whom the world is
indebted for being the pioneers in the work of breaking down the
impassable barrier of hatred and disdain which divided the followers
of one faith from those of another. Rationalism began to lift the
curse of intolerance and persecution which lay heavily upon the human
race. No one who values the freedom to live his own life in his own
way should cast aspersions upon the influence of that school of
thought. Though they argued erroneously about the nature and essence
of religion, we must not forget that they emancipated the human soul
from the shackles of spiritual bondage.
On the other hand, our gratitude to them cannot blind us to their
superficiality and inexperience in the matter of religion. Nineteenth
century thought, with its emphasis upon historic development, exposed
the fallacies and weaknesses of the method they employed to interpret
religious phenomena. The distinction between natural and revealed
religion was an arbitrary one, and the conception of priestly
fabrications a mere figment of the imagination. Historical research
has established that all the great world faiths or revealed religions
have followed laws of development that have been in accord with the
circumstances and mentality of those who professed them, and in that
sense have been perfectly natural. Instead of being the product of
fraud and wilful deceit, the established religions were seen to be the
outcome of a healthy enthusiasm and deep sincerity. The limitations of
knowledge and experience, which marked the earlier expressions of
religious life, were, from the historical point of view, more than
atoned for by the inner worth and sincerity that had prevailed in
former days. In fact, so far did the historical conception change
men's attitude that, upon finding themselves sophisticated and torn by
doubt, they looked back longingly to former ages, when religion had
brought inward calm and serenity. As a consequence of this reaction to
the disintegrating tendencies of eighteenth century rationalism, a
renewed appreciation for the religion of the past made itself felt
among the circles of the cultured, particularly those of Germany and
England, and the institutions in which the spirit of the past clothed
itself were given a new lease of life.
_The Historic Method Is Found Wanting_
THE adoption by religion of the historic method thus represents the
second stage in its process of self-adjustment. It now appealed to
man's natural desire not to allow his past to sink into oblivion.
Nothing is so humanizing as memory. He that is engrossed only in the
future and would make it the only standard of value, he who has no
patience with anything that interferes with practical utility--and
memory is certainly a source of such interference--lacks the main
ingredient of humanity and has something beaverish about him. Thus
taught the historical school during the nineteenth century, and the
rationalistic ideal that would have destroyed the established faiths
no longer held sway.
But while the historic method stemmed the tide of rationalism, it
failed to give back to religion its native vigor. It removed forever
the stigma of insincerity that was attached to the origin and
development of the dominant faiths; it illumined the past and
incorporated it into man's spiritual life; but it was unable to
restore to religion its most important function, that of shaping the
future. The fundamental paradox which the historic method harbors, and
which has prevented it from contributing adequately to the process of
adjustment, is the fact that the spiritual experiences of the past,
which it asks us to love and revere, were at the time of their
enactment not memories, but vital responses to immediate and pressing
needs. In the past religion dealt with its own present. That at all
times the past did play an important rôle cannot be denied; but in all
effective religion it can only be a means to an end. The historic
method, on the other hand, succeeds in nothing but in revitalizing the
past for its own sake. It provides no guidance for the future. A
religion must not only write history--it must make history. This is
why the historic method has been found wanting and has had to be
supplemented by a new method of adjustment, which for want of a better
term we may designate the socio-psychological.
_The New Way--the Social and Psychological Viewpoint_
BUT little attention has so far been paid to this new method of
self-adjustment. Though it is still inchoate and uncrystallized, it
forms the best part of every endeavor that makes for the
rehabilitation of religion. The remarkable feature about the new mode
of adjustment is that it did not come about directly, through a desire
on the part of the teachers of religion to make good the inadequacy of
previous methods. It was arrived at indirectly from a source that at
first seemed hostile, and to some extent is still considered so,
namely, social science. Not alone religion, but government and
education, as well as history, economics and psychology, have been
revolutionized as a result of the new way of approaching the problems
of human life. So recent is the change that we have hardly had time to
appraise it. The modern point of view toward human society has worked
a change in all our thinking, comparable only to the one which
resulted when the true purport of the concept "evolution" became
apparent. The human race has lived through the forces generated by
social existence without having been aware of them, even as it went on
living for thousands of years without knowing the numerous forces that
were latent in the earth, air and sea. It will probably take a much
longer time for man to estimate at their worth the forces that are at
work in social life than it took him to perceive the forces that
dominate the physical world.
With all that, it is now generally established that the study of any
phase of human life, whether for theoretical or for practical
purposes, must be based upon the recognition that man is not merely a
social animal, as Aristotle put it, but that his being more than an
animal is due entirely to his leading a social life. In opposition to
the older point of view, which prevailed in the more materialistic
schools of thought during the nineteenth century, social science has
proved that the forces that operate in human life are not merely those
that are derived from the physical environment, but also those which
are of a mental character. These psychical forces operate with a
uniformity and power in no way inferior to those of the physical
world. Social science is gradually accustoming us to regard human
society not merely as an aggregate of individuals but as a psychical
entity, as a mind not less but more real than the mind of any of the
individuals that constitute it. The perennial source of error has been
the fallacy of considering the individual human mind as an entity
apart from the social environment. Whatever significance the study of
the mind, as detached from its social environment, may have for
metaphysical inquiry, it can throw no light upon the practical
problems with which the mind has to deal--problems that arise solely
from the interaction of the individual with his fellows. The
individual human being is as much the product of his social
environment as the angle is of the sides that bound it.
This new method of studying mental life both in the race and in the
individual has revealed not merely the true significance of religion,
but the way in which it functions and the conditions which affect its
career. We now know that those phenomena in life which we call
religious are primarily the expression of the collective life of a
social group, after it has attained a degree of consciousness which is
analogous to the self-consciousness of the individual. When a
collective life becomes self-knowing we have a religion, which may
therefore be considered the flowering stage in the organic growth of
the tree of social life. The problem of religious adjustment is at
bottom that of maintaining in a social group the psychical or
spiritual energy which expresses itself in beliefs, ideals, customs
and standards of conduct. Accordingly, when a religion is passing
through a crisis, what is really happening is not so much that certain
accepted truths or traditional habits are threatened with
obsolescence, as that the social group with whose life it has been
identified is on the point of dissolution. Whatever interest we have
in the cultivation of the spiritual life must go towards conserving
this kind of social energy. To have roses we must take care of the
tree on which they grow, and not content ourselves with having a
bouquet of them put into a vase filled with water. This newer
conception of the religious life is fraught with far-reaching
consequences, some of which we shall have to point out in a later
article.
In Judaism we encounter the same three stages in the process of
self-adjustment, though less clearly defined, by reason of much
overlapping. What is known as the Haskalah movement represents the
application of the rationalistic method to the spiritual problems of
Jewish life. Having taken place in Russia, it was bound to be delayed
in its coming for nearly a century. It received the first setback in
its career when the pogroms broke out in the early "eighties," and the
Russian Government inaugurated its policy of hounding and repression.
The type which the Haskalah movement produced is the "Maskil," a man
who curls his lip at ceremony and tradition, who lacks a sense of
history and dabbles in cosmopolitanism. Not having had the courage to
be thoroughgoing in his principles, or realizing that it was futile to
be so, he tolerated what was distinctively Jewish so long as it was
kept indoors and withdrawn from public gaze. In practice, however,
"Haskalah" moved in the same direction as eighteenth century
rationalism which made for the abrogation of the historic faiths.
_Judaism in the Rationalistic and Historic Stages_
CONTEMPORANEOUSLY with the rise and development of the Haskalah
movement in Russia, Jewry in the German-speaking countries tested the
validity both of the rationalistic and of the historic method. The
Reform movement was at first, like the Haskalah movement, little more
than a diluted cosmopolitanism. A typical case is that of David
Friedlander and his friends, who began by reforming the worship in
harmony with modern ideas and the changed social position of the Jews,
and ended in offering to accept Christianity, if they would not be
required to believe in Jesus and could be exempted from the observance
of certain ceremonies. Influenced by the general reaction against
rationalistic tendencies and by the rise of Jewish Wissenschaft, the
Reform movement has had to reckon with the historic method of
adjustment. But that influence has not been strong enough to overcome
its early rationalistic bias from which it suffers to this very day.
The historic method was applied with far more thoroughness and
consistency by the advocates of Historical Judaism. Zunz, Frankel,
Graetz, Herzfeld, Luzzatto and Joel drew the line between adaptation
and assimilation. They laid down the principle that it was fatuous to
speak of a religion adjusting itself when it breaks so completely with
the past as to be unrecognizable. In our anxiety to have Judaism
conform to the needs of the age, we must take care lest we create an
altogether new religion and label it Judaism. Intellectual honesty
demands that we give due heed to the principle of identity, so that
the sameness in our Judaism and that of our fathers be greater than
the difference between them. They therefore applied themselves to the
task of reconstructing the past by dint not of logic and
phrase-mongering, but of patient, plodding search after facts strewn
in the most out-of-the-way by-paths of literature, with the
consequence that they discovered an impassable gulf between the
Judaism of history and the Judaism of the Reform movement. We shall
never be able to discharge fully our debt of gratitude to these Jewish
scholars and historians who have given us, in place of a few vague
and detached memories, a past rich in content and inspiration. But
what they did was only to lay the foundation of the Judaism of the
future. A foundation affords poor shelter against the hail and sleet
of a bleak wintry day. Of what avail is it to keep on forever hugging
the cold foundation stones, when we should be engaged in building the
house of Israel?
_Judaism and the Jewish Soul_
AS soon as we begin to experience the need not merely of giving
consent to certain abstract truths or of contemplating the past, but
of helping to build the house of Israel as a means to our spiritual
well-being, Judaism enters through us upon the third stage in the
process of self-adjustment. This is the case with all those who rebel
against the pulverizing and granulating tendencies of Judaized
Protestantisms which ignore the "Kenneseth-Israel" in the effort to
mete out salvation to the individual soul. This is true of all who
refuse to allow Judaism to provincialize itself by applying for
naturalization papers wherever it finds a habitat. To this class also
belong those who see in Zionism not what its opponents make it out to
be, a sulking, sullen Chauvinism, but a method of regeneration to
which Judaism has been led by divine intuition. Dr. Schechter, who has
contributed to Judaism the concept of catholicity, has this to say of
Zionism: "While it is constantly winning souls for the present, it is
at the same time preparing us for the future, which will be a Jewish
future. Only when Judaism has found itself, when the Jewish soul has
been redeemed from the Galuth, can Judaism hope to resume its mission
in the world." How significant the apposition in which the author
places Judaism and the Jewish soul! What a pity to spoil a poetic
insight of that kind by applying to it so barbarous a term as
socio-psychological. Yet in that insight is echoed the modern
conception of religion as the self-consciousness of the group, a
conception which the very conditions of life have forced the Jew to
adopt. Whatever vitality Judaism still displays may be traced to a
general presentiment that it is a social mind and not a system of
abstract truths. We should not, however, permit such a principle to
remain merely a vague presentiment. The task that devolves upon us is
to render articulate both in theory and in practice all that is
implied in the intuition that Judaism is the soul of Israel.
EDITORS' NOTE.--_Prof. Kaplan will continue to develop
his conception of the true meaning of Judaism in
articles to appear in subsequent issues._
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote G: In _The Menorah Journal_ for October, 1915.]
=University Menorah Addresses=
_The following addresses indicating the attitude of
University authorities towards the Menorah movement
may be considered as supplementary to the University
Addresses printed in Part II of_ THE MENORAH MOVEMENT
(1914) _and in the first number_ (_January_, 1915)
_of_ THE MENORAH JOURNAL.
PROFESSOR ALBERT LÉON GUÉRARD OF THE RICE INSTITUTE
_Before the Rice Institute Menorah Society, November 29, 1915_
IT is my privilege to welcome the Menorah Society in the name of the
non-Jewish element and of the Faculty of the Rice Institute. When I
was requested to do so, I accepted at once and with pleasure. I am in
hearty sympathy with the purpose of the Menorah Society. I am a
teacher of French; but I should consider myself unworthy of my calling
if, behind the words of a foreign language, I did not attempt to show
the civilization of a people, their soul, their ideal. Now, what I am
attempting to do for French, the Menorah plans to do for the
traditions, the problems, the aspirations of the Jewish race. And
although I believe that the people which gave to the world Saint
Louis, Joan of Arc, Calvin, Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Pasteur,
Victor Hugo has left its imperial imprint upon the whole of modern
civilization, yet I cannot but be conscious of the prior and higher
claims of that strange family of whose blood Moses, Jesus and Spinoza
were born. Judaism and Hellenism, said Renan, are the twin miracles of
human history. The artistic and philosophical primacy of the Greeks is
not so striking as the religious primacy of the Hebrews. The worship
of beauty is a less vital element than the undying quest for
righteousness. The whole fabric of our culture rests on those
Judeo-Hellenic foundations. And surely a university would be false to
its name if it did not include among its courses the study of Jewish
literature and Jewish history. The Rice Institute is young, and will
not reach its full stature for many a decade; all branches of
knowledge cannot be taken up at the same time. But the place which
Judaic studies ought by right to have in the curriculum will be at
least indicated and kept in mind by your Menorah Society.
I heartily welcome the Menorah because, open to Jews and Gentiles
alike, it will help us break down the barrier of prejudices which
still separates the two elements. I have seen with my own eyes the
tragic effects of such prejudices: I was in Paris at the time of the
Dreyfus case; I have seen how they warped the thought of scholarly
men, like Houston Stewart Chamberlain; I have read with horror of the
Russian pogroms. You, who have suffered for ages under the fierce
contempt and hatred of fanatics, you who have at last reached this
haven of democracy and justice, let not the lesson of past sufferings
be lost; do not forget your brethren still in bondage; and your
brethren are those who are persecuted, all the world over, even as you
were persecuted. You ought to be foremost among those who labor for
equality and freedom. We have a right to count upon you in the fight
against all prejudices--prejudices of race and color, of class and
country, of caste and religion. The emancipated Jew must be an
emancipator.
I welcome the Menorah Society because, though devoted primarily to the
tradition of your people, it does not look exclusively towards the
past. Be rightly proud of the most unique and entrancing tradition in
the history of the world. Cherish it, hold fast to it, as a title of
nobility. The world has no respect for the man who does not respect
himself in his forefathers. The call to American citizenship does not
in the least imply the duty of forgetting that you are Jews: it is the
best Jews that will make the best Americans. But do not be hypnotized
by your past; be worthy of your ancestors by continuing their spirit
rather than aping their habits. Think of the problems of to-day and
to-morrow. Apply to human affairs your Biblical test of righteousness.
Then you will find that, with a slightly different coloring perhaps,
your aspirations are ours; our diverse evolutions, after centuries of
estrangement and conflict, tend towards the same goal; and in the
Menorah I see a sign of the coming harmony of sects and creeds, each
remaining passionately attached to its own past, but all working in
common towards the same future.
Finally, I cannot drive away from my thought the shambles of Europe.
Your co-religionists are fighting under all the belligerent flags, as
bravely, as loyally, as their fellow-citizens of a different creed;
and they have suffered more heavily in Poland than even the Belgian
martyrs. When one thinks of the carnival of murder to which the
idolatry of territorial, political patriotism has led, one cannot but
wonder whether the Jewish people throughout the world might not afford
an example for all to follow. In Judaism we have tradition, culture
and race dissociated from any special habitat or from any political
form; and this nation without a land, this nation without a king, is
developing, prospering, unconquerable. I wonder whether the
territorial state, which has led to such monstrous aberrations, is not
a last idol and doomed to disappear as an ethical factor; and whether
the future might not belong to universal, interpenetrating
communities;--freely expanding, untrammelled by physical boundaries,
unable to use force, and free from the fear of force, communities of
which Judaism to-day might be the prototype. But I do not want to
dwell at any length on a mere hypothesis or perhaps on a flight of
fancy. I have said enough, I hope, to convince you of my hearty
sympathy with the work of the Menorah Society. May it long
prosper--an increasing element of strength in our Institute!
PROFESSOR PHILIP B. KENNEDY, DIRECTOR OF THE DAY DIVISION OF THE
SCHOOL OF COMMERCE, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
_Before the New York University (Washington Square) Menorah Society,
November 3, 1915_
I AM very glad to be present this morning at the opening meeting of
the Menorah Society. I believe that any people should make the most of
traditions which they have behind them. Personally, I always feel more
confidence in a man of any race when he stands up for the best of his
race traditions.
The Hebrew race is a very ancient one and should contribute to the
civilization of this country. Students of this race who are in our
colleges are the ones who may rightfully take the lead in making these
traditions count.
The Menorah Society, I believe, is proceeding along the right lines. I
hope to learn more of the work of this Society as it continues its
work in the School of Commerce; and I am especially glad to have the
opportunity of being with you at the beginning of the year. I trust
that the year will be a very successful one. Personally, I shall
attempt to back up the Society in every way that I can.
DEAN ALFRED E. BURTON, OF MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
_Before the M. I. T. Menorah Society, October 22, 1915_
THE Menorah Society has appealed to me especially because of its high
purpose. We who are not of the Jewish race realize what an important
factor the Jews have been in civilization. Jewish culture has played
an important part particularly here in the foundation of New England.
Puritan life and thought drew its chief inspiration from the Old
Testament. From the earliest times Jewish men have, been leaders in
science and letters. Among the Americans and the English there is a
growing tendency towards a better appreciation of Jewish ideals.
It is important that all Jewish men have pride in their race. If you
don't, others will not. Some Jewish students do not seem to realize
that they have a great inheritance. Many Jewish students with whom I
have talked have been inclined to self-depreciation, and they also
felt that everyone was against them. In contrast, Irish students have
always impressed me with their self-confidence.
Bring non-Jewish students to your meetings. Try to increase your
members. I shall do all I can to foster and promote your work. I would
also urgently advocate a joint Menorah banquet between Harvard and
Technology. This banquet would not only tend to tie Technology and
Harvard students closer together, but would be of great benefit to
your Society.
The study of Jewish culture and ideals will help you to think of other
things than those immediately connected with your school work, and it
will, furthermore, instill in you a feeling of dignity for your
heritage.
REV. ANSON PHELPS STOKES, SECRETARY OF YALE UNIVERSITY
_Substance of Address before the Yale Menorah Society, October 27,
1915_
MR. Stokes spoke of three reasons why Jewish students of the right
type were welcome to Yale University:
1. _They showed themselves capable of the highest scholarship_; the
large number of prize awards won by Jewish students was evidence of
this. The speaker expressed the hope that some of the Jewish students
would go in for scholarly life careers. With so many Jewish students
of high scholarship it seemed strange that relatively few pursued
graduate studies outside of the various professions.
2. _They made their contribution to the life and thought of a
democratic American university._ A university like Yale is, he said, a
melting pot of democracy. One of its main advantages is that it brings
together Orient and Occident, North and South, Catholic and
Protestant, Christian and Jew, and makes each understand the point of
view of the other.
3. _The presence of Jewish students at the University tends to attract
to Yale gifts in the interest of Semitic studies._ The contribution of
Judaism to religious and ethical ideals was so important that no
university could afford to fail in supplying adequate courses of
Semitic instruction. Several recent gifts to the University in the
interest of Jewish scholarship from prominent Jewish citizens
indicates that they had been impressed with the fair treatment of
Jewish boys at Yale. He spoke with appreciation of a recent gift of a
rabbinic library of several thousand volumes of large value.
Mr. Stokes spoke with much appreciation of the Menorah Society because
of what it was doing in bringing together Jewish students in the
interest of high intellectual and ethical ideals, and hoped that it
would not forget that its mission was not only to interest Jewish
students but also Christian students in Jewish culture.
Intercollegiate Menorah Notes
Fourth Annual Menorah Convention
At the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., on Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, December 27, 28, 29 and 30, 1915.
_Announcements_
All members of Menorah Societies are cordially invited to attend the
Convention. Though the right to vote is enjoyed only by duly
accredited Representatives and Deputies of constituent Menorah
Societies, all Menorah members may be given the privilege of the floor
at the business sessions. Graduates also, especially former members of
Menorah Societies, are invited to attend.
All business sessions, unless otherwise indicated, will take place at
College Hall, University of Pennsylvania.
A reception will be given to the delegates and other Menorah members
by a Committee of graduates and leading Jewish men and women of
Philadelphia, at the Y. M. H. A., on Monday evening, at 8.
By invitation from the President of the Dropsie College, Dr. Cyrus
Adler, one of the meetings, the "Scholars' Evening," will be held at
The Dropsie College, corner Broad and York Sts., Philadelphia, on
Tuesday evening, December 28, at 8.15 P. M. This meeting will be open
to the public.
The Convention Dinner, at the Hotel Adelphia, Philadelphia, on
Wednesday evening, December 29, at 6.30 P. M., will be open to
Representatives and Deputies, all other Menorah members, all
graduates, and invited guests. Menorah members who desire their
friends to be invited will please send their names and addresses
immediately to the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, 600 Madison
Avenue, New York. The subscription will be $3.00 a cover.
_Program_
MONDAY, December 27.
10. A. M. Opening session. Submission of
credentials by Representatives
and Deputies, and written reports
of their respective Menorah
Societies (unless previously sent
to the Chancellor of the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association);
payment of Society dues to the
Association for 1916; seating of
Representatives and Deputies;
presentation of the applications
of new Menorah Societies for admission
into the Association and
action thereon.
1. P. M. Informal luncheon to delegates
and visiting Menorah members.
2. P. M. Presentation of reports of Intercollegiate
Officers for 1915, covering
(1) roster of Menorah Societies
and census of Menorah
members; (2) extension of the
Menorah movement during 1915;
(3) the Menorah College of Lecturers;
(4) Menorah courses of
study and syllabi; (5) Menorah
Libraries; (6) Menorah Prizes;
(7) The Menorah Journal; (8)
Menorah Classics; (9) Graduate
Menorah Committees; (10) The
graduate phase of the movement;
(11) Relations of the Menorah
with other organizations, etc.
Questions regarding the activities
of the Association and the policy
of the Administration during
1916.
8. P. M. Formal reception to the delegates
and visiting Menorah students,
given by University alumni of
Philadelphia at the Y. M. H. A.
TUESDAY, December 28th.
9.30 A. M. Discussion of the Intercollegiate
reports submitted the previous
afternoon, with special reference
to The Menorah Journal. Resolutions.
1. P. M. Informal luncheon.
2. P. M. Discussion continued of the Intercollegiate
reports, with special
reference to the question of the
affiliation of graduates with the
movement. Resolutions.
8. P. M. "Scholars' Evening" at The Dropsie
College. Papers by Professor
Max L. Margolis of The Dropsie
College, Professor Israel Friedlaender
of the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, and Professor
Julian Morgenstern of the
Hebrew Union College. Informal
memorial to the late Dr.
Schechter by President Cyrus
Adler of The Dropsie College.
WEDNESDAY, December 29th.
9.30 A. M. Submission of 10 minute oral reports
of Menorah Societies by
their respective Representatives
or Deputies, in summary of the
written reports previously submitted.
2. P. M. Discussion of the activities and
problems of the Menorah Societies
and the ways in which
Menorah work may be still further
advanced in the Colleges
and Universities of the country.
4. P. M. Election of Intercollegiate Officers
for 1916.
6.30 P. M. Convention Dinner at the Hotel
Adelphia for Representatives and
Deputies, all other Menorah
members, graduates, friends and
invited guests. Toasts.
THURSDAY, December 30th.
9.30 A. M. Discussion continued of Menorah
activities in Colleges and Universities.
Resolutions.
2. P. M. Unfinished business.
=Items of Interest=
_Death of Dr. Schechter_
Solomon Schechter, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, died suddenly on November 19. Dr. Schechter was a member of
the Board of Consulting Editors of THE JOURNAL, and from the first an
inspiring friend of the Menorah movement. THE JOURNAL was shortly to
have received his promised article. Endeavor will be made in an early
issue to give worthy appreciation of Dr. Schechter as scholar and
humanist and Jewish leader. Meantime, it may be noted that several of
his leading works are to be found in Menorah libraries: "Studies in
Judaism" and "Aspects of Rabbinic Theology." Attention may also be
called to Dr. Schechter's last book, published only recently, entitled
"Seminary Papers and Addresses."
_Relief of Jewish Students in Switzerland_
Menorah members have sent the following amounts through the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association for the relief of Russian Jewish
students at present in Switzerland: $38 from the University of
Pennsylvania; $23.50 from the University of Valparaiso; $18 from The
Johns Hopkins University; $9.50 from Temple University (Philadelphia);
and $6 from the University of North Carolina. The students at Harvard
sent approximately $100.
_Syllabus of Jewish History_
By special arrangement with the University of London, the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association has been enabled to provide
Menorah Study Circles with a Syllabus of Jewish History from
Mendelssohn to Herzl, prepared by ten Jewish authorities in England as
an Extension Course of the University of London.
_New Menorah Societies_
New Menorah Societies have been organized since the opening of this
academic year at a number of Colleges and Universities, including
Alabama, George Washington (Washington, D. C.), Rice Institute
(Houston, Texas), Temple, Vanderbilt, and Washington (St. Louis).
Menorah Societies are now in process of formation at a number of other
Universities.
_The Graduate Phase_
A Graduate Menorah Society was organized last year in Scranton, Pa.,
with Dr. Elias G. Roos as President.
A number of former members of the Menorah Society of New York
University organized last month into "The Menorah Alumni of New York
University," with Louis Weinstein as temporary President.
A Graduate Menorah Society has recently been formed in Montgomery,
Ala., with Harry Weil as President.
A Graduate Menorah Advisory Committee has been formed in Cincinnati,
with Mr. S. Marcus Fechheimer as Chairman.
_Joint Menorah Meetings in New York_
Continuing the pleasant practice originated last year, the Menorah
Societies in New York--at the College of the City of New York,
Columbia University, Hunter College and New York University, in
company with the newly organized "Menorah Alumni of New York
University"--held their first joint meeting of this year in the
Auditorium of Hunter College, the Hunter Menorah acting as hostess. It
was a most successful meeting, with an attendance of about 700 Menorah
members and friends.
Miss Sarah Berenson, President of the Hunter Menorah, introduced the
Chancellor as the chairman. The speakers were Miss Tamar Hirschensohn
of the Hunter College Faculty, and Mrs. Benjamin S. Pouzzner,
Radcliffe, 1912. Miss Hirschensohn drew a comparative picture of a
great Hebrew friendship celebrated in the Bible, that of David and
Jonathan, and notable friendships in the Greek and Latin
classics--Achilles and Patroclus and Euryalus and Nisus. Mrs. Pouzzner
spoke upon the Jewish women of the German Salons of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. The Chancellor read communications to THE
MENORAH JOURNAL from Viscount Bryce and Hon. Oscar S. Straus (see
pages 281 and 297). After the speaking the Hunter Menorah held an
informal reception for the members of the other Menorah Societies.
The next joint meeting of the Menorah Societies of New York will be
held at Columbia University on Sunday afternoon, December 26. The
principal speaker will be Mr. Louis Weinberg, artist and lecturer at
the Metropolitan Art Museum and the College of the City of New York.
The subject will be "Culture and Nationalism." Besides the members of
the Menorah Societies in New York, members of Menorah Societies at
other Colleges and Universities home for their vacation are invited to
be present. It is hoped also that a number of delegates from various
parts of the country to the Menorah Convention which meets the next
morning in Philadelphia will be able to attend.
Activities of Menorah Societies
=Clark College=
THE third year of the Clark College Menorah Society opened on
September 24 with every Jewish member of the college present. The
membership is larger than ever before, and all things forecast a most
prosperous year, one which will be fully in keeping with the decennial
year of the Menorah movement.
A program has been made by the executive committee and the subjects
for the year have been mapped out, as follows:
(1) Jewish Literature;
(2) The Messiah Idea in Jewish History;
(3) Aspects of Hebrew Genius;
(4) Jewish History;
(5) Stories and Pictures;
(6) The Haskalah Movement;
(7) Songs of Exile;
(8) Judah Ha-Levi;
(9) Zionism;
(10) Ahad Ha-'Amism;
(11) The Bible as Literature;
(12) The Jewish Language;
(13) Reform vs. Orthodoxy;
(14) Nationality and the Hyphenated American;
(15) Anti-Semitism;
(16) Justice and Mercy.
These topics are assigned to the various members of the Society and
reports are given at the meetings. Discussion follows usually and
great interest has been manifested by all members.
The second annual banquet of the Society is to be held in January and
plans have already been under way for the past few weeks, efforts
being made to hold a banquet surpassed by no other Society in point of
stirring interest for the Menorah among all the students and faculty.
ISADOR LUBIN
=College of the City of New York=
THE beginning of the academic year 1915-1916 marked the adoption of a
new policy in the history of the C. C. N. Y. Menorah Society. During
the past five years, Menorah activities have been mainly extensive,
the purpose being to interest as large a number of students as
possible. But now that the Menorah has come to exert such a wide
influence in C. C. N. Y., greater prominence is being given to work of
a more intensive nature, and emphasis is laid on the quality rather
than the quantity of the membership.
Our program of Menorah activities may be divided into extensive work
and intensive work. At the basis of the extensive work are the public
lectures which are intended not only for Menorah members but for the
entire student body. The first of these public lectures was held on
October 7 when Dr. Sidney E. Goldstein of the Free Synagogue delivered
an enthusiastic and inspiring address on "Social Service and the Jew"
before an audience of over 150 students. At the suggestion of Dr.
Goldstein a number of students present volunteered to form a group for
the study of social problems in the Jewish community of New York City
in connection with actual social service work. The second public
lecture, held on October 21, was delivered by the Hon. Marcus M.
Marks, Borough President of Manhattan. Over 200 students were present,
and about 150 more were turned away after the doors were shut.
The weekly forums constitute the second part of the extensive work of
the Society. At these Forums, talks followed by discussions are given
by members of the Faculty, Menorah alumni and others. The first Forum
meeting of the semester, with which Menorah activities were formally
opened, was held on September 21, and was led by Chancellor Henry
Hurwitz, who spoke on "The Meaning of the Menorah Movement." Other
Forum speakers have been Professor William B. Guthrie of the
Department of Political Science; Professor John P. Turner of the
Philosophy Department; Mr. George J. Horowitz, an ex-president of the
Menorah; Rabbi Aaron Robison, Director of the Y. M. H. A.; Mr. Isadore
Berkson, an alumnus and ex-president of the Menorah; Professor H. D.
Marsh of the Philosophy Department; and Mr. Julius Drachsler,
Secretary of the School of Jewish Communal Workers.
The study circles comprise the intensive work of the Menorah and
constitute its most important activity. At these study circles a group
of not more than ten students come together once a week for one hour
to study and discuss questions of Jewish interest. The work in the
study circles is done entirely by the students themselves. Up to the
present, eleven study circles have been organized and these meet
regularly every week. Some of the subjects taken up are: Modern Jewish
Movements, Current Events in Jewry, Schechter's "Essays in Judaism,"
Present Day Problems in Judaism, Jewish Biography, The Philosophy of
Ahad Ha-'am.
In addition to all these activities, "regular" meetings of the Society
are held. On the evening of October 6 the annual smoker took place at
the City College Club, with Mr. M. S. Levussove of the Faculty, Mr.
Julius Hyman, an alumnus, and Chancellor Hurwitz among the speakers.
On October 23 George J. Horowitz read an interesting paper on "Judaism
and Christianity," which was followed by a spirited discussion. On
Saturday evening, November 13, there was held a joint meeting of the
students of the day college and of the evening college for the purpose
of organizing a Menorah Society among the students of the evening
college. Professor I. Leo Sharfman of Michigan addressed the meeting
on "A Few Facts About the Menorah." The men of the night college were
very enthusiastic about the idea of the Menorah and the prospects of a
successful Menorah among them are very favorable.
The membership of the C. C. N. Y. Menorah is constantly growing,
although in every case application for membership is always
spontaneous and voluntary.
WILLIAM E. AUSTIN
=Hunter College=
SINCE its first meeting of the season, the Hunter College Menorah
Society has more than trebled its membership. Ten per cent of the
entire student body have joined our ranks. We hope for even greater
members before the end of the year. Our freshman "At Home" was
pronounced the most enjoyable welcome to freshmen given by any
society. A large audience, including several members of the Faculty,
attended our first regular meeting, which was addressed by Professor
Israel Friedlaender of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Between our regular meetings, we hold weekly noon-time Forums.
Besides, the three study circles organized by the Society meet weekly
and are attended by between twenty and twenty-five members. The
Society arranged for the very successful joint meeting of all the
Menorah Societies in the city, which was held at Hunter on Sunday
evening, November 21, with an attendance of about 700.
The members of the Society have shown their appreciation of the
privileges arising from membership not only by voting almost
unanimously to double the annual dues but also by undertaking a
catalogue, on the basis of subject matter, of the contents of books
which might be of interest to students of Hebraic culture. This work
will cover finally, we hope, all such books in English and the leading
modern foreign languages and should prove a lasting help to students
everywhere.
ERNESTINE P. FRANKLIN
=Johns Hopkins University=
A DISTINCT Menorah revival has taken place this year at the Johns
Hopkins University. Having for several years led a rather aimless and
nomadic existence, the Menorah Society has at last affiliated itself
definitely with the University. At the beginning of the present
collegiate year, application was made to the authorities of the
University for permission to hold meetings in one of the college
buildings. The permission was very graciously granted, and, in
addition, the Dean of the Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Murray Peabody
Brush, accepted our imitation to say a few words of welcome to the
Jewish students at the inaugural meeting of the Society for the year
1915-16.
This meeting was held in McCoy Hall, on the evening of October 18, and
was comparatively well attended. Dr. Brush, in a talk that was brief
but to the point, congratulated both the Menorah Society and the
University upon the closer relations into which the two organizations
were entering. The University must benefit, he said, from all student
activities not directly connected with the curricula of studies, as a
more unselfish love for the institution is thereby fostered in the
student. The Menorah Society must prove of advantage to us, as
students, in that it tends to broaden our outlook and encourages us to
enter fields of study that we might otherwise never approach. Finally,
the Society fulfills a definite purpose for the Jewish students in
particular by keeping fresh in their minds all the great ideals and
achievements which distinguish their history. The Dean closed his talk
with a hearty welcome from the authorities of the University to the
Johns Hopkins Menorah Society. Dr. Brush was followed by the
Chancellor of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, who urged the
assembled students to give the Society a strong impetus this year, now
that it has definitely found a habitat in the University. He explained
the need that is filled in the life of the student by the Menorah
Society, and outlined a mode of conduct for the Hopkins organization.
In accordance with Mr. Hurwitz's suggestion, a study circle, aiming to
take up modern Jewish history since the time of Moses Mendelssohn, was
formed on the spot. The Society has been fortunate enough to procure
the services of Mr. Elias N. Rabinowitz, a member of the Semitic
department of the Johns Hopkins University, as leader of the study
circle. The group consists of close to twenty students and meets
weekly in one of the rooms of the University library. It bids fair to
prove of genuine good to the students interested in it.
At the second meeting of the Society, November 1, the speaker was
Rabbi Eugene Kohn, of Baltimore, whose interesting talk on "The
Elements of Stability and Progress in Judaism" elicited warm
discussion. The Society hopes to have regular monthly meetings, for
which attractive programs have been arranged by the Executive
Committee.
AARON SCHAFFER
=New York University=
(University Heights)
FORMED in December, 1913, forced to cope at first with many opposing
and discouraging elements, the New York University Menorah Society at
University Heights has rapidly mounted the ladder of success and has
entered upon a banner year. We have set two great aims before us for
this year: first, to make the Society strong internally, and,
secondly, to bring the purposes and ideals of the Menorah movement
before the alumni of New York University.
Various plans are being utilized for the fulfillment of the first aim.
The Executive committee succeeded during the summer in getting
together an excellent list of prominent men to lecture before the
Society on current topics of Jewish interest. A prospectus was issued
in the first week of the college year, containing, in brief, a
discussion of the Menorah Idea, a history of the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association, a resume of the New York University Menorah
Society, a speech by Chancellor Elmer E. Brown delivered before the
Menorah Society, a word about Associate membership and about Menorah
Prizes, and the program for the year. Using this prospectus as a means
of introduction to those unacquainted with the movement, a vigorous
campaign was conducted by a well organized committee to increase the
membership. A doubled membership in two weeks was the result of this.
Another means towards getting the new men to join was the Freshmen
Reception, held on October 14, at which Dean Bouton of the College of
Arts and Chancellor Hurwitz were the speakers. This reception proved a
great success.
Besides attending the regular bi-weekly lectures of the Society, each
member is urged to join one of the eight study circles in modern
Jewish History and Hebrew (elementary and advanced). A well organized
committee has charge of these study circles. It has been successful in
signing up nearly a hundred men. The study circles are conducted by
several members who are also Seminary students and by several rabbis
of the city. These study circles are proving of first importance in
our general plans, because it is really in these that the men acquire
a little "Jewish culture and ideals and an independence of thought and
action in things Jewish." Several members of these classes have become
so enthused with the newer Jewish spirit that they devote a good part
of their time lecturing on Jewish topics to Young Judaean
organizations and Young People's Synagogues in and about New York
City.
To stimulate still further individual research and study of Jewish
problems it has been decided to offer one or two Menorah prizes for
papers on various Jewish topics. In order to raise a substantial
amount of money for that purpose two committees are working on
separate plans. One of these committees, by a special arrangement with
the Business Manager of THE MENORAH JOURNAL, has started a campaign to
get two hundred subscriptions for THE JOURNAL, thereby netting the
Society fifty dollars for one prize. This committee, backed by the
entire membership, is gaining speed daily, and looks forward to the
accomplishment of its object before the Convention. Another committee
is circularizing the alumni outside of New York City to get their
support. The result of this work, though incomplete as yet, looks most
promising.
The above is a brief resume of our year's plans. We realize the
importance not only of having plans but of carrying them through
successfully, as we are determined they shall be. The work is being
done systematically, not by one man nor by two or three men, but by an
efficient, earnest executive committee backed by almost every man in
the Menorah Society. It is our aim to tell a pretty tale at the
Intercollegiate Menorah Convention.
M. A. STAVITSKY
=Ohio State University=
OUR annual freshmen reception this year saw very little of the
conventional "stiffshirt" formalities, nor did it hear much of the
honey-soaked praises of Jewish loyalty and patriotism. Instead of this
we had a simple, all-student affair where everyone found satisfaction
in merely meeting and getting acquainted with the rest of the Jewish
students. A short talk on the purpose of the Menorah, several
selections of Jewish music and refreshments made up the rest of the
program. This year's Freshmen, both men and women, are especially
promising for the Menorah.
At the second meeting the members displayed an excellent Menorah
spirit by adopting a resolution to include the subscription fee of THE
MENORAH JOURNAL in the membership dues and thus making the JOURNAL
receivable by every member as a matter of course.
At a later meeting there was a lecture by Professor Brooder of the
Sociology Department on "The Anthropology of the Jew," which was
followed by a general discussion. At another meeting the writer read a
paper on the Jewish Congress movement.
Our meetings have thus far been unusually well attended and highly
spirited. It must be admitted, however, that the work was rather
spontaneous and not the product of previous planning. This is to be
remedied soon by a plan, now under consideration, systematizing the
entire year's work.
SAMUEL LESSER
=Radcliffe College=
THE Radcliffe Menorah, which was organized in December, 1914, did not
accomplish very much last year; there was no study circle, although
attempts to form one were made, and the members did little or no
concerted work. This year, however, a much stronger group spirit is
being shown. A study circle in Jewish history, lead by Dr. Harry
Wolfson of Harvard, has been formed; and a petition for a regular
course in Jewish Literature has been drawn up.
We have had two lecture meetings. At the first, Mr. Henry Hurwitz
spoke on the imperative need for concerted action among American Jews
in the attempt to ameliorate the conditions among the Jews of Europe.
He said the Menorah Society should ultimately help towards this
concerted effort by bringing home the realization of the conditions to
Jewish young men and women who, through lack of interest or education,
have not yet become conscious of them. At the second meeting, Dr.
Kaufmann Kohler, President of the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati,
spoke on Reform Judaism: its history, meaning, and purpose. Reform
Judaism has its being, stated the speaker, not in the desire of the
Jew for an easier, less irksome mode of cooking and praying, but in
his acute need of adapting himself to the manners and customs of the
country in which he lives. Not only is the spirit of Judaism not lost,
it is reinforced through the casting off of the form which might
obscure it. At the same meeting, Mr. Frederick F. Greenman, President
of the Harvard Menorah, spoke about the possibility of co-operation
between the Harvard and Radcliffe Societies.
While there are few new members of the Radcliffe Menorah, it is
expected that the year will be an active one.
RUTH JANE MACK
=Tufts College=
THE Menorah Society of Tufts College began its activities for the
third year with an enthusiastic reception to the Freshman class. A
marked increase of enthusiasm came along with the new members. Our
Society, which three years ago began with four members, has now a
membership of sixty, all enthusiastic about the Menorah work. A
shingle has been designed and adopted. A Menorah prize which was
offered last year for 1915-1916 was announced at the first meeting and
it looks as if a keen competition will take place. Courses have been
organized in Jewish History, Philosophy and Bible study, the feature
of the study circles being that a different member conducts each
meeting and the man who obtains the highest mark (each student being
rated by the presiding member) will receive a prize of a set of books.
All in all, the outlook is for the most successful year in the history
of the Tufts Menorah.
H. L. KATZ
=University of Illinois=
THE Illinois Menorah is looking forward to a most successful year,
with efficient officers, enthusiastic members, and the usual interest
and co-operation of the Faculty members. A definite attempt is to be
made to foster a spirit of friendliness and co-operation among all the
Jewish students.
The year was formally opened on October 10 by a reception to the new
students. After an opening talk by President Karl Epstein, the
students were addressed by Professor E. C. Baldwin, Dr. Jacob Zeitlin
and Mr. Samuel Abrams, a former president. The meeting was attended by
110 students. At later meetings Dr. David S. Blondheim spoke on "The
Jewish Congress," Dr. Simon Litman on "The Jew of To-day," and
Professor B. H. Bode on "The Hyphenated Jewish-American."
The work of our Menorah is augmented by the Menorah Study Circle,
under the leadership of Mrs. Simon Litman. The class is doing
intensive work in Jewish post-exilic history. Throughout, the bearing
of our past history upon present day problems is emphasized. Judging
from the enthusiasm of the members of the class, the Study Circle is
going to become a permanent feature of our Menorah activities.
ANITA LIBMAN
=University of Michigan=
SOMEONE once said that he could lift the world if he could find a
place to stand on. The Menorah Society at Michigan is still working to
rear a strong foundation which will bear the weight of a large and
beautiful superstructure.
Our Society began its current year with a "Teruah Gedolah." The
trumpet blast was sounded loud and long: and the children of Israel
came out from their tents. Through advertisement in the _Michigan
Daily_, through posters and personal contact with the students on the
campus, a large attendance was procured for the first meeting.
Professor Sharfman was on hand to inspire enthusiasm into the men and
women. An excellent musical program had been provided for. The meeting
was highly successful and brought tidings for a banner year. Some
previously discordant strings were brought to the proper tune. There
had been some friction between the Students' Congregation and the
Menorah last year. This friction arose for two reasons: first, some
Menorah men felt that the Congregation was "cutting out" the Menorah,
that the Congregation was entering upon the Menorah's field of action.
Of course, there is absolutely no reason for such an objection. The
Menorah supplies the intellectual needs of the Jewish students; the
Congregation exists for religious inspiration only. True enough, the
two overlap to a small degree; but not sufficiently to be termed
"encroachment." The second reason was a technical one. The Menorah men
were greatly vexed because the time of the Congregation conflicted
with our time. The Menorah began at 8 P. M. on Sunday evening; but the
Congregation did not adjourn often until 8.15 or 8.30. The
Congregation itself was not to blame, for they could not always
foresee that a Rabbi would become so overheated in discussing the war
situation that he would ignore the element of time in the make-up of
our universe. At the beginning of this semester we determined to put
an end to all friction, though trivial, between the two organizations.
There is no worldly reason for discord between the two Jewish
organizations. We held a consultation with the President of the
Congregation who assured us of all possible support; and in turn the
Menorah assured the Congregation of support. Indeed, the Menorah
conceded a point by moving our meeting time fifteen minutes; and the
President of the Congregation, who is also a Menorah member, was given
the floor at the first meeting to enlighten the audience on the
meaning of the Congregation to student life. A goodly number of
Congregation men and women are Menorah members and _vice versa_. The
two organizations are now working in entire harmony and we are
accomplishing the more for it.
Our second meeting was held on October 31. Professor Leroy Waterman,
the new head of the Semitics Department, led the discussion with an
address on "The Religious Problems of To-day in the Light of Early
Jewish History and Literature."
On November 28, Mr. Fred M. Butzel, an alumnus of Michigan and
President of the United Jewish Charities in Detroit, led the
discussion with a talk on "Some Tendencies in the Social Work of the
Jews." Through the Intercollegiate Menorah Association we were enabled
to procure Professor Edward Chauncey Baldwin of the University of
Illinois to speak before us on December 12 on "Job." Also through the
Association we expect to have Professor Julian Morgenstern of the
Hebrew Union College.
We have this year more members than ever before, and they are
enthusiastic. But it is not in numbers alone that we must put our
trust. We should never worry--I know that some do--when the Menorah
has a small meeting if only it is successful. I think that we never
had a better meeting than when Dr. Kallen addressed fourteen members
two years ago. Isaiah's prophecy concerning the _Shearith Yisrael_,
the remnant of Israel, applies to our Menorah problem. The few will
redeem the many; they will uphold the ideals and culture of the Jewish
race.
But no matter how successful the semester will be, we shall only be
able to say that we have added but one stone to the pedestal which is
to be the permanent and deep foundation of the Menorah at Michigan.
ABRAHAM J. LEVIN
=University of Minnesota=
WITH an attendance that broke all records, and a display of enthusiasm
and interest that augurs well for the Society, the Minnesota Menorah
opened its year of activities on October 1, with the annual
"Get-Together" reception. During the evening, members of the freshman
class were introduced to members of the Faculty, alumni and upperclass
men and women. A short program entertained the assembly, which was
followed by a brief address by President H. W. Davis, expressing the
aims and purposes of the Society.
Following the plan adopted last year of centralizing the subjects of
study and discussion, our Program Committee has for this year again
divided the work of the Society into two divisions. The first semester
will be devoted to a presentation and discussion of some of the Jewish
problems, viz., anti-Semitism and certain social, economic, and
religious problems, while the second semester will be devoted to
proposed solutions of these problems through Zionism, Socialism,
Assimilation, etc. Students and representative members of the
community will alternate in the presentation of the various subjects
to the Society. Greater emphasis than ever before will be given to
general discussion by all the members of the Society at each meeting.
After careful consideration, the Minnesota Menorah has decided to
withdraw its campaign to bring the Intercollegiate Convention to
Minnesota this year, yielding in favor of the East and Philadelphia.
We wish, however, to thank the members of the Administrative Council
who had pledged us their support, and we take this opportunity to
announce that at this Convention Minnesota will earnestly urge the
delegates to fix the place for the Convention of 1916, and it is for
that Convention that Minnesota will put in its strongest bid.
DAVID LONDON
=University of Wisconsin=
THE academic year 1915-16 opened very auspiciously for the Menorah at
Wisconsin. Fully 100 attended the first meeting, at Lathrop parlors,
on October 4. Twenty-four new members were added, swelling the total
membership to fifty-six. President Charles A. Lebowsky welcomed the
freshmen into the Society, and explained the broad and liberal basis
upon which the Menorah rested. Professor Dodge, Chairman of the
Menorah Prize Committee, announced the Menorah prize of $100 (the
largest individual prize in the University of Wisconsin), and urged
all members to try for it. The closing speech of the evening was given
by Dr. H. M. Kallen, mentor of the organization. Dr. Kallen spoke on
"The Menorah Movement--Its Relation to Jewish Academic Life." After
the meeting a general mixer was held, refreshments served, and the
members became acquainted with each other.
At the second meeting of the year, on October 18, Mr. Alexander
Aaronsohn of Palestine, brother of the famous agronomist, addressed an
enthusiastic audience upon the subject of "Jewish Colonization in
Palestine." The speaker had but recently arrived from that land, after
many thrilling adventures, and his talk was most inspiring. Mr.
Aaronsohn emphasized the fact that while formerly, since time
immemorial, it has been the custom, and in fact the ambition, of every
Jew to return to Palestine that he might die there, to-day, it was not
to die, but to live, that the Jew returned to the land of his fathers.
At the following meeting the Society discussed the Russian situation;
Mr. Zigmund Salit gave an interesting paper describing his own
experiences in that land of suffering. Mr. Milton Moses delivered an
oration on "The Wandering Jew."
On November 15, Rev. C. A. Greenman, of the First Unitarian Church of
Milwaukee, addressed us on a striking theme, "The Relationship Between
Judaism and Unitarianism." Other speakers to follow are Justice Hugo
Pam, of the Chicago Appellate Court, Rabbi Joseph Stolz, and Dr.
Horace J. Bridges, of the Chicago Ethical Culture Society, besides
members of our own Faculty.
In order to arouse even more enthusiasm for the Menorah idea, the
executive committee has arranged to hold a number of informal dinners.
Since these dinners are given primarily for members of the Society, no
outside speakers will be invited. Short and snappy toasts will be
given by members, the alumni will be called upon if any happen to be
present, and the Menorah Song will be rendered by the ensemble. If the
first dinner proves to be successful, and there is every reason to
believe that it will, these affairs will become an established part of
the Menorah program at Wisconsin.
CHARLES A. LEBOWSKY
=Western Reserve University=
THE opening of the scholastic year 1915-16 marked a radical change in
the policy hitherto followed by the Western Reserve Menorah Society.
During the first few years of its existence membership was open only
to the male students of the university and attendance was necessarily
small. Interest in the Society itself began to dwindle until finally
it became clear that some radical step would have to be taken if the
Society was to remain intact and worthy of the name.
Accordingly, at a meeting of the executive committee held shortly
after the opening of college in the fall, it was decided that
hereafter membership would be open to both the men and the women of
the university. Seventy-five students gathered for the opening meeting
held on October 24. At later meetings, Dr. Lamberton, of the Faculty,
lectured on "The Influence of Hellenism on Hebraic Culture," and Dr.
Daniel A. Huebsch, noted art critic and lecturer, spoke on "The
Neglect of the Old Testament." Dr. Huebsch urged that inasmuch as the
Menorah Society was devoted to Jewish study, it was the proper place
for a revival of interest particularly in Biblical literature and
other Hebrew writings. These works were distinctively the Jews' own
and should not be neglected by them as the younger generation was
inclined to do. Both lectures were well attended and followed by
interesting discussions. A later meeting was devoted almost entirely
to a lively as well as an intensely interesting discussion of Zionism.
The Western Reserve Menorah Society may well look forward to a banner
year. Having overcome the obstacles that face every new organization,
we are now prepared and eager to carry on the aggressive work of the
Menorah. Passing as we are through a period fraught with epoch-making
events, an endless number of problems spring up on every side, each
one clamoring for attention. Upon the solution of many of these
problems rests the future welfare of the Jewish race. Having been
awakened to a realization of the seriousness of the situation, the
Western Reserve Menorah Society will compass every effort to do its
share in the movement for enlightenment and progress.
BENJAMIN F. ROTH
INDEX
To Volume I of THE MENORAH JOURNAL
January--December, 1915
Authors' names in SMALL CAPITALS; Titles of Articles in _Italics_
_Adam Prometheus, and Other Lyrics_ (Dec.) 282
ADLER, DR. CYRUS, Greeting from, (Jan.) 3
_Akiba, The Romance of Rabbi._ (Oct.) 227
American Jewry, The Present Crisis in (Dec.) 265
AMRAM, DAVID WERNER: _"Paths of Pleasantness," The Study of the
Jewish Law_ (June) 159
ANSPACHER, LOUIS K.: _Adam Prometheus, and Other Lyrics_. (Dec.) 282
_Arch of Titus, The_: A Poem (Oct.) 201
Arch of Titus, The: _Frontispiece_ (Jan.)
_Asch, Sholom: The Jewish Maupassant_ (Dec.) 285
ASKOWITH, HYMAN: _The Symbolism of the Menorah_ (Oct.) 248
_Aspects of Jewish Life and Letters:_ Reviews of Books (Oct.) 237
BACON, BENJAMIN W.: From a Menorah Address (Apr.) 86
BALDWIN, EDWARD CHAUNCEY: _The Jewish Genius in Literature_, (June)
164
BENTWICH, NORMAN, Greeting from, (Apr.) 73
BLATT, WILLIAM M.: _The Quality of Mercy: A Sixth Act to "The Merchant
of Venice"_ (Apr.) 96
BLONDHEIM, D. S.: Review of Herford's "Pharisaism" (Oct.) 237
Book Reviews: _Aspects of Jewish Life and Letters_ (Oct.) 237
BRANDEIS, LOUIS D., Greeting from, (Jan.) 4
_A Call to the Educated Jew_ (Jan.) 13
BROWN, ELMER E.: Menorah Address (Jan.) 46
BRYCE, VISCOUNT: Letter from. (Dec.) 297
_Call to the Educated Jew, A_ (Jan.) 13
Colleges and Universities: _See_ Menorah Societies.
DABNEY, CHARLES W.: Menorah Address (Jan.) 47
_Days of Disillusionment_ (Jan.) 39
_Decennial of the Menorah Movement, The_ (Oct.) 253
_Duty of the Hour, The_ (Oct.) 202
_Editorial Statement_ (Jan.) 1
ELIOT, CHARLES W.: _The Potency of the Jewish Race_ (June) 141
ESCOLL, MORRIS J.: _The Jewish Student in Our Universities_ (Oct.) 217
_European Universities, Jewish Students in_ (Jan.) 26, (Apr.) 106
FRIEDLAENDER, ISRAEL: From a Menorah Address (Jan.) 38
_The Present Crisis in American Jewry_ (Dec.) 265
GASTER, MOSES, Greeting from. (Apr.) 72
GOTTHEIL, RICHARD, Greeting from, (Jan.) 5
From a Menorah Address (Jan.) 32
_The War from a Jewish Standpoint_ (June) 150
Greetings (Jan.) 3, (Apr.) 72
GUÉRARD, ALBERT LÉON: Menorah Address (Dec.) 319
HADLEY, ARTHUR T.: Menorah Address (Jan.) 45
HALL, G. STANLEY: _Yankee and Jew_ (Apr.) 87
Harvard Menorah Society Shingle (Oct.) 251
_Hebraic Culture, The Twilight of_ (Jan.) 33
HERZL, THEODOR: _The Menorah_, (Dec.) 261
Herzl, Theodor, Etching by Hermann Struck, _Frontispiece_ (Dec.)
_Hillel, "Golden Rule"_ (Apr.) 91
HOROWITZ, GEORGE J.: _The Romance of Rabbi Akiba_ (Oct.) 227
HURWITZ, HENRY: _The Menorah Movement_ (Jan.) 50
_The Decennial of the Menorah Movement_ (Oct.) 253
HUSIK, ISAAC: Review of "Aspects of the Hebrew Genius" (Oct.) 241
HYAMSON, MOSES: _"Golden Rule" Hillel_ (Apr.) 91
Intercollegiate Menorah Association Notes (Jan.) 70, (Apr.) 140,
(June) 200, (Oct.) 257, (Dec.) 322
Third Annual Convention (Apr.) 121
Fourth Annual Convention (Dec.) 322
_Israel and Medicine_ (June) 145
JACOBS, JOSEPH, Greeting from (Jan.) 6
_The Jews in the War_ (Jan.) 23
_Liberalism and the Jews_ (Dec.) 298
_Jew, Yankee and_ (Apr.) 87
_Jewish Genius in Literature, The_, (June) 164
_Jewish Problem Today, The_ (Apr.) 75
_Jewish Race, The Potency of_ (June) 141
_Jewish Student in Our Universities, The_ (Oct.) 217
_Jewish Students in European Universities_ (Jan.) 26, (Apr.) 106
_Jewish Student Organisations_ (Oct.) 246
Jewish Worthies: _See_ Hillel, Jochanan ben Zakkai, Akiba.
_Jochanan ben Zakkai_ (June) 173
Judaism--_What Judaism Is Not_, (Oct.) 208
_What Is Judaism?_ (Dec.) 309
KALLEN, HORACE M.: _Nationality and the Hyphenated American_ (Apr.) 79
Review of Lewis' "Liberal Judaism" (Oct.) 238
KAPLAN, MORDECAI M.:
_What Judaism Is Not_ (Oct.) 208
_What Is Judaism?_ (Dec.) 309
KOHLER, KAUFMANN, Greeting from (Jan.) 6
LEHMAN, IRVING, Greeting from (Jan.) 7
From a Menorah Address (Jan.) 25
_Our Spiritual Inheritance_ (Dec.) 277
LEONARD, WILLIAM ELLERY: _Menorah_: A Poem (Jan.) 20
_Liberalism and the Jews_ (Dec.) 298
_Literature, The Jewish Genius in_, (June) 164
LOWENTHAL, MARVIN M.: _Zionism: A Menorah Prize Essay_ (Apr.) 111
(June) 179
MACK, JULIAN W., Greeting from, (Jan.) 8
MAGNES, J. L., Greeting from (Jan.) 9
From a Menorah Address (Jan.) 19
MARGOLIS, MAX L.: _The Twilight of Hebraic Culture_ (Jan.) 33
_Medicine, Israel and_ (June) 145
_Menorah: A Poem_ (Jan.) 20
_Menorah, The_ (HERZL) (Dec.) 261
Menorah Addresses, Extracts from, (Jan.) 19, 25, 32, 38, (Apr.) 86,
120
Menorah Addresses, Third Convention (Apr.) 121
Menorah Addresses by University Authorities (Jan.) 45, (Apr.) 121,
(June) 145, (Dec.) 319
_See also_ Intercollegiate Menorah Association.
_Menorah Movement, The_ (Jan.) 50
_Menorah Movement, The Decennial of the_ (Oct.) 253
Menorah Prize Essays:
_Zionism_ (Apr.) 111
_The Jewish Student in Our Universities_ (Oct.) 217
_Shalom Asch: The Jewish Maupassant_ (Dec.) 285
Menorah Societies, Activities of, (Jan.) 56, (June) 194 (Oct.) 257,
(Dec.) 325
_See also_ Intercollegiate Menorah Association.
_Menorah, The Symbolism of the_, (Oct.) 248
_"Merchant of Venice, The": A Sixth Act to_ (Apr.) 96
MEYER, MARTIN A., Greeting from, (Jan.) 9
_Nationality and the Hyphenated American_ (Apr.) 79
NORDAU, MAX, Greeting from (Apr.) 72
_The Duty of the Hour_ (Oct.) 202
OSLER, SIR WILLIAM: _Israel and Medicine_ (June) 145
_"Paths of Pleasantness," The Study of the Jewish Law_ (June) 159
PHILIPSON, DAVID, Greeting from, (Jan.) 10
Poetry (Jan.) 20, (Apr.) 71, 96, (June) 158, (Oct.) 201, (Dec.) 282
_Potency of the Jewish Race, The_ (June) 141
POUZZNER, BESSIE L., translator: _The Menorah, by Theodor Herzl_,
(Dec.) 261
Prize Essays: _See_ Menorah Prize Essays.
_Quality of Mercy, The: A Sixth Act to "The Merchant of Venice,"_
(Apr.) 96
_Romance of Rabbi Akiba, The_ (Oct.) 227
SAMPTER, JESSIE E., _O Sweet Anemones_: A Poem (June) 158
SCHECHTER, SOLOMON, Greeting from (Jan.) 11
SCHIFF, JACOB H., Greeting from (Jan.) 11
_The Jewish Problem Today_ (Apr.) 75
SCHURMAN, JACOB GOULD, From a Menorah Address (Apr.) 120
SHARFMAN, I. LEO: Review of Cohen's "Jewish Life in Modern Times,"
(Oct.) 244
The Decennial of the Menorah Movement (Oct.) 253
SHOSTAC, PERCY B.: _Sholom Asch, the Jewish Maupassant_ (Dec.) 285
SIMON, ABRAHAM M.: _Jochanan ben Zakkai_ (June) 173
STRAUSS, SAMUEL: _Days of Disillusionment_ (Jan.) 39
STRAUS, OSCAR S., Letter from (Dec.) 281
STRUCK, HERMANN: Etching of Theodor Herzl, _Frontispiece_ (Dec.)
Students: _See_ Jewish Students.
_Symbolism, The, of the Menorah_, (Oct.) 248
University Authorities, Menorah Addresses by (Jan.) 45, (Apr.) 121,
145, (Dec.) 319
War, The Present:
_The Jews in the War_ (Jan.) 23
_The Jewish Problem Today_ (Apr.) 75
_Nationality and the Hyphenated American_ (Apr.) 79
_The War from a Jewish Standpoint_ (June) 150
_What Is Judaism?_ (Dec.) 309
_What Judaism Is Not_ (Oct.) 208
WISE, STEPHEN S., Greeting from (Jan.) 12
WOLFSON, HARRY: _Jewish Students in European Universities_ (Jan.) 26
(Apr.) 106
_Yankee and Jew_ (Apr.) 87
ZANGWILL, ISRAEL: _For Small Mercies_: A Sonnet (Apr.) 71
_Zionism: A Menorah Prize Essay_ (Apr.) 111, (June) 179
* * * * *
[Illustration: CARUSO & HIS HARDMAN PIANO]
[Illustration:
New York, April 13th, 1914.
Messers. Hardman, Peck & Company, #433 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
Dear Mr. Peck:--
The five foot Hardman Grand which you have sent for my use to my
apartment is certainly a beautiful piano. I was surprised how your
factory was able to produce such a wonderful tone in such a small
Grand.
Accept my congratulations for your success.
Sincerely,
Signature: Enrico Caruso]
_The New_
HARDMAN Five-Foot Grand
The perfect small Grand Piano, exquisite in its artistic lines and
marvelous in tone.
=Caruso=
uses one himself and calls its tone "wonderful."
=Price, $650=
We cordially invite you to visit our warerooms and hear this marvelous
little Grand, without placing you under any obligation to buy.
=HARDMAN, PECK & COMPANY=
=BROOKLYN STORE=
=524 Fulton Street=
=Near Hanover Place=
(=Founded 1842=)
=HARDMAN HOUSE=
=433 Fifth Avenue=
=Bet. 38th & 39th Sts.=
* * * * *
Kindly mention The Menorah Journal when writing to advertisers
* * * * *
[Illustration: Steinway]
STEINWAY
The purchase of a Steinway for the home means the selection of the
ideal piano, tone and workmanship being of first importance.
It is the price of the Steinway which makes possible its supreme
musical qualities, but you will find that the Steinway costs only a
trifle more than many so-called "good" pianos.
Style V, the new Upright, and Style M, the smallest Steinway Grand,
offer a special advantage in price. They embody all the distinct
Steinway features, but, being of a reduced size to meet the
requirements of the modern home or apartment, are offered at very
moderate prices.
_We shall be glad to send you, free, illustrated literature, with the
name of the Steinway dealer nearest you._
STEINWAY & SONS, STEINWAY HALL
_107-109 East Fourteenth Street, New York_
* * * * *
Kindly mention The Menorah Journal when writing to advertisers
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page i, "321" changed to "322" in table of contents.
Page i, "324" changed to "325" in table of contents.
Page vii, "contributon" changed to "contribution". (a distinct
contribution)
Page 319, "Leon Guerard" changed to "Léon Guérard" (Albert Leon
Guérard)
Page 333, "Jan." changed to "Apr." under the reference for "Bacon,
Benjamin W."
Page 333, "Jan." changed to "Oct." under the reference for "Arch of
Titus, The: Frontispiece"
Page 333, "70" changed to "56" under the reference for "Intercollegiate
Menorah Societies"
Page 334, "Maupaussant" changed to "Maupassant" (The Jewish
Maupassant)
Page 334, the reference to page 145 under the "Menorah Addresses by
University Authorities" was deleted as the April edition has no page
145 and the June edition has no such section. This was also deleted
from "University Authorities, Menorah Addresses by" for the same
reason.
This text uses both today and to-day.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915" ***
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