meta: {"file": "/data/tomer/Sefaria-Export/txt_done/Modern Works/Works of Eliezer Berkovits/Towards Historic Judaism/English/merged.txt"}
text: Towards Historic Judaism
  לקראת יהדות היסטורית
  merged
  
  This file contains merged sections from the following text versions:
  -Oxford: East and West Library, 1943
  -
  
  Towards Historic Judaism
  
  Preface
  
  MEASURED against the crying need for a great spiritual revival of Judaism, I am fully aware of the inadequacy of my efforts in this book. I, therefore, dare not wish to convince or to teach. But should this book initiate a serious discussion of the problems with which it deals, I should feel richly rewarded for a modest introduction to the great subject of “Historic Judaism”.
  Spiritually Judaism suffers from the indifference of the average Jew, as well as from the dogmatic sterility of partisan politics and “sectarian” outlooks. This book intends to be a challenge to both. This is its only ambition.
  It is with the greatest pleasure that I acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Maurice Simon, M.A., and to my friend Dr. H. Edelston, M.B., D.P.M., for invaluable help and advice.
  LEEDS, <i>March 1943</i>
  E. B.
  
  I; Introductory
  
  
  
  
  
  NEW world is in the making. As usual, we Jews are the first to suffer the throes of its coming; and, as so often, we are the last to see its implications and to prepare accordingly. This is to be regretted, and yet it is the logical outcome of the anomalous position in which we Jews have to live. Jews do not control their own life. In the whole world there is nowhere a Jewish-controlled environment complete in itself, for all that we are a nation of 16,000,000.
  We take part in the life of other nations. We are fighting on all the fronts; we are preparing the coming world-orders for every generation, as Frenchmen, as Britishers, as Germans, as Poles, etc. However successful Jewish scientists, physicians, merchants, soldiers, etc., may be, they are always contributing to a life over which they as Jews have no control. Save for the mite of Jewish Palestine, there is no genuine Jewish focus in this world. Jewish positions will, therefore, be the easiest to dislocate, and Jews will thus go on fighting on all fronts, without preparing themselves as Jews for a new order. They may be conditionally admitted to it, but in its upbuilding they have no say. We are waiting for the new conditions to emerge. We accept conditions which are not of our making, and try to make the best of them. This has been Jewish history for almost two millennia of Galut, and it seems to hold good of the overwhelming majority of our people even today.
  This position, anomalous as it is, involves such a terrible waste of spiritual, moral and material energy, that we can afford it no longer; certainly not now, after the recent tragic blows threatening the very survival of the Jewish nation. In the past, against the non-Jewish, and mostly anti-Jewish, forces to which our external life was exposed, we have set the stronger forces of Jewish religious faith and hope which were rooted in the unimpaired and independent world of Jewish spiritual tradition. The Jew could face the strange world in which he lived as an onlooker, for in fact he lived in a different sphere, on a different level. Whatever the world thought of or did to him, he was safe and free in his own inner world.
  But the self-contained world of Jewish tradition has been disintegrating since the beginnings of the emancipation of the Jews. When the French Revolution threw open the gates of the ghettos of Europe, the Jew became a citizen of two worlds. There was the great heritage of thousands of years of Jewish history within him, and here, the young, victorious civilisation of Western Europe before him. The one had sustained him through the dark ages of human history, enabling him to outlive Caesars and tyrannies, and was still maintaining him; the other, the promising, the new and beautiful, was luring him on. Conflict between the two systems, of living was unavoidable, and the Jew was torn between them.
  The conflict was unavoidable not merely because the chance was new and alluring, but also because the seemingly very generous charter of liberties to the Jews contained a disastrous clause. This clause was plainly stated in one of the debates on Jewish emancipation in the French National Assembly, 1789, by Clermont Tonerre, when he said: “To the Jews as men everything, to the Jews as Jews nothing”.*<i class="footnote">* See S. Dubnow, <i>Neueste Geschichte d. Jüd. Volkes,</i> Einleitung.</i> The sponsors of Jewish emancipation expected from us the denial of our Jewishness. They hoped to settle the Jewish problem no more by killing and slaughtering Jews, which, after all, was a foul and bloody business, but by the more humane method of converting them into good Germans, good Frenchmen, etc., as the case might be. It never entered their minds to give us an opportunity of building up our own world; they invited us to take part in the world that was theirs. They “generously” invited us to be their guests and, naturally enough, expected us to take over the manners and morals of our hosts. This was the price we were asked to pay, and with its acceptance began the gradual process of dissolving and diluting the traditional and spiritual system of Judaism. Jews were prepared to pay. At first not the whole price: they made compromises. They exchanged part of their own world for the advantages of Western civilisation, thus breaking the unity of their own lives. The bonds with the heritage of the past were loosened; the more they loosened the easier it was for the next generation to free itself further, and the easier it was in the end to pay the whole price asked for, to present to the world the novel type of a Jew who was no Jew any more.
  It was the logical result of this kind of emancipation to empty the Jew of his Jewishness and to pump into the vacuum thus created the blessings of some one or other European national culture. “Jews as men” meant in fact Jews as Frenchmen, Englishmen, etc., for plain man is a term of natural and not of human history.
  The result of this process of emptying the Jew of all Jewish culture has been deplorable. It is most strikingly manifest in the comparatively younger Jewries of the United Kingdom and the U.S.A. There its devastations can often be observed in families under the same roof, where there are two or three generations living together. No outsider would believe that grandchildren and grandparents were of the same stock. It is mostly in the younger Jewries that one meets that unpleasant type of the “vacuum-Jew”, the Jew who has already abandoned all his traditional heritage but has done it so quickly that he has had no time to assimilate the standards of the surrounding civilisation; the type of Jew whose masquerade is only the empty shell of his old father who at least belonged somewhere, who had at least a spiritual motherland, and whose life was rooted in the great culture of his own nation. The “vacuum-Jew” is one of the most pitiable of all the Jewish types that have ever appeared on the motley scene of Jewish history. He is an object-lesson of the tragic waste of Jewish substance in the past hundred and fifty years of Jewish emancipation. All the time we have been living on this substance, and that Judaism survived at all was due to the fact that emancipation affected almost exclusively the Western European countries. The farther east one went, the less emancipation one found, the less was the necessity for Jews to betray their own way of living by assimilating themselves to the “civilised habits” of the rest of the world. A huge reservoir of Jewish life was accumulated in the countries of Eastern Europe from which the gradually decaying Jewries of the West have continually been replenished. German Jewry, for instance, in spite of its old and great communal tradition, was kept alive mainly by the large influx of Jews over Germany’s eastern borders. There were of course other forces also at work: for instance, Neo-Orthodoxy or even Jewish Liberalism, both trying to reconcile the two worlds that fought in the soul of the Jew, both trying to work out some cultural compromise in order to arrest the continued waste of Jewish substance. We shall have to discuss these attempts and the reason why they failed. However, they did have some retarding effect on the over-rapid flow of Jewish assimilation.
  It is not that we resent emancipation as such, but this emancipation was badly conceived and badly executed, by Jews as well as by non-Jews. There was not enough justice in the world to accept the fact of the existence of a Jewish nation and to acknowledge its right to live its own life, nor was there enough wisdom on the Jewish side to recognise the Trojan horse which had been offered in the shape of this emancipation. Assimilation was the condition on which European society was prepared to treat Jews as human beings, and Jews, always surprised if people are not harsh and cruel to them, always grateful for the least decency shown to them, were prepared to accept it. Judaism was quickly driving towards its end.
  Had this process been left to go on indefinitely, and had it further been aided by the penetration of decency into the “gallant” civilisation of Eastern Europe, at a not remote period Judaism would have been extinguished by the enchanting sorcery of human kindness towards us. Kindness, had it been practised long enough and with patience, would have brought about what thousands of years of barbarous persecution could not achieve, the end of the Jewish problem because the end of the Jew.
  Judging by the course of human history and by the nature of man, for the Jews to have expected such kindness to go on indefinitely was inexcusable folly. Anti-semitism in its modern shape was the world’s reply to such childish expectations. But with continued anti-semitism the old longing of the Jewish nation for its own place on this earth, the pious aspirations for a return to Zion, have been revived in the form of modern political and cultural Zionism. Zionism was the only positive and creative Jewish effort in that epoch of Jewish self-humiliation through assimilation. “We are one nation—One nation”, said Herzl, and a new epoch of Jewish history opened. With the creation of a Jewish life in Eretz Israel assimilation was doomed, though it still went on, until it received a mortal blow from a new barbarism which arose in the heart of Europe.
  
  
  
  When the ideas of the French Revolution burst the barriers of the ghettos in Western and Central Europe, the Jews emerged as heirs to a spiritual world which, though completely one-sided, had been an unquenchable source of strength to innumerable Jewish generations, keeping them alive in spite of the inhumanities of Christian Europe. On the other hand, the Jew entered this new Europe inexperienced, blinded with the bright light of a new promise, full of trust in his fellow-men, optimistic to a fault concerning human progress and the good will of nations. Today we are one of the most experienced nations on earth. If only we had the courage to face the lessons of our experiences! Our eyes have been forcibly opened, if only we would not shut them to the facts! We should then find that there is no room for confidence and over-optimism. We have gained a deep insight into the machinery of human society, and we find it difficult not to think of the ghastly grimace of human wickedness and stupidity that hides behind the lying mask of “progress” and “Western civilisation”. The heritage of our generation consists of this disillusionment, of the mistaken notions of the last four or five Jewish generations, and of what is left of Jewish substance after an epoch of senseless squandering by assimilation and brutal destruction by anti-semitic brigandage.
  A hundred and fifty years of Jewish emancipation has left us poor and miserable. We are weak as never before. German Jewry with its great communal traditions and important educational institutions is completely broken. Among all the Western Jewries it showed the greatest ability in finding a <i>modus vivendi</i> between the Jewish heritage of the past and the culture of modern Europe. Polish Jewry, the great Jewish reservoir, is prostrate, and however this war may end, generations must elapse before it can recover. Economic reconstruction will absorb most of the available energies of European and world Jewry. That is why we have to think now and to prepare now in order to infuse the right spirit into the coming period of reconstruction. We must find a way to make up for the squandering and the destruction. It is true that the world is at war, but this is no reason for evading the issue.
  We Jews are deeply interested not only in the outcome of this struggle, but also in the new order that is to follow. With this new turn in the history of the nations we enter on an entirely new phase of Jewish history as well. As the whole situation of our people has fundamentally changed, and this in a world which in itself is undergoing the most drastic transformation, it is the duty of every thinking Jew to consider the consequences of this change on the general direction of Jewish life.
  The adaptation of Judaism to an entirely changed world is the great need of our generation and of many more to follow. It is a religious, cultural, and social task. Our political aims and methods must also be reconsidered. But whatever the new policy may be, it cannot be successful without a straightening out of the internal affairs of the whole Jewish nation. What we need is nothing less than the re-thinking of the whole Jewish position in modern terms and with full regard to the new circumstances.
  We must find our own place on this earth. There is no reason why we should give up our Jewish heritage for European civilisation. We may admire the technical achievements of this civilisation, but we are not impressed by its morality as applied to social life, or to the relations between nations, or to the treatment of the weak and poor. For two thousand years this civilisation that has never tired of emphasising that it goes back to a religion of Love has been arguing with the sword. We are not impressed. There never was more reason for preserving the whole system of our cultural and religious values than there is today. But this does not mean retiring from all contact with the outside world and building up some kind of spiritual ghetto. The conception of a place on this earth for us Jews involves in fact the establishment of normal relations with the nations around us, a thing that has not existed since the destruction of the Jewish state. The will-of-the-wisp of assimilation distracted our attention from it, for in its essence assimilation meant the abandonment of any desire whatever for normal collective relationships. Assimilation denied even the need for such relations, maintaining that each Jewry was a somewhat peculiar variant of its immediate surroundings. Only normalised relations will enable us to share in the responsibility of building a happier world together with other nations. This will make us comrades in the good work without ever compelling us to give up our own independent cultural and national existence.
  We are a long way from this ideal. Even when this war is over, and even if humanity and justice will be victorious we shall still be very far from it. The New World we have to envisage will be a revolutionary one. Some kind of effective federalism is essential to curb the evils of nationalism. In this process we shall again have to face the danger of assimilation, not now a national assimilation (i.e. assimilation to a ruling national group) but the more alluring and promising assimilation of revolutionary internationalism. Jewish youth will be powerfully attracted to it. In such circumstances the way for normalised relations will have to be prepared by a new conception of Jewish renaissance that will fit into the engaging picture of free national groups living in an international society. A new conception of the Jewish Ideal is overdue. It must become an important part of the rethinking of our present position.
  But we should go to work very cautiously. Revolutions and changes may be made with the best intentions: in the end everything will depend on man himself. And man changes only very slowly for the better. There is no reason for over-confidence, either in ourselves or in the nations. But a chance there is for all of us. Shall we use it—together?
  
  II; Dualism in the Life of the Modern Jew
  
  
  
  
  
  ORTHODOX AND LIBERAL ATTEMPTS
  AT THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM
  1
  EMANCIPATION came as a sudden change to the Jews. They were unprepared for it. The abolition of the ghettos made a strong wrench. From then on the life of the Jew ran simultaneously on two different tracks. The one was the new dominance of Western civilisation, the other the still authoritative order of the Jewish past. The more Jews became acquainted with the Western civilisation to which they were now introduced, the more did they realise the difference between the two outlooks on life. The triumphant scientific and industrial spirit of the 18th and 19th centuries brought with itself a world-wide crisis of religion which was felt by Western Jewries with especial vividness, due to the suddenness of the impact. It found them utterly unprepared, and in a position that was easily assailable. For Jewish religiosity went far back, to Biblical and Talmudical as well as mediaeval traditions. For centuries of ghetto-existence Judaism as such had had no spiritual contacts with the rest of the world. It remained untouched by the great changes outside its own sphere, until, as though after a long, long dream, the wand of emancipation awakened it to an unwonted reality. The effect was overwhelming, and the whole structure of Judaism was shaken.
  Confronted with the daring rationalism of modern Europe, Judaism became conscious of two perplexing questions. The first was a theological one, the critical question as to the truth of the religious teachings and traditions. The results of modern historical research and scientific progress, the new conceptions of the workings of nature, all tended to undermine fundamental religious beliefs which were deeply rooted in Bible and Talmud. The second problem, of less intrinsic importance but probably more pressing for the moment, was that of outer “forms” or of “language” in general. New generations of Jews were growing up and gradually becoming children of that critical and matter-of-fact epoch. To these new Jews Judaism was still speaking in the language of the past. Not only did the masses not understand Hebrew well and not only were they gradually forgetting it, but what was more, the style in which religious and moral teaching was expressed was strange to them. The images and similes in which eternal truth or wisdom had been taught, being derived from a naïve outlook on the universe and related to conditions which no longer existed, could not serve their intended purposes. A great deal of the old and revered forms of religious practice lost its appeal. This problem of the language, in its widest sense, was very serious in its consequences for it meant that the past was losing its instrument for handing down its import to coming generations. Gradually it became silent and dumb. Only seldom did it reply to the searching questions of the children of this new world.
  The “problem of the language” was not merely the question of understanding, nor the question of communicating the ideas of the past to the generations of the future. It had its bearing on that much weightier problem which we have called the theological one. For the real significance of the “language” which (including outer “forms”) any religious system uses to state its ideas lies in the fact that it is an attempt to name the nameless. The language of religion consists not merely of the generally accepted signs and symbols for things and actions, in its very essence it is the process, the great human endeavour to conceive the inconceivable. If you have no words for it, you have nothing. Every generation has either to adopt the language of the past or to formulate its own terms in naming the nameless. The lack of intelligible language everywhere, and especially here, destroys imagination and saps at its root every creative thought.
  
  
  
  In face of the new difficulties, modern Jewry, especially in Germany, produced two new movements. The one was Jewish religious liberalism, the other Neo-Orthodoxy.
  There is little question that by the overwhelming majority of its followers liberalism was not understood to demand religious convictions. It was religious indifference which made them liberal Jews. Liberalism was to the greater part of its adherents the most convenient way of escaping from religious responsibility without being compelled to give up the middle-class respectability of the “believer”. Liberalism as a mass movement was professed by a Jewish middle-class that was mainly interested in religion for the reason that it was part of the middle-class respectability to have some god and to believe in some kind of a religion, provided that neither of them interfered much with their daily affairs, for after all they were living in a “modern world”. The result was that for the bulk of its adherents liberalism had more to do with Jewish politics than with religion. It became identified with Jewish assimilation, and it never succeeded in pointing the way to any new shaping of Jewish religious life. This was mainly due to the inherent weakness of its doctrine. Liberal thinkers saw well enough the problems arising out of the new phase in the history of Jewry in Western and Central Europe. They usually saw them more clearly than their orthodox confrères because they were more critical, but they never succeeded in passing beyond the stage of criticism. They started with negative conviction, with disbelief in the traditional conceptions and formulae. But, unfortunately, the negative conviction was never followed by any positive belief. The leading thinkers of liberal Judaism spent all their energy in pointing out the “mistakes” of the past. They were busy telling us what was of no importance, with which part of religious tradition Jews could well dispense and still remain “good Jews”. Liberalism was like a dissecting laboratory in which a few experts, and many bunglers, tried their skill. It lacked the strength of constructive thinking. That is why it entirely failed to solve the great problems involved in adapting Judaism to the new epoch in human history. Liberalism never put forward a single creative thought, and could never formulate a connected system. It had no positive convictions; what it believed in could almost always be accepted by any “respectable and enlightened European”, for it was the “Zeitgeist” which dictated it. The offer of a Friedlaender*<i class="footnote">* See S. Dubnow, <i>Neueste Geschichte d. Jüd. Volkes</i>.</i> in 1799 to a leading Berlin Pastor to accept Christianity on condition that Jews would not be bound to the Christian dogmas was but the logical application of Jewish liberalism to Jewish politics. Whatever might be in vogue, generally acknowledged by “enlightened Europeans”, and respectable, be it Christianity, nationalism, imperialism or socialism, belief or disbelief, revolution or counter-revolution, would always become the substitute for the positive convictions lacking in Jewish liberalism. That space which in every religious system is taken up by the guiding ideas and their application to everyday life remained a vacuum in liberalism, and was bound to be invaded by any current watchword. Nothing shows more clearly the absence of any directive and constructive strength in liberalism than the fact that it never seriously tried to formulate its own Shulchan Aruch. With every religious movement authority must be vested somewhere or in something. There was, however, no place for the idea of religious authority within the framework of Jewish liberalism. Every liberal Jew, especially if he was a communal leader, was his own authority. Like a religious dictator he accepted traditions of the past or rejected them, he introduced new customs if he wanted to, or allowed the old ones to go on existing. Discrediting the belief in an historic revelation on Sinai, they authorised every paid minister of religion to become a possible source of new revelations.
  Everything could sail under the liberal flag if it only acknowledged the idea of monotheism. But one had often to wonder whether even this idea was sincere religious belief in God, or perhaps only disbelief in idolatry. Liberalism had only a negative criterion, it was non-orthodox: apart from this it could be almost anything. It drifted along without compass, carried by the tides of the day.
  While developing its “negative theology” liberalism tried courageously to tackle the “problem of language”. The reforms mainly affected the synagogue as almost the only place where liberal religious life was active. Soon the language of the country was introduced, gradually replacing more and more of the Hebrew. The new prayers were written in perfect English, German, etc., written for praying purposes; as ordered by mighty communal leaders, decided on by a conference of well-educated liberal rabbis. They were composed by some official sitting comfortably in his study in an easychair, and then read as a prayer in the House of God. Written they were, but not prayed. Naturally, the whole form and style of the Service had been reformed; but the new style was without tradition, without a past, it was the mechanical imitation of forms which had their right place in the churches whence they had been borrowed but which, torn from their organic background, became empty and meaningless. Reform, whatever its justification, cannot be successfully undertaken without genuine and well-directed religiosity. The fact that existing forms are not adequate is in itself no guarantee that the newly introduced ones will prove so.
  Neither problem of modern Jewry has ever been solved by Jewish liberalism. Impatient as it was, it took the easy step of cutting through the Gordian knot. It had not the strength to bear the strain that was imposed upon modern Jewry by the dualism of its existence. It could have been a good question-mark, pointing clearly at the gravity of the situation; trying, however, to pose as a full-stop, giving senseless verbose replies to weighty questions, it became one of the most tragic aberrations of Jewry, a move towards the complete jettisoning of Judaism. Its devastations became sadly manifest in the dreary hour of Jewish destiny in the Third Reich, when the Jewish masses, cut off from the “Zeitgeist”, were thrown back on to their Jewish position and thus grew aware of their spiritual helplessness and the emptiness within them, after they had lost their share in the culture of the country. Whatever the intentions of liberalism might have been, its historic result was not reform but the dissolution of the essence of Judaism.
  
  
  
  A far more successful attempt to face and to solve the problems of a dualistic existence was that of Neo-Orthodoxy, especially in Germany, whence it spread to many other countries. That it was a far more serious experiment than liberalism is easily shown by the fact that it succeeded in creating a type. The modern orthodox Jew was a new Jewish type. One is almost tempted to say that all orthodox Jews in Germany in some way looked alike even externally. It was possible to recognise them at a glance; even their houses were “furnished” in the same “orthodox” style. Neo-Orthodoxy succeeded in doing something which liberalism never thought of trying; it created a style of its own, a style of thinking and living.
  Whereas liberalism yielded more and more under the stress of the conflict, abandoning position after position, and not knowing where to make a halt, Neo-Orthodoxy formulated its own ideology. Indeed, through the vigour of its ideology it dominated the entire private and public life of its fellowship. The principle of “Torah im Derech-Eretz” formulated by S. R. Hirsch, meaning the combination of Torah with Western civilisation, was made by the neo-orthodox communities the basis of a complete system. It enabled them to found, for instance, an entirely new type of Jewish school, with a very high educational standard, from which Jewish youth could proceed to the university or, as often happened, to one of the modern Yeshivot in the West; even a course at a Yeshivah in Eastern Europe would sometimes be an organic continuation of the curriculum. The Yeshiva of the East experienced its renaissance in the neo-orthodox communities. The new ideology was applied with great vigour and energy to all walks of modern life. The contribution of the new movement to the preservation of Judaism in Western Europe can hardly be overestimated. Whatever remained of Judaism remained in spite of liberalism, and was a result of Neo-Orthodoxy. It might even be said that to some extent Jewish liberalism itself owed its survival to the invigorating influence that radiated from the schools of Hirsch and Hildesheimer.
  “Torah im Derech-Eretz” was a great success indeed. What it aimed at was the preservation of the “old wine in new bottles”, and this it did achieve. Naturally, it had to make many a compromise that, judged by the old orthodoxy of Eastern European countries, was a departure from the true way; it had, however, the courage to take a staunch stand on all the fundamental teachings and religious commandments of traditional Judaism.
  However, the question we have here to ask is: Did Neo-Orthodoxy really achieve a reconciliation between the two opposing worlds? Did Neo-Orthodoxy mean spiritual harmony between the dynamic civilisation of Europe and the tradition-bound and static culture of Judaism? Surely not. Neo-Orthodoxy was lacking in all the essential requisites for performing such a task. The dynamic strength of Western civilisation was rooted in modern scientific method. Any accommodation with modern civilisation had to mean accommodation with science. Neither orthodox nor liberal thinkers realised that this was the crux of the whole problem. In spite of the great number of scientists of Jewish origin, the scientific knowledge of specifically Jewish thinkers and their interest in science was negligible. Hence they were not qualified even to begin to tackle the real problem. In fact, hardly any of the leading apologists of modern Jewry were ever seriously aware of this aspect of the controversy. What they attempted was an accommodation with philosophy and Bible criticism. And this endeavour too did not lead to the rise of a new orthodox philosophy of religion, or to fundamentally new research work in the study of the Bible. Naturally enough, orthodoxy was not in need of a New System, for it was deeply rooted in the traditions of the past. But had Neo-Orthodoxy seriously tried to reconcile Western civilisation and Jewish traditionalism, and even only partly succeeded in the task, it would necessarily have produced a new orthodox theology and a new orthodox conception of the Bible. This, however, was not achieved.
  What Neo-Orthodoxy did succeed in creating was a cleverly thought out system of defence against the encroachments of the “Zeitgeist”. Neo-Orthodoxy was a strong defensive position, but it had no genuine philosophy or scientific interest of its own: it was defending, replying to attack from without. Its philosophy was apologetic, as was the biblical research work it had undertaken. Its success was pragmatic, i.e. it was able to render bearable for a great many the strain of the contradictions in the life of the modern Jew. This alone was a great achievement. But as the strength of Neo-Orthodoxy lay in its practicability, so did its weakness. It could only work in a particular environment created by certain definite social factors.
  The dominant figure in the neo-orthodox community was the typical middle-class Jew, the Baal-Habayis, the man in a fairly safe and comfortable position economically, intelligent but not inquiring, efficient in business, and well assured that when he retired his children would be left to carry on. The Baal-Habayis, as modern orthodox Jewry knew him, was the product of generations of relative social security and growing economic activity. This satisfied type of Jew was the backbone of Neo-Orthodoxy, that was the main reason of its practical success. For the Baal-Habayis was by nature uncritical; his attitude to life was not that of the restless scientist, nor that of the searching philosopher. He was intelligent enough to recognise the problems which are raised by the “Zeitgeist”, but the “Zeitgeist” of today is usually the science and philosophy of yesterday. That is why the accommodation with the “Zeitgeist” may be a practical success without achieving a reconciliation, even a <i>modus vivendi</i>, between religious traditionalism and the world of advancing knowledge. Only the Baal-Habayis could be satisfied with such an accommodation between orthodoxy and the “Zeitgeist”. Only for him did the “Zeitgeist” represent science and knowledge; only he could think that the new orthodox apologetic was theology; only he could admire in merely good and intelligent sermons an adequate neo-orthodox philosophy; only he looked upon new commentaries in the homiletic style as a real reply to the problems of critical research. The Baal-Habayis was neither a philosopher nor a scientist; nor was he—on the other hand—a Talmid Chacham, i.e. a real scholar in the knowledge of traditional Judaism. A philosopher would have seen the problems sharply defined and would have noticed that there was no real reply forthcoming to his critical questions; the Talmid Chacham, on the other hand, because of his genuine Jewish knowledge, would have felt the strangeness of the world represented by the “Zeitgeist”. He would certainly not have felt satisfied, always aware as he would have been of the contradictions of his modern Jewish life, of the dualism of Jewish existence within the circle of Western civilisation. Only because the Baal-Habayis, to whom Neo-Orthodoxy appealed, was at bottom an Am-Haaretz, really a layman, both as regards modern scientific methodology and knowledge of traditional Judaism, could Neo-Orthodoxy become a great practical success. The leaders and thinkers of Neo-Orthodoxy represented the embodiment of the genius of the Baal-Habayis; this was the source of their practical strength as well as of their philosophic-theological weakness. The strain of modern life had been rendered by them endurable, but the dualism remained; the real problems had been shelved, not solved.
  With the breakdown of German Jewry the main strength of Neo-Orthodoxy has been annihilated. One cannot believe that the movement will be revived in its old shape in any other country in the world. For the great transformation of the world will involve the disappearance of the Baal-Habayis as Neo-Orthodoxy had known him; the social factors which alone made him possible will be non-existent. And to a restless, searching, critical, and revolutionary world Neo-Orthodoxy can offer very little. A solution of the social problems arising from the modern industrial era was never to be looked for either from the neo-orthodox piety of the Baal-Habayis or from the liberal indifferentism of middle-class respectability.
  
  III; Galut, or the Breach Between Torah and Life
  
  
  
  
  
  TODAY we are just as far from the solution of the religious and cultural problems of modern Jewry as we were when these problems first appeared in the last century. The position, however, is much worse now than it was then. For, firstly, we have no longer the single-minded strength and vitality of the ghetto behind us. In its place we see a succession of gradually declining Jewish generations. This is not a very encouraging background. Much of our former strength has been wasted. We are very much weaker than, say, a hundred and fifty years ago. Besides, today we are living in a restless world, a world of gigantic transformations in which all the fundamentals of human life are being critically reviewed. The whole world is being re-moulded. Amidst the turmoil of these transformations—which, as usual, are especially felt and suffered by Jews—we carry the additional load of our own Jewish problems. In such circumstances to prepare the Jewish future, after an unfortunate epoch of misapplied Jewish emancipation, is a task more formidable than probably any other Jewish generation has had to face since Jews have lived in exile. It will not do for us to try to unload our difficulties onto others. For in this respect the nations are very honest: they always bring the load back to us whenever we try to discard it. Besides, however keen Jewish youth may be on playing its part in the rebuilding of a happier world, we shall never find our appropriate place in life unless we have already managed to solve the problems of Judaism. But before this can be undertaken we have to face unflinchingly and sincerely the real problem of our existence.
  We have tried to show how both liberalism and orthodoxy have failed in their attempts. In fact, as theologies or philosophies both already belong to the past—(in practice they may persist through <i>vis inertiae</i> for quite a long time yet). What we have to consider is why they have failed. We believe that, from the very beginning, both attempts were doomed to failure. In order to understand this we must consider one hard fact of our life in Galut: the rigidity of the structure of Judaism as it has been handed down to us.
  Our Judaism, as we know it today, is based on the Talmud. Now, the Talmud is a very great work. It is a pity that under the influence of stupid, ignorant, and mischievous non-Jewish misrepresentation there are so many Jews who look upon it as a work of hair-splitting Pharisaism. On the contrary, it is a wonderfully vivid record of the religious, cultural, and social life of the entire Jewish nation, covering a period of at least seven centuries (this without taking into account the old and usually anonymous parts of the Mishnah which go back almost to Bible times). There is every reason for a Jew to take pride in this great creation of his nation.
  The antecedents of Talmudic Judaism were far different from those of the contemporary Christian civilisation. Its memories went back to Ezra and Nehemiah, to Isaiah and Jeremiah, to Hosea and Amos; its actual everyday life was imbued with the Bible. The Talmud came into existence because a whole nation, and not just a few saints, took the Bible seriously, and tried to make it the very foundation of their everyday life. The teachers of the Talmud wore the mantle of the prophets. It is, therefore, misleading to say that the Talmud closed about 500 C.E. It would be more correct to say that it was concluded in 1300 A.I. (i.e. after Isaiah). When the last word was inserted in the Talmud, Judaism was looking back over thirteen centuries of the prophetic teaching. This was not the world of 500 C.E. Thirteen hundred years of prophetic tradition, lived and taught, produced a world much nearer to us than its contemporary world of Christian civilisation. The great teachers of the Talmud are even today “modern personalities” in a much deeper sense than many of the great Europeans ever have been, their message is still to be taken to heart, although it is the message of a life that was actually lived many centuries ago.
  Within the Talmud since its conclusion all religious and spiritual authority in Judaism has been centred. Every decision in Jewish life, great or small, has been taken in accordance with Talmudic authority. This was an historic necessity in the life of a nation that had no state of its own, that was dispersed all over the world and the branches of which were continually in danger of extermination. Such a nation had to vest its unifying authority somewhere where it did not depend either on geography or on material well-being, the two factors over which the Jewish people had no control. The Talmud became the spiritual authority—voluntarily accepted by the whole nation. Jews were persecuted, murdered, chased about in the world, catastrophe following upon catastrophe, but the unifying authority remained firm all the time, for it was rooted in the voluntary acceptance of spiritual values. The Talmud was the most successful experiment in the history of national constitutions, in that it worked without any executive power and without any compulsion. It preserved a whole nation against the continuously stupid, cruel, and wicked enmity of the entire world. That, notwithstanding its physical weakness, there still exists a Jewish nation which has witnessed the breakdown of mighty empires and of all kind of gigantic tyrannies, that it is still there, young in spite of the heavy burden of its years, hopeful in spite of all its terrible disappointments—all this we owe to the Talmud.
  Nevertheless, we made a very serious sacrifice in constituting that great work as it stood at 500 C.E. the only authority in Judaism, an authority that could be commented upon but never over-ruled. Until the end of the fifth century C.E. authority rested in living institutions—in Eretz Israel in the office of the Nasi, the Prince of the Jews, and his court; in Babylon in the person of the Resh Galuta, the Head of the Exile, and the Presidents of the great Babylonian academies, the M’tivtot. Though these institutions were more and more losing their influence (as we shall see later), yet they were <i>living</i> authority. Living authority is always elastic, for it has in itself the possibility of development, it is able to make its decisions in accordance with the necessities of life. It can guide and direct life, not in the shape of compromise, but by applying to it the living spirit of tradition, thus not only preserving traditional values but developing them in faithfulness to their intrinsic sense. Living authority is always built upon tradition, but as it is alive, it can only exist so long as there is a possibility of an organic evolution in the application of tradition. When owing to the hard facts of Jewish history, owing to the insecurity of Jewish life, living authority was no longer practicable and authority had to be transferred to the book, the Talmud, the records of a once-living authority, Judaism had to sacrifice the possibility of organic development, it renounced the great principle of the evolution of traditional teachings. The structure of Judaism became rigid, for it had lost its evolutional strength. For many centuries this was not felt to be hampering Jewish existence. The Jewish people were living in general amidst semi-barbaric surroundings, however high-sounding their names might be, which were at a stage of cultural development far behind the world of the Talmud.
  But when, through Jewish emancipation, European Jews entered the circle of modern civilisation and experienced the conflict between that new world and their own Jewish world of old, the rigidity which they had voluntarily incurred meant lack of adaptability and rendered all the important problems arising out of that conflict insoluble. Jews began to share more and more in a life that was rapidly changing, whilst at the same time they had to remain in a spiritual and religious world that had lost its capacity to develop. In such a situation, all attempts at reconciliation and harmony were doomed to failure. Nothing else was possible but the Liberal method of breaking the rigidity and thus breaking Judaism (for there was no other Judaism apart from that which was traditionally bound), or the unsatisfactory compromise of Neo-Orthodoxy, a compromise which had to be renewed with every changing day.
  
  
  
  In order to understand how serious is the spiritual position of Judaism, we must not forget that Judaism originally was not lacking in the potentiality of development. The prophets and their successors, the teachers of the Mishnah and G’mara, were no orthodox Jews in the sense in which we understand the word today; and to try and compare them with anything Liberal would be quite devoid of meaning. The Talmud tells us, for instance, that Rabbi Eliezer, in a controversy with Rabbi Joshua, called for miracles to testify to the truth of his opinion, and in the end a voice from Heaven (Bat-Kol) declared that everywhere the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer was decisive Halachah. And yet Rabbi Joshua was able to say, “The Torah is no more in the Heaven, we are not obliged to obey the miraculous voice from Heaven”. Such a Judaism, claiming an independence that could not be influenced either by miracles or even by a direct “message from Heaven”, was surely not lacking in boldness or intellectual courage. In an Aggada, in the tractate M’nachot (29 b), the story is told that when God introduced Moses into the Beth-Hamidrash of Rabbi Akiba, Moses was unable to follow the lectures of that great master, and only regained his peace of mind when he heard Rabbi Akiba replying to a pupil that his (Rabbi Akiba’s) teaching was nothing new but tradition directly received by Moses from Sinai. An Aggada like this expresses in a striking manner the evolutionary unfolding of Judaism in the course of Jewish history. Not even Moses himself is able to recognise the Judaism of Rabbi Akiba at first glance, for it is somehow different, something new. Nevertheless it is still Torat Mosheh, for it is indeed the teaching of Moses, organically unfolding itself in the life of the nation. Everywhere in Talmud and Midrash we meet this courage to apply the spirit of the ancient word to new situations and in so doing to give the word a new shape. The Torah is not eternal in the sense that it retains for all time that shape in which it was first understood by men. It is eternal because it has the miraculous power to reveal to each generation new meanings which are yet the old ones, which have waited just for this generation to be lifted into the sun of the passing day.
  The rigidity and inflexibility of Judaism, as it has been handed down to us since the conclusion of the Talmud, is not of the essence of Judaism. The static quality is certainly no religious dogma, nor is it any principle of religious belief. Had it been so, the exigencies of our life would have jettisoned such dogmas and principles of faith long ago, without endangering the essential contents of Judaism. As it is, the rigidity is something far more serious, for it is a concrete fact. Judaism has indeed lost its flexibility, its strength of development. You may override principles, you cannot overlook historic facts. For that reason any attempt to reform Judaism or reshape it must fail. Reform is only possible where there is flexibility. It is folly to treat Judaism today as if it were flexible. Whoever tries to break its rigidity is not building anything new; he is only destroying the old mould that was useful for so many centuries and which even today is more useful than the shortsighted innovations by which reformistic and liberal bodies are bringing about the dissolution of Judaism.
  Before we can at all approach the task of solving the manifold problems of modern Jewry with any hope of success, Judaism must regain its original capacity for development. Nothing will ever be achieved, and we shall be facing ultimate disaster, if we fail to understand this. Before anything can be undertaken to overcome the unbearable dualism of our modern existence, we shall have to bring about those conditions in which alone Judaism may unfold itself naturally in the line of previous Jewish history.
  
  
  
  Is it possible to bring about such conditions? On the answer to this question depends the future of Judaism.
  We are convinced that this great change in the structure of Judaism is at least a <i>theoretical</i> possibility. Whether it will be actually achieved depends on whether Jewry understands the gravity of the present situation, and whether it will concentrate all its spiritual energies on the task.
  But before we can deal with the manner in which the change may be affected, we have to go somewhat deeper into the cause of the present rigidity in the structure of Judaism. It is not enough to say that with the closing of the Talmud Judaism lost its evolutionary capacity. For the closing of the Talmud itself was due to necessities of the time: it was in itself the effect of certain historical causes. To understand the underlying causes we must re-state some fundamental facts concerning Judaism.
  The teachings of the Torah were not suspended in midair: they were closely related to living human institutions. Judaism looks upon life as the raw material which has to be shaped into conformity with the spiritual values contained in the Bible. Judaism is a great human endeavour to fashion the whole of life, every part and every moment of it, in accordance with standards that have their origin in unchallengeable authority. Its aim is not merely to cultivate the spirit, but to infuse prosaic everyday existence with the spirit. Its great interest is not the human soul, but the living human body controlled by the forces of the soul. It is in and of this world. It will never yield to the obstinacy of that gigantic mass of raw material which we call Life, and which lends itself so hardly to moulding by the spirit. It will never reconcile itself to a divided existence of which part is Caesar’s and part God’s. The whole of life is of one piece, the whole of life is the testing place for man. Judaism is in love with life, for it knows that life is God’s great question to mankind; and the way a man lives, what he is doing with his life, the meaning he is able to implant in it, is man’s all-important reply. Actual life is the great partner to the spirit, without the one the other is meaningless. The teachings of the Torah can therefore reveal their real sense only when there is a concrete reality to which they can be applied. On the one hand we have Torah, trying to give shape to that raw lump of life which is so reluctant and evasive; on the other hand, each bit of Torah-shaped life—in social institutions, in economic arrangements, in the relations between man and his neighbours, in the street and in the market as well as in the places of worship—living Torah reacting on the very intentions of Sinai. For just as Torah shapes life, so does Torah-shaped life, in its turn, direct and thus unfold Torah. It is as if Torah was using its own experiences to determine its next new phase. And in each new phase it strives again to re-fashion our lives, which, newly fashioned, will again affect the meaning of the teaching as revealed during its preceding phase in history. And so on to eternity; Torah leading life, and Torah-led life unfolding Torah. This is the inner meaning of the partnership between Torah and prosaic, every-day existence; and out of this partnership emerges a Judaism capable of unlimited development. It is the spirit developing life, and that new life with its new necessities challenging the spirit to unfold new meanings. The eternity of the Torah lies in being able to accept the challenge and to reveal new meanings from among those latent in the original Sinaitic tradition.
  But this is only possible as long as the partnership exists, as long as there is a corporate Jewish existence controlled by a group of people who are prepared to realise Torah in everyday life. Torah could unfold itself as long as there was such a corporate Jewish existence to be influenced, and which as Torah-controlled was able to exercise reciprocating influence upon Torah. (The great record of such mutual guidance is the Talmud.) The degree to which the corporate life exists is the measure of the evolutionary strength of Judaism. As we are losing that life Judaism is losing elasticity. Naturally, Jewish corporate life does not mean only the synagogue or Hebrew classes, nor the intimacy of the famous “Jewish home”. It implies the total life of the Jewish people under the control of the Jewish people. This kind of Jewish reality we lost centuries ago; we lost it with the destruction of the ancient Jewish state, with the beginning of Galut. Large chunks of it remained for a time in Palestine, for even under Roman domination the country remained for a time Jewish; there were also conglomerations in Babylon and in other countries where Jews lived in close and large settlements. But even these remains gradually crumbled into smaller and smaller pieces. So that by the time the Talmud was closed, Judaism had in fact reached a point where development was no more possible, for the great partner of Torah, Jewish reality, was lost. From then on the Jewish nation has more and more been subjected to living conditions in the shaping of which as Jews they had no say whatever. The examples of Jewish communal autonomy in the centuries that followed were of great cultural and religious importance in their days, but they could not normalise the basic anomaly of Jewish existence. For Jews from now on had to bear in sufference an existence imposed upon them by others. The great spiritual tragedy of the Galut consists in the breach between Torah and Life, for Galut means the loss of Jewish-controlled environment, which as far as we Jews are concerned is the crux of the whole problem.
  It is incorrect to speak, as it is so often done among Jews, of the conflict between Judaism and modern life. For as yet there is no modern Jewish life existing: we are only sharing in modern non-Jewish conditions of life. Many of the baffling problems of modern Jewry entirely change their shape if we visualise them as set against a background of an environment which, however small, we Jews would control. For instance, the problem of observing the Sabbath in modern times is a very difficult one. For we are part of an economic system that works on Saturdays. Hebrew prayers represent another difficult problem, but only because life around us is not Hebrew. But how different the position would be if we had an economic system resting on Sabbath. What a great day the Sabbath could be to us! And if the mother tongue of our children was Hebrew, what a different meaning could be given to the services in the synagogue! What could we do with the Bible, with our Hebrew Bible!
  The conflict between Judaism and non-Jewish surroundings is always present, and does not present any theological or philosophical problem to us. For Judaism was never so ambitious as to try to dominate a non-Jewish environment. Being a Jew does not mean that one has to prove the compatibility of Judaism with a life built on non-Jewish foundations. It is, therefore, not right to call for the reform of Judaism under the pressure of the hard facts of modern life. It is certainly very uncomfortable to be a Jew in the midst of a Christian world, but a reform of Judaism on that ground alone means sacrificing Judaism on the altar of Christian civilisation for the sake of individual comfort. The only justification for a call to reform would be the exigencies of a Jewish-controlled environment: for instance, a modern Jewish life in an autonomous Eretz Israel. The necessities of Jewish life are necessities of Judaism. The demands of a Jewish-owned environment are justified demands on Judaism and must be satisfied by Judaism. But exigencies arising out of the anomaly of the “Christian existence” of Jews in the midst of Western civilisation, demands resulting from the difference between the rhythm of Judaism and some other civilisation, these are no problems of theology or philosophy; they are part of the great Jewish tragedy: they all go back to the political problem of the Galut. Naturally enough, they are influencing the religious and cultural atmosphere of Judaism. As to them we say, rather should we perish in defending Judaism than subject it to a reform that can only mean dissolution and destruction. Our “Christian existence” in the Galut is no reason whatever to reform Judaism. As long as Jews live in Galut the conflict between Judaism and non-Jewish surroundings will remain; we shall have to endure the strain, that cannot be helped. (Maybe we can reduce and alleviate the strain very considerably, but of that later on.)
  Any further development of Judaism is only possible by the creation, somewhere on this earth, of a complete Jewish environment, i.e. a reality that is wide enough to embrace the whole existence of a Jewish national unit. Only by the creation of such a Jewish environment can we give back to Torah the great partnership of Life which alone is able to free Judaism from its present Galut-conditioned rigidity, and create the circumstances in which evolution will again be possible.
  True enough, in a modern and autonomous Jewish society there will be many conflicts arising out of the modern organisation of life, and there will always be the eternal discussion between religion and science; but a Judaism again rendered elastic by Jewish-owned life will be able to face these conflicts, unfolding itself in the struggle as it does so.
  Let us consider for a moment in this connection the oft heard argument for the renewal of the institution of the Sanhedrin, with the object of creating an authoritative body to decide religious questions in accordance with the necessities of the day. This idea is nothing more than thoughtless play with a word which in spite of its historic associations would be void of any meaning at the present moment. The Sanhedrin is not the academic gathering of seventy-one illustrious Jewish scholars. It is an organ of a really corporate Jewry. It is an institution of a Jewish nation that is master in its own house, and its function is to keep order in that house. It is no academy for the furtherance of the knowledge of Judaism. The Sanhedrin can only be a constitutional body in the Jewish State, in an autonomous Jewish society, or, at least, in a self-contained society in which the great factors of life are Jewish. Its authority is not that of knowledge nor that of election; its authority has its roots in Jewish corporate existence. For that reason it could never be established outside Eretz Israel, and even there it ceased to exist when Jewish life there had entirely lost its autonomy.
  
  IV; Healing the Breach
  
  
  
  
  
  THE creation of an autonomous Jewish body corporate is the <i>sine qua non</i> for the regeneration of Jewish religion and culture. Without it further development of Judaism is impossible; without it Judaism can hardly be saved in the present circumstances. On the other hand, such autonomy does not of itself mean religious and cultural regeneration, nor does it automatically bring about the healing of the breach between Torah and Life. On the contrary, its reappearance may emphasise the breach by revealing the contrast between the new form of life and the world of an ancient tradition.
  For two generations now we have been witnessing the heroic efforts of an enthusiastic Jewish youth to create for itself a new Jewish life in Eretz Israel. In many aspects we can see clearly the regeneration of the Jew. A new Jewish type has arisen that is far different from the crippled, stunted, and often degenerate Jew of the Galut; a new youth in which any nation might take pride; courageous, with a straight back, heroic and beautiful, but, unfortunately, hardly recognisable as Jewish. Is this modern Hebrew in modern Palestine still a Jew? Of course he is according to the Nuremburg Laws, for racially he certainly is of Jewish stock. But can he be looked upon as continuing the spiritual life of Judaism? Is he handing on the great heritage of the past to coming generations? Is he giving back the newly-created Jewish life of Eretz Israel to Torah? In general, not; and many of his representatives will declare that they have never intended to do so. What was intended and to a considerable degree achieved was the regeneration of our people through the Jewish national idea and through the work to be done in its realisation. What, as yet, we have failed to achieve is the regeneration of Judaism. The new Jewish reality in Palestine is, for the time being, overwhelmingly of a nature that cannot be reconciled with the aims and intentions of historic Judaism.
  Let us face these facts calmly. Not in the silly querulous mood of those self-righteous people who are always prepared to blame others, and to pry into their “sinful hearts”, repeating <i>ad nauseam</i> phrases which are void of any meaning for those to whom they are addressed. This sort of “criticism” will lead us nowhere. Rather than criticise let us try to understand.
  The Jewish pioneers who followed the call for national revival in Eretz Israel had literally to take their lives in their hands. After two millennia of Galut the task of rebuilding the land and rejuvenating the nation was a living dream unparalleled in human history. A nation for many centuries deprived of the possibility of ordinary manual labour, without agricultural experience, estranged from a natural life on the land, was returning to its ancient country that had been deserted for so many generations, a barren people back to a barren land. Over and above the recalcitrance of the neglected land itself, there were other difficulties; there was a whole nation in ruins, there was poverty and misery, there was lack of sympathetic understanding even among Jews, but in spite of all this, there were the faithful too, with the unquenchable desire to build.
  To achieve what has been achieved in such circumstances was only rendered possible by a fanatical will, fanatically concentrated on that one aim, to build. The least success could only be achieved by incomparably great efforts. There was only one way open, to concentrate all the available energy, physical as well as spiritual, on the one task in hand. Everything had to be made subservient to the one aim of returning to the land. This new generation consisted of fanatics and builders. For this reason it was one-sided; and so it had to be. No other Jewish type would ever have succeeded at the beginning. The “Fanatics” had neither time nor energy to spend on the very intricate problem of fitting traditional Judaism into the new framework they were creating. For them to succeed there was only one way open, to find the shortest way from the “Bitzah” (the swamps in Palestine) to the sound foundations of a new “Meshek”. It is futile to blame anybody for such a development; it was dictated inexorably by the prevailing circumstances. To be blamed are those who leant back in their comfortable easy-chairs to write verbose protestations, instead of joining in the work and showing practically how Torah was to be realised while creating the new Eretz Israel. It will ever remain a stigma on a great part of orthodox Jewry that they protested instead of encouraging, that they hampered instead of helping, that they stood behind instead of going in front, that they separated and did not join.
  There is another point that should be considered in this connection. Eretz Israel is Jewish <i>land</i>. Its requirements are of a different order from those of the single Jewish house, for instance, and of far wider scope. The observance of the Sabbath in the Jewish house, for example, is comparatively easy. The only thing one needs is a reliable “Sabbath Goy”. But what of a Jewish colony or a Kvutzah? Should it be handed over to the Sabbath Goy on every Saturday and on Holy-days? Should the whole economic system of the country be given over to the Sabbath Goy for fifty-two Saturdays and the several Holy-days of the year? We have only to picture such a thing to realise that it is an impossibility. Are there indeed shortsighted people among us who ask for such arrangements? Unfortunately, there are many champions of the Torah who are so far from understanding it as to believe that such unnatural arrangements are compatible with its intentions. There are innumerable difficulties arising from the Jewish life in Eretz Israel and hampering that life. As yet nobody has ventured to make the bold arrangements which could be looked upon as the answer of historic Judaism to the questions of a new day. What wonder then that the breach between Judaism and life not only continues to exist, but has been emphasised by the juxtaposition of the two, as has happened in Eretz Israel. Whatever the situation there may be, no one of us has the right to shift the responsibility to other shoulders. All have not a share in the successes in Palestine, but we are all responsible for the failures in the country. The failures in Eretz Israel are failures of the whole nation and of Judaism as such. What we have achieved has been in spite of our faults, wherever we have failed it is because of them.
  
  
  
  The most sympathetic understanding of the Zionist movement cannot deceive us into overlooking the fact that, as yet, we have achieved no success whatever in the matter of regenerating historic Judaism. And the Jewish national renaissance should be examined from this angle.
  Two thousand years of Galut have undoubtedly crippled us. We have to overcome the anomaly of our existence in exile; we want to normalise the social, economic, and political structure of the nation. All this can only be achieved by returning to Eretz Israel. For us the return is a necessity; we cannot survive without it. But do we intend to live exclusively by it? Is mere survival an ideal worth living for? What are we to do with our national regeneration? Is it to be an end in itself? Are we to emulate the “great Western civilisation” in this respect too: are we to become adepts in some form of European nationalism? Is all our endeavour to be directed towards becoming a “respected” member of the family of nations, towards the restoration of “Jewish prestige”? Do we intend to become, maybe, even a “great nation”? If so, we say, God guard us against such happiness and greatness! Is it really such a worthy ideal for us to show to the nations that we too are capable of “great deeds”, of deeds which they themselves must admire? Like the liberal assimilationist who was so very eager to prove to his non-Jewish neighbour that an “Israelite” could also be a good citizen, are we going to Palestine now in order to live there too in the public gaze, to demonstrate to the world that a Hebrew can be just as gallant as any other of the “gallant nations” of Europe? If so, this Jewish renaissance is just assimilation on a national scale. In the emancipation period Jewish religious and political assimilation emulated European liberalism; now in a Europe gone mad with nationalism we imitate this newest fashion of the day. The assimilation of emancipation and this kind of national renaissance would affect the same result—the destruction of Judaism; the one through individual, the other through collective assimilation. It may be granted that national renaissance is a better policy than assimilation, it may secure more personal happiness for its followers—at least for the time being. The controversy between the two policies, however, would become entirely opportunistic. Maybe that it is better policy to be a Zionist than an assimilationist. But what of that? What if people still prefer to be English or French or American for the obvious reason that they have been living in those countries for generations and not in Palestine, that they speak the language of their native countries and not Hebrew, that they are imbued with the spirit and culture of modern Euopean states and not with that of the Bible or the Talmud? What if they do not appreciate the new Hebrew literature which, however wonderful in itself, is still but a poor thing compared with any of the literatures of the European countries! If Hebrew nationalism is to be a mere copy of European, its controversy with assimilation becomes a struggle between temperaments rather than ideals.
  What is more, Hebrew nationalism provides a kind of justification of assimilation. For assimilation may not necessarily mean the imitation of the evil side of Western civilisation, whereas Hebrew nationalism is emulating its most dangerous idol, Nationalism. We Jews should understand this, for again and again we have had the unhappy experience of seeing the true nature of nationalism without the mask. We ought to know by now that it is capable of being the worst murderer of history; its patriotic guise, lending it the mantle of the noble and the good, make it the more dangerously efficient. Have we forgotten all this so soon, we who have had the unique but unenviable opportunities of seeing it at work? Have we lived and suffered for so long only to fall victim to this infantile disease of half-grown Europeans? Are we now to become a “great nation” and live for our “honour” only? Should it not rather be our duty to exterminate this scourge of mankind, at any rate, among Jews! Why are we so timid in stating clearly our own position? In accordance with our historical experience and the highest teaching of Judaism we are cosmopolitans, we are internationalists and pacifists.
  The Biblical conception of the Jewish State is the Kingdom of God on Earth. The basic demands of Judaism compel this outlook, the logical consequence of which for the modern man is opposition to the idol of the independent nationalistic state that is its own end and purpose: this will forever remain the great historic tradition of Judaism; whoever breaks with it, breaks with Judaism. True enough, as long as there was a Jewish State in history it was more often heathen than Jewish, which means, in fact, that it was mostly “European” in its essence, although on the Asiatic level of development. It is true that the history of the ideal of God’s State is mainly a history of failures. But Judaism was always conscious of the failure, for it remained always conscious of the ideal. The histories of the heathen Hebrew states in ancient Judah and Israel concern us only in as far as they show the relentless struggle of Judaism against the obstinacy of human hearts clinging to their religious, social, and political ideals. The heroes of that period were not Saul or Ahab but Samuel and Elijah, not the great kings but the great prophets, not the warriors but the teachers. And they, our prophets and teachers, were fighting uncompromisingly against much which we should call in modern terms nationalism. The great traditions of the prophets were carried on by the scribes, the pharisees, who were persecuted and slaughtered by the great kings because they would not consent to compromise with Caesar and his heathen creations. They did not choose to give him what he claimed as his; for nothing was his in the eyes of those for whom there was only one truth and one God, and everything on earth was to serve His Kingship in one great unity of purpose.
  We must not forget for a single moment that throughout all the failures to realise it the ideal came nearer and nearer to fulfilment, until it had—at least in part—triumphed at the tragic moment of Jewish history when the Roman legions successfully stormed the walls of Jerusalem. Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai smuggled out of the beleaguered city in a coffin was the embodiment of the ideal triumphant over the obstinacy of human hearts. The establishment of the Kerem b’Yavneh was not a sudden change over from one form of Jewish existence to another; it was not a new invention of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai in order to enable the nation to go on living, it was no clever trick frustrating the natural course of events, as it seems so often to be misread by modern Hebrew nationalists; it was rather an organic link in the continuity of the history of Judaism. The Jewish State lay prostrate, but in the midst of its destruction Judaism was conquering the Jewish nation. In accordance with the teaching of its prophets and their rabbinical successors the Jewish nation had overcome the seductions of such molochs of nationalism as national pride and national prestige.
  From this aspect, the disaster of the destruction of the Jewish State in 70 C.E., and the endless Galut that followed it, are seen to be necessary links in the long chain of the history of Judaism. We have already remarked that, at last, the ideal of the State of God on earth had partly triumphed. Partly we say, because it had won over the heart and will of the remnant of the people, but could not maintain the concrete Jewish State as well. Judaism was winning the nation, but it lost certain elements which are indispensable to the existence of a nation. For now that for the first time in its history the nation as such was prepared to build the State of God on earth it had, alas, nowhere on earth a place to build it. The concrete bases of its life were more and more delivered up to and determined by factors outside its control. This, however, was no mere accident; it was historic necessity. For no devotion and singleness of purpose on the part of one nation can ever succeed in establishing, let alone maintaining, the State of God in a world that is organised on lines constituting the very denial of such a state. We cannot say how far the ideals of the prophets with regard to national existence were already established within the Jewish State before its destruction; certainly the world would not accept them, and therein lay the weakness of the Kingdom. It has been said in modern times that the world cannot exist half free and half slave, far less is it possible to create a State of God in one corner of the earth amidst a world of imperial Caesars and power politics. The Jewish State had to go under because its heathen basis of power and might for the sake of power and might became meaningless to the nation; the State of God, however, could not be established because the rest of the world lived for nothing but power and might.
  Thus we went into Galut to bide our time there, to wait; to wait, however long it might be, until the time when the establishment of the State of God on earth might be attempted once more.
  Galut is no break in the history of Judaism: it is an inevitable step on the way to the final realisation.
  We have always seen in the Galut the “wrath of God poured out over us”, and so it was, always has been, when measured by the appalling suffering it entailed. It has crippled us, it has maimed us—bodily and mentally. But this unnatural mode of existence has brought with it at least one great blessing: it enabled us to live and to wait without being responsible for the course followed by the world in general. At the moment when the Jewish nation was prepared seriously to attempt the upbuilding of a State of God, it could not proceed because other nations were not yet ripe for such a venture; their exclusive devotion to might and pomp was not only a tragedy for the Jews—it was a world tragedy. Might and pomp, national honour and “greatness”, imperial majesty and power politics, are conceived in guilt and maintained in guilt. From the beginning of recorded history collective or national existence has always been bound up with crime. Consequently taking part in national life meant living in sin. Political transactions became synonymous with iniquity and corruption. There has been no place for us as Jews in international life. Our national history in Galut has always been passive and not active. We have had to accept the crumbs which “great civilisations” have graciously thrown out to us. All this has been unpleasant, but, we say, thank God for it. Let us thank God that it was not we who were throwing out these soiled crumbs to others. Let us thank God that we were not the masters but only the pariahs of these great civilisations; that we had no share in their criminal inhumanities. We have often been trampled upon, but let us thank God that it was not we who trampled upon justice, decency, freedom, human dignity, whenever it suited our selfish purposes. Let us be grateful to the Galut; it has freed us from the guilt of national existence in a world in which national existence meant guilt. We have been oppressed, but we were no oppressors. We have been killed and slaughtered, but we were not among the killers and slaughterers. We have been hunted from country to country but there were no fugitives fleeing from their homes because of fear of us.
  For this reason we see in the Galut no break in our history, but a very important phase in the realisation of Judaism. It is not passive resignation to an inevitable fate. It was no purposeless suffering, but suffering for the sake of an ideal to which we remained faithful at all costs. Galut was far more a blessing than a disaster. In the circumstances they <i>alone</i> served “who only stood and waited”.
  Let us also be just towards the Galut. Let us never forget that for centuries in the wretched, overcrowded, sordid ghettos—one of the crowning inhumanities of Western civilisation—there was more humanity, justice, and kindness than in the rest of Europe. Let us not forget the endless galaxy of truly great men and women who lived and worked in the Galut, children of the Galut, humbly righteous Jews and Jewesses. Let us not forget for a single moment that much of what we detest in the Galut, its squalid ugliness, its lack of harmony and beauty, is not Jewish but European: it is the stain of Europe on our life. The Galut-Jew, his bent back, his distorted features, his often undignified outer bearing, what else are these but the seal of his “masters” on his body. The outer wretched appearance of the Galut-Jew was the fitting counterpart of the moral wretchedness of the surroundings in which he had to live. It was not Jewish, it was the mark of Europe on the Jew.
  Let us be just towards the Galut! It has been a greater and worthier period of our history than the time of our independence in the past. We were incomparably more faithful to the ideals of the Bible in the Galut than we ever were in Bible times. Unfortunately, in the endless anomaly of Jewish suffering the greatness of Galut degenerated into assimilation. But woe unto us if the degeneration of the Galut should lead us to a Hebrew nationalism on the European pattern. The Jewish nation two thousand years ago grew out of this kind of wickedness and shortsightedness. Are we to relapse into it today? Is it for such “glorious times” we have been waiting? Do we intend to obliterate two thousand years of Jewish history and render sterile all the incredible sacrifice of numberless Jewish generations? Such a relapse would imply that the whole of Galut was a meaningless tragedy. Let us think again before we seek to make the change-over from Galut to Eretz Israel. Not every form of Eretz Israel is worth the trouble, and many a form could be unworthy of Judaism.
  
  
  
  Reason tells us that we cannot cancel the past; we cannot start Jewish history anew. If we sought survival on such terms, we should certainly go under. There is essentially no difference whether the dissolution of Judaism, and with it the disappearance of the Jew, is disguised as assimilation or as a perverted nationalism. True, national survival is only possible through return to Palestine, but survival is not an end in itself. Survival must serve—continuity. Survival must aim at creating those circumstances in which the next phase of the organic development of Judaism is possible. Organic development is not synonymous with reform. Reform is consciously undertaken in opposition to the past; organic development is natural growth in conformity with principles that have prevailed in the past. Organic development cannot be “made”; what we can do and must aim at is the creation of circumstances which make it possible. This is the only way of regenerating Judaism. Regeneration is not “a task to be tackled”, it must grow.
  There are two sources out of which it can emerge, the one historic Judaism, the other a new Jewish life constructed and run by Jews; and it must come from both these sources simultaneously. Both these main sources are present in Eretz Israel. There we already have Jewish life with its demands and its needs which cannot be overlooked. The authority of the living Jewish present will have to work miracles in freeing Judaism from its present Galut-conditioned rigidity, and stimulate to new phases of development. But before this can come about, the authority of the living present must recognise the spiritual authority inherent in the long past of our nation. It would be fatal if, because of the special form that Judaism had to take in the Galut, we should now deny its claim to determine the meaning and aims of this new life for which Judaism has been yearning for thousands of years. It would not only mean introducing the great spiritual tragedy of the Galut into Eretz Israel (the break between Torah and Life) but perpetuating it there. If it came to that, then this return to our ancient homeland would prove to be another tragic aberration of the Galut, and in Eretz Israel itself we should be farther away from “home” than we have ever been in the Galut. Continuity alone will lead us home; and continuity, as we understand it, does not mean a mere repetition of the past. It is the road along which to move into the future in faithfulness to the past. It is the only way of building “Alt-Neuland”.*<i class="footnote">* See the title of Th. Herzl’s famous novel.</i> That there should be some such continuity is, we think, widely felt in modern Palestine. The attempt to revive the Jewish festivals, for instance, is one of the many evidences of this tendency. The untiring endeavours of Bialik in the last years of his life aimed at fostering historic continuity.
  Return to Eretz Israel is a stirring ideal with a great moral appeal so long as Jews live in Galut. But once the Return has been achieved, and the homecomers have settled down, when the hard struggle to conquer the neglected soil is over, what then? If there be nothing more but the ideal of Return for the sake of return, disappointment is at hand, and emptiness lies ahead. Zionism is good for the Galut, it is bad for Zion. Those who see the menace clearly and feel the responsibility for averting it will naturally enough turn to historic Judaism for help. But, with the exception of Bialik, all we have witnessed so far in this direction is more like fumbling in the dark; incoherent attempts without a clear-cut programme, without knowledge of what we should be aiming at, without investigation of the conditions under which alone the appeal to historic Judaism can give us what we are in need of.
  To what extent such fumbling in the dark goes on is shown by the case of the Bachad, the Movement of Religious Pioneers for Palestine. Here we have an intelligent and very active group of chalutzim that has already achieved remarkable successes in the colonisation of the country, and established itself as a separate group within the Zionist movement, dedicating all its work in Eretz Israel to the ideal of the historic continuity of Judaism. Its basic formula “Torah va’Avodah—Torah and manual Labour”, under which alone this youth can envisage realisation of Judaism, is indeed a great and moving call. But is it yet a working programme? Is it yet a reply to the many pressing questions that beset the modern Jew in Palestine? Unfortunately no. The movement is labouring heavily under the burden of its religious idealism. Its members are well aware that its formula means a new order of social justice; the implications of Avodah are well understood by them. Yet it cannot be said that there is a clear realisation among them of the part that Torah is to play in the upbuilding of the country beyond the fulfilment of the daily commandments of religion by the members of the group. There is no conception of how Torah can be made the basic principle of social and political life in a modern Jewish state. Take, for instance, the great problem of the Halachah. Halachah as we have known it in the Galut is bound to fetter the development of the country. The settlements of the Torah va’Avodah movement are, of course, already experiencing this difficulty, and yet no step whatever has been made towards the solution of the problem. If the Left Wing within Zionism is too impatient with the past, the Right Wing is too tender with it. What Torah va’Avodah actually does is to import Galut-conditioned Judaism into Palestine, just as the parties of the Left and the Centre are importing Galut-born and Galut-produced negation of Judaism into the country.
  Neither of them will prevail. Continuity as further organic unfolding of historic Judaism must be the sole aim. But we must know how to create the circumstances in which new growth will be possible. We have already pointed out that in the new Jewish life of Eretz Israel the main conditions are present, for through Eretz the vivifying partnership of Torah and Life can be restored. We must realise, however, that man is the place of this restoration; it is in us that Torah and Life must meet. It is in us that the old life must hand on its principles and strength to the new life that is to be created and given direction. We are the link between the past and the future. It is through us that the past must pour itself into new channels. It is in us alone that Torah can be given back to life, and life may find its way back to Torah. The past must live in us before it can grow into the future.
  The decisive proof of this is the experience of Eretz Israel herself. Whatever new culture has been created there that can rightly be called Jewish is the work of the former Yeshivah Bachur. On the other hand, all the cultural activities in the country with no relation to the past, undertaken without reference to continuity, have proved to be the empty bubbles of Hebrew busybodies. The new culture of Eretz Israel will either be Jewish or nothing at all. Unfortunately, continuity is not so easily achieved when the link has to a very large extent been severed. For generations now the Jewish masses have been estranged more and more from Jewish values, standards, and teachings of the past. Today, Judaism is for the great majority of us a theoretical system, stored up in old books that people understand no more, imprisoned in libraries and covered there with thick layers of dust. In actual life, it is restricted to a steadily decreasing minority. Even in these how does it survive? Owing to the circumstances of the Galut, it survived in one special shape that was bound to become rigid, and that, because of its rigidity, has ceased to draw strength from its origin. And this too is another break in continuity. Before the opportunities presented in modern Palestine can lead to a new organic development the broken chain must be mended. We must go back into the past before we can create the future. We must give ourselves back to the past. We must trace back the long stream of Judaism to its origin. We must make ourselves receptive, and let Judaism enter us before it can flow through us to coming generations, augmented, enriched, and reshaped by our own exertions.
  This is not the usual call for return to Judaism, a call that does not become more convincing because it is being ceaselessly repeated. It is not very helpful to blame those who will not listen to stirring calls for return. They do not listen because the words that reach them do not carry any convincing message for them. They do not listen because they do not understand. They do not understand the language in which Galut-preserved Judaism is addressing them. They do not understand it, not because it is Hebraic or Talmudic, but because it belongs to a life which even the specialist historian apprehends but vaguely. You cannot speak to the youth of 1940 in the words of the year 500 without their sounding like a meaningless gibber. You certainly cannot reach their hearts or stir their imagination. What we have called the “problem of the language” proves to be the main obstacle in the way of restoring the broken chain of continuity. The great task at hand in this field is the translation of the whole content of Judaism; not into one or the other of the modern languages that we speak, but into the terms and notions of our time, a translation that will provide for historic Judaism the means whereby to speak to the present generation.
  Every good translation is always a rediscovery of the original, and the translation we have here in mind will be the great Rediscovery of Judaism. The Great Translation or the Rediscovery of Judaism is the only method of mending the broken chain of continuity. As we go on rediscovering our heritage we open our minds to the message of the past, so that it may now enter us and continue through us.
  
  V; Rediscovery of Judaism
  
  
  
  
  
  WHAT is involved in the task of translating the whole content of Judaism into the language of our century? How is Judaism to be rediscovered? There are three sources which we have to explore anew: the Bible, the Talmud, and the religious and cultural history of the Galut. In the investigation of all three of them important beginnings have been made in the last few years.
  1
  The first and basic task is the rediscovery of the Bible. This book of eternal inspiration has ceased to inspire modern Jewry, and what is more, it is almost unknown to the great majority of them. And even the minority, with their more or less limited knowledge, what do they know of the captivating beauty and wisdom of its language, the incomparable force of its diction, the depth of meaning in the biblical text, the flame burning in the words of the prophets?
  The nation of the Bible is at the moment running a great risk of losing its Book of Books. How has this come about? Partly, it is due to defects of the Jewish educational system, though there is something much more serious than that. The perennial Jewish educational problem, especially in Western countries, is, as we believe, only one of the symptoms of the real evil. It will never be solved, unless we tackle the evil at its root—and this demands in the first instance a new approach to the Bible.
  There are a few basic facts about the Bible which must always be borne in mind. The Bible is indeed a miracle, it is superhuman, it is eternal. A miracle it undoubtedly is, for although it is only a book, it often appears to be something like a living organism. The Biblical word, the Biblical sentence carries on, as it were, a life of its own. Somehow, the text seems to be independent of the author, and tends to adapt itself to each individual reader. The Bible can be a story-book for children and at the same time an exciting spiritual land of adventure for grey-haired sages. That is why one can read it again and again and still discover something new in the old word. The same word speaks to the child and the man, carrying the message to each of them in accordance with his ability to receive it. It is the same word that speaks to you today in one voice and reveals to you tomorrow new wisdom and new truth. It is a living word that is able to adapt itself to the intellectual capacity and the individual situation of the reader.
  But not only for that reason is the Bible superhuman. In the whole of world literature there is nothing that can be compared with it. The greatest amongst the literary works are dwarfed beside the Hebrew Bible. It stands eternal, and its message has lost nothing of its directness and urgency in all the centuries of human history. But the message is not always the same. The Word addresses each generation anew. The Word is eternal because it is capable of eternal unfolding; it depends on when one reads it and who the reader is. Since each generation has its own needs and problems and difficulties, it is not the same guidance and the same comfort that the Word imparts to all men in their innumerably varied situations. The Word is eternal because it is always timely, always appropriate. It is as if the Bible was filled to the depths with different levels of meaning, for each generation its own particular level that is waiting to be brought up into the light of its own day; for each man and every situation the same word and yet a new meaning, a meaning needed and asked for in the continually changing life of men. The Word is eternal because it has the power to renew itself whenever it is considered from new angles and new aspects. There is only one Bible, and yet every generation has its own Bible; every generation and every individual is presented with a different message from the biblical word.
  If modern Jewry, today, is no longer inspired by the Bible, if we have lost touch with it, that proves that the new meaning in the biblical message that alone could be our guidance in the spiritual, moral, and religious confusion of our time has not yet been discovered by us. We are a generation at the parting of the ways. The parting of the ways has been forced on us by new politics, by a new economic and social structure, by the scientific outlook of our times, and the hard and often ruthless character of the industrial era. We are a new generation; the whole world around us, and we too with it, has entirely changed in the last fifty to sixty years. The biblical message, however, to our present understanding of it, is the message to the world of our ancestors, a world with different problems of moral behaviour, with different questions of belief and disbelief, with different embarrassments of the spirit. The biblical message, as handed down to us from a past generation, is well described as the message to the pre-scientific and pre-industrial world. The traditional commentaries of the past reveal a level of meaning in the biblical word in conformity with the spirit of their own times. There can be no doubt that in them are contained great religious and cultural treasures, which must become integral parts of the spiritual make-up of a reborn Jewry. But the way of their approach to the Bible was their own way, based upon their particular outlook on a world and a life that no more exists. The Bible is eternal, the way of approach to it varies from generation to generation.
  We are a new generation with a biblical message as it was left to our fathers. That this message does not inspire any more is not due to lack of religious faith; the lack of religious faith is due to the fact that the message we have inherited has not been received; it is not so much disbelieved as unheard. The particular message was addressed to them and not to us. It cannot reach ears for which it was never intended. We need now to open the Bible anew, and search in it carefully for the message that is for us. We must confront modern Jewry with the Bible itself and not with interpretations of it which belong to the past. We have to approach it from our own standpoint and not just retread the lines of approach that fitted the positions of our ancestors. Naturally, we cannot ignore the biblical messages received by past generations. After thousands of years of “biblical history”, we cannot start as if we were the first to open the Bible. Working out the new approach of our generation, we must build upon the great traditions of our past. The Bible of our day can never be a new book, but only a new phase in the intimate intercourse between our nation and the Book of Eternity.
  At the present moment it would be presumptuous to draw in detail the outline of the new approach that is the imperative need of our time. We should like, however, to refer to the admirable work that has already been done in presenting the Bible to modern Jewry in the ingenious researches and great German translation of F. Rosenzweig and M. Buber. (Unfortunately the results of their efforts are hardly accessible to that part of Jewry that will have to bring about the nation-wide rediscovery of the Bible. Their work is in German. Hebrew and English translations of essays and other writings by these two scholars would be of great service.) There we have an inspiring beginning, there the new approach is indicated.
  We may well call it the literary approach. The literary approach differs both from the traditional religious, dogmatic exegesis, as we have known it, and from the modern biblical criticism. Traditional exegesis believes in the Bible <i>a priori</i>, and all it wants to know is the contents of the Bible, the teaching and the law. All the problems of interpretation are treated from this one aspect. Peculiarities of style or of syntax are of interest only insofar as something may be “learned” from them. Every word, every letter is of importance, only because any single word or letter may contain or allude to some commandment or admonition. The literary or poetic quality of the word commands but little attention. Seldom is anything explained by considerations of style or diction. Thus a method of exegesis has been developed that is to a large extent based not on the Bible itself but on certain principles of our faith in the Bible. The premises of the believer once conceded, the method of traditional exegesis is perfectly logical. We do not doubt that the essential question in approaching the Bible is the traditional one: what is it teaching us, what does it command us to do? But the modern Jew is seldom a believer. He is a doubter; he must be convinced <i>by</i> the Bible. Even with his sceptical approach he must be led by the Bible to a faith in the Bible.
  The only method of convincing a sceptical mind is the method of literary exegesis, based on a thorough understanding of the language. Questions of style, of literary elegance, of poetic inspiration, are put in the foreground. How something was said is just as important as what was said. The word is not merely a means of expressing a teaching, but must be looked upon as a creation of the spirit on the same level as the teaching, the very law itself. The literary exegesis is thus able to reveal a beauty and majesty, a towering greatness in the Bible that commands attention. Because the Bible is incomparably great and commanding literature, literary exegesis can convince; in the end it will lead the modern Jew through literature to Torah, from reading to learning, from the word to the teaching. Traditional exegesis believes in the Bible before it has opened it, literary exegesis may restore belief in the Bible after it has closed it.
  Literary exegesis is opposed to the attitude of modern biblical criticism. It is not impressed by the wild hypotheses and the uncontrolled imagination of the critics. It is not interested in their dissecting activities, for it is able to discover the unifying genius behind the biblical text, notwithstanding the supposedly different sources of the material. The unifying genius that has left its mark on the biblical text, the mark of Eternity, has made it the Bible; there is nothing on earth that can be compared with it, and the Bible is rightly referred to as Divine.
  It should be understood that the literary approach is only possible through the knowledge of the language of the Bible. A language can never be completely translated; translations are always individual commentaries. All this is especially true of the Bible. The literary approach looks upon the language of the Bible as unique and inseparable from its contents. It can teach the Bible only through the medium of its Hebrew; the Bible is the Hebrew Bible. For this reason the rediscovery of the Bible is intrinsically connected with the rediscovery of Hebrew by the modern Jew. (This, of course, is an educational task, with which we deal in its place.) We must find our way back to the Bible not through translations or commentaries but through the immediate appeal of the living Hebrew word.
  
  
  
  Inseparable from the Bible is the Talmud. The word stands for “Talmud Torah”, meaning the study of the Torah. The study of the Torah in Israel of old had one definite purpose, to apply Torah to the whole of life. Talmud is the record of how the Jewish nation applied biblical teaching in all spheres of its existence, great and small. The Talmud answers the question how biblical principles, the biblical ideal and commandments, are to be realised in everyday life. Anybody who takes the Bible seriously cannot but ask this question, so as to order his life on the basis of the Bible. The “Oral Law” (Torah sh’baal peh) is inseparable from the “Written Law” (Torah sh’bichtav). When one begins, to ask questions on the practical application of the Bible and attempts to give replies one becomes a Talmudist. Talmud is the bridge between Torah and Life; it is applied Torah.
  As we have already explained, continuity implies the realisation of the rediscovered Bible in Eretz Israel. It must therefore bring about a new phase in the study of the Talmud, by means of which the new application of the Bible to novel circumstances will be achieved, so that Judaism will no longer be compelled to retread the past.
  In the last two decades or so there have been, especially on the Continent, certain signs pointing to a revival of interest in the Aggadic parts of the Talmud. One of the most important signs of this revival is the beautiful “Sepher ha’Aggada”, edited by Bialik and Ravnitsky. In many circles the renewed interest went so far as to discover an aggadic Judaism as opposed to the strict halachic Judaism. It is apparent to anybody with some knowledge of the Talmud that such artificial distinctions are due in the main to ignorance of both, Aggada as well as Halachah, and their relation to each other. Bialik, the Talmudist, certainly never intended to suggest so foolish an idea as that of the existence of an aggadic Judaism beside that of a strict halachic one. The new edition of the “Mishnayot” which he started, with a new Hebrew commentary, proves that he was conscious of the need for the revival of the Talmud as a condition of Jewish national revival in general. Judaism as a “Way and Art of Living” can never dispense with Halachah, the great instrument with which to create in our history the disciplined forms of Jewish life. Halachah alone can hammer out the high and lofty ideals of the Torah into a shape fitted for practical and everyday use.
  Nobody will deny that modern Jewry has become estranged from the Talmud. Translations of the Talmud intended to bring the work nearer to the “Am ha’Aretz” (layman) will not change this. In conception and execution rather doubtful experiments, these are only landmarks on the path of our complete estrangement from the Talmud. On the other hand, those who urge modern Jews to attend the Yeshivah, so far the only place where Talmud has been taught with real success, are voices crying in the wilderness. Jewry, as it exists today, will not go back to the Yeshivah, not because of any ill will, but because its world is completely cut off from the world of the Yeshivah. Moreover, return to the Yeshivah does not in itself imply that rediscovery of the Talmud which Judaism is in need of today. The Yeshivah makes us disciples of the Halachah; we, however, must plan a future when we shall be masters of the Halachah, at a time when called upon by new Jewish life to apply Torah with independence and authority and yet in faithfulness to historic Judaism.
  It is a fundamental principle in Judaism that Torat Mosheh is unchangeable, eternal. But it is not part of Jewish doctrine to believe that the application of Torah to one special period of Jewish history must remain unalterably valid for all time. This would be illogical. The application of Torah to a certain situation can only remain valid as long as the situation remains unchanged. In fact, in the Talmud itself, authoritative decisions of a previous age are often rejected on the ground that the situation has become different from that originally envisaged. The new application of the Torah does not mean rejection of the traditional one, for it is always undertaken in accordance with the same principles that have determined the Halachah during previous periods of Jewish history. The new application is not over-riding: it continues where others, even of greater authority, left off. (In certain circumstances, however, according to the system of the Halachah even over-riding is possible.) It is an historic accident and certainly no part of the intrinsic nature of Judaism that for many centuries, especially since the conclusion of the Talmud, neither overruling nor new authoritative application has been possible. This restriction has been forced on us by circumstances, not by Judaism. This was Galut, i.e., Judaism waiting and preserving itself for a new chance of total realisation. But Judaism cannot go on waiting now that the chance presents itself for a very important part of our nation to liquidate Galut. It cannot be “preserved”, it must move, it must progress; it must take up the thread where it has been left off; it must utilise all the potentialities of development which are included in the system of Halachah. We must apply <i>Torah</i> and not some formerly valid <i>application</i> of Torah to this new form of Jewish existence for which it was never intended. To make this possible we must transform the rigid authority of the Talmud back into the living authority of a national institution such as it was originally. This can only happen after we have, so to speak, given ourselves to the Talmud, so that it becomes again part of our cultural and religious existence. Only when Judaism has become the main spiritual force in us can it unfold itself through us. We have to reconquer the Talmud before Judaism can be freed from its present rigidity and further development be made possible.
  The rediscovery of the Talmud is chiefly a problem of finding a new method of study and teaching. Broadly speaking, the New Method should have two main features; it must be historical and it must be systematic. There is nothing new in this; these qualities are the stock-in-trade of modern methodology, and it is most natural and logical to apply this methodology to the study of the Talmud.
  Unfortunately, the Talmud is still studied so unscientifically that it is necessary to state a few elementary facts about it before describing the “historical method”. First of all, it must be borne in mind that the Talmud is the work of many generations. It is certainly not an homogeneous work, containing as it does a great number of levels which are of different ages. (The Talmud itself alludes to this quite often.) The whole work must be clearly dissected into its historic levels. And as each of these levels corresponds to a certain historic situation, each must be placed in the proper relation to its respective period. We must see how each affected the other. This involves a new study of Jewish history in Talmudical times in which the most striking events in each period must be related to the cultural, economic, and social circumstances of that period. And further, a comparative study of each of the Talmudic levels along with its non-Jewish environment will be of the greatest importance, for it is most likely that Jews were considerably influenced by the structure of the world around them. A connected history of certain Talmudic schools and their methods is also indispensable.
  But the new historic method will have to work hand in hand with a new systematisation of the Talmud.
  The system of the Talmud is utterly strange to anyone who is accustomed to modern systematism. This is because the Talmud is the record of the “Oral Law”. Its systematism is not that of the “written word” but that of the spoken one. The “Oral Law”, as the application of biblical teachings to actual life, dealt with “cases” as they arose, so that the main feature of Talmudic systematism is the somewhat rough division of the Talmud into large “bundles of cases” (Gittin, K’tubbot, Shabbat, etc.). We have no systematic arrangement according to the logical principles on which these different cases are decided. For this reason the division into “case-bundles” could not be strictly maintained, for any decision implied a discussion of fundamental principles that naturally ramified in many directions. Thus the discussion of the applicability of any one principle to any one case brings with it the discussion of many cases which differ from each other, but to which the same principle is to be applied. Owing to this peculiarity, even a limited portion of one tractate of the Talmud often mirrors the whole work. This practical systematism according to the case-bundles has further been complicated by the fact that the Oral Law was taught and preserved orally. This meant that the systematism had to safeguard, as far as possible, the whole body of this “spoken tradition” against possible failures of memory. For that purpose an extensive mnemotechnical method was developed in obedience to which sentences are often strung together for no other reason than some external similarity without any intrinsic connection. Such sentences were kept together because they gave rise to certain associations of thought or sound which would easily lead from one to the other. Thus numbers, names, places, dates, etc. became the basis of mnemotechnical associations, and whole bundles of different Hilchot hang together in virtue of such external features.
  Of very great importance in the systematism of the spoken word is the use of the picture given by an actual case for expressing the principle. The spoken tradition is formulated not in abstract or general terms but in word-pictures. (Such terms as “Chazakah”, “B’rehrah”, “Ma’amad-shloshton”, etc., are all “word-pictures” and not abstractions.) The great advantage of preserving principles in the form of pictures is that it makes them vivid and illustrative, while at the same time it allows for quite a large number of independent views, for there is always a wide range of possible interpretations. These can be modified to different purposes, for the “picture” is always open to further interpretation.
  Division into case-bundles, mnemotechnical associations, and principles formulated in “case-pictures” are the main features of Talmudic systematism. The Talmud, in fact, is no book: it is the product of an orally-preserved tradition with all its idiosyncrasies. The arrangement of the Talmud has all the characteristics of the spoken word, it is practical and “psychological”. The new systematism we have to aim at must be theoretical and logical. The record of the oral tradition must be converted into a “book”, the spoken word must be translated into the written one. The whole content of the Talmud must be digested into a great series of fundamental principles. These principles, in their turn, must be divested of their old garments, they must be freed from the pictures in which they have so far been preserved. The content of the picture must be translated into a formula with clear and exact scientific terms.
  Only through such an historical and systematic method can we reconquer the Talmud. The New Method can make us real masters of the Talmud. And only as masters shall we be in a position to wield that great instrument creatively, applying it to a new Jewish life. But even as masters, developing the heritage of the past, we shall yet have to remain pupils, humbly serving and maintaining continuity. Nothing can be achieved without humility and faith. Those who are convinced that the Talmud is teaching the legitimate Jewish way of realising the Bible in actual life will be able to bring about the rediscovery and revival of the Talmud, without which no Jewish revival is possible.
  The needs of the New Method, as here indicated, demand planning on a grand scale. A central Jewish institute must be created, an Academy for Talmudic Research, to work on some such lines. The task is tremendous, but its importance for the future development of Judaism can hardly be exaggerated. The sooner we start the better. Is it really fantastic to hope for Jewish cultural planning?
  Let us make no mistake about the old method of the Yeshivah. For the time being, it is the only way of acquiring real Talmudical knowledge; and for many years to come it will remain so. The future members of a Talmudical Academy will have to come from the Yeshivah. Of course modern Jewry will not return <i>en masse</i> to the Yeshivah, but the appeal of the Yeshivah, if put forward in a form more adapted to the life of modern Jewry, should be strong enough to attract a sufficient part of the Jewish youth to guarantee the successful functioning of a Talmudical Academy.
  We do not doubt that as soon as the Academy presents Jewry with the first fruits of its work, it will, in its turn, influence the whole basis of the Yeshivah. As the Academy proceeds with its activities, it might remould more and more the structure of the Yeshivah, so that, through the rediscovery of the Talmud, it would again become the backbone of Jewish education in some not so far distant future.
  
  
  
  An important part of what we have generally called the Rediscovery of Judaism is a new understanding of our life in the Galut. Our historians have taught us the story of Galut as political history, and as such it is an endless record of suffering. But Galut is much more than political history; it is not described adequately as the abnormal existence of a nation living in exile, deprived of political power. However abnormal, it is the longest period of our history, and it is a very important form of Jewish existence. It has not been mere misery; it has been life, many-sided Jewish life. Although mostly poor and persecuted, Galut-Judaism has created great Jewish values in every generation. There is the religious world of the Galut that so very often attained an unsurpassable nobility and purity; there are the great schools of thought, the religious movements at all times in all the countries of the Galut. There is the traditional Jewish style of life that produced numberless saints in all the humbler walks of life. There is the unending galaxy of great men, of inconceivably great Jews of the Galut to whom we may rightly look up as the highest examples of human perfection that we know of. There is the ceaseless heroism of the Galut, the great heroisms of endurance, of faithfulness, of unshakable belief in a better world to come, of preparedness to die rather than to accept a lie or to bow down to evil. There are the important organisations and institutions of Jewish religious, cultural, and social life in the various countries in which Jews have had to live. And last but not least, there are the happier periods of co-operation between Jewish and gentile cultural circles, when Jewish genius, influenced and influencing, created new Jewish values in religious thinking, philosophy, literature, etc. All this has been Galut, all this has been genuine Judaism.
  For the expressions of the Jewish spirit in the literature of all the languages in which Jews have been creative. Bialik has coined the term “Kinnuss” (in-gathering), the idea being that all important Jewish literary products written in the language of whatsoever nation should be “brought home”, rescued from oblivion, and preserved for the benefit of the Jewish nation by being translated into Hebrew. So they would be, as it were, gathered to a centre, from where they could be made available for all parts of Jewry. It is obvious that the idea of “Kinnuss” must be extended to all the expressions of the Jewish genius by which Jews lived in the Galut. It is not enough to know how Jews suffered, how they were massacred in the Galut. It is far more important for us to know how they lived on in spite of everything, what they thought and felt, how they brought up their children, what their houses, communities, and schools looked like, how they celebrated their religious or family or communal festivals, etc. We are in great need of a connected presentation of Galut Judaism in all countries and at all times, as it can be reconstructed on the basis of its religious, cultural, literary, social, and, yes, even its heroic expressions. This spiritual Kibbutz Galuyot, this great ingathering to a Jewish centre of the spiritual harvest of Jewish genius in the countries of our exiles would best be undertaken in Hebrew and in modern Palestine. But this is a secondary consideration. Important is it that this great Kinnuss be undertaken somewhere in a strong and spiritually active Jewish community. As for the re-discovery of the Talmud so for this task too, the establishment of a central Jewish institute will be necessary.
  If continuity in the sense of further organic development should be the watchword of a Jewish future, Galut Judaism must receive its proper place in leading to that future. It must be reckoned part of the heritage of the past, from which alone can grow the new branch on the tree of Jewish spiritual life.
  
  VI; God and National Existence
  
  
  
  
  
  IN our plan for closing the gap between Torah and Life an all-important part must be assigned to the return of the Jewish nation to Palestine. A Jewish Eretz Israel is the only place where the great partnership between Torah and Life can be restored without which Judaism is doomed. It is necessary now to define with some precision the role that is to be allotted to Jewish national existence within the system of Judaism.
  We have dealt with modern Jewish nationalism in a previous chapter. But national existence is not nationalism; national existence is a fact, nationalism is a conception. National existence is a kind of life, nationalism a manifestation of will-power. The national unit, insofar as it is an aggregate of living beings, is part of a greater unit; it is a biological entity that subserves the purpose of the whole. Nationalism, the unity of conscious aims, converts this small section of mankind, the national aggregate, into a self-contained unit, thus elevating the part to the dignity of a whole—even of the whole. But whoever elevates the section into the whole does so at the cost of other sections that are constituents of the legitimate whole.
  Whereas the national unit, as a biological entity, is beyond good or evil, the substitution of the nationalistic aspirations for what may be called the humanistic, as if the nation were the be-all and end-all of things, belongs to the worst category of idolatry. It implies the sanctification of the selfish ambitions and desires of the national unit, and sets up the interests of the nation as the only standard of action. A nationalism carried to extremes will always usurp the Throne of God by placing on it the national ideal. Of course, nationalism need not always be extremist, need not always be carried to its logical conclusions, may not always have the courage to do so, and may often be lacking the power to throw down the challenge to the rest of the world. But where nationalism is carried to the point where the interests of the nation are regarded as the supreme authority, the result is that all the individual egotisms are bundled together into one national egotism, which thus becomes the most monstrous idol mankind has worshipped in all its aberrations. It is hardly possible to imagine a more dangerous crime than such Nationalism, for no other has brought so much robbery, suffering, bloodshed, and bestiality into the world; and all that clad in the mantle of idealism and heroism.
  It cannot be doubted for a single moment that in the system of Judaism there is no place for such Nationalism. The acknowledgment of God as the supreme authority, carries with it the recognition of the religious and ethical values based upon monotheism as the only standards for human action and behaviour, and overrides all other ends. You either serve God or Baal; monotheism does not allow of compromise.
  A Jewish nationalism of this kind would be a contradiction in terms. If it were Jewish it could not be nationalist, if nationalist it could never be Jewish. Naturally enough, individual Jews may be nationalists of this type. There is no end to the possibilities of Jewish failures, especially in the midst of a world gone mad with successful nationalistic idolatry. As in biblical times so today, we Jews are only too ready to imitate the idolatries of the world around us, for as then so today, they appeal most strongly to the weaknesses of human nature. But the repudiation of such nationalism does not mean the renunciation of a Jewish national existence. The Jewish national unit is an undeniable historic fact. We are a living nation, and as with everything living we have in us the natural desire to live. For no just or logical reason can this right to live be denied us. There are certain minimum necessities of national existence, and it is imperative that these at least should be satisfied. But let us make up our mind once and for all, that though we want to live it must not be at <i>any</i> price. (Judaism, but for a few individual aberrations, has remained true for thousands of years of Jewish history to this great principle.) A Jewish national policy must not be determined by Jewish national interest alone. Whatever Jewish national policy may be, it is still accountable to the moral code, based upon Jewish monotheism. This may not always be the most immediately successful way of achieving our aims. But when was easy success an all-important motive in our history? Let us rather be unsuccessful than unfaithful. The essence of the Jewish national cause is justice; and justice is a formidable enough weapon in a world in which, we believe, it is bound to triumph in the end. And we Jews shall live to see the fulfilment of that persistent Jewish dream.
  
  
  
  National existence and Judaism are more closely related than we have so far indicated. The national unit is an essential part of the system of Judaism. This is often deeply felt by Jews but seldom clearly understood. Judaism is often called a national religion. There exists, indeed, an intimate connection between Nation and what is usually called Religion. We have the Jewish festivals, which though religious in character are commemorations of important national events. We have the many religious regulations which seem to be intended to safeguard and preserve racial purity and national cohesion. There are many laws of the Torah applicable only within the nation. There is a whole land policy of a religious nature which is applicable only in Eretz Israel. The Torah offers us a national constitution based on religious principles. It is, indeed, correct to assert that no Judaism is possible without Jewish national existence.
  On the other hand, however, there exists another and broader conception of Judaism, very prominent in the prophets, the great idea of a Universal Religion, of a world in which all are worshipping the One God, Who chooses his priests from amongst <i>all</i> the nations. This Universalism of the prophets can hardly find a proper place in a national religion; it breaks through the national framework. There is, of course, the idea, very eagerly put forward by non-Jewish Bible critics especially, of a great religious development in Israel from its primitive belief in a tribal deity to a later universalism. These ingenious hypotheses are for us completely irrelevant. Judaism is not a relic of the past that has to be dug out from biblical allusions or antiquarian discoveries. Here we are, a whole nation, the children of the prophets, representing <i>living Judaism</i>; not only with the memory of a tribal deity obliterated, but with fundamental principles originally promulgated to counter any such idolatrous conceptions. Whatever the early religious ideas of the Semitic tribes, our Judaism commenced with a pure monotheism, God the Creator of the Universe, the Father of all nations and all men. What does it prove if Jews often relapsed into the pre-monotheistic ways, if they were not always able to distinguish clearly between the tribal creeds that flourished around them and the idea of the One God? Jewish failures are no representation of Judaism. Universalism is at the root of Judaism and was contained in it from its very beginning. Judaism stands or falls with it. Universalism is not a new development within Judaism, only a new conscious realisation by Jews of its full meaning.
  For this reason all talk about a Jewish national religion is not only misrepresentation but falsification. The term National Religion, so very popular in these days even among Jews, is only the old tribal deity in other words. It is idolatrous. The idea of God is a-national; monotheism does not fit the national frame. In its very essence monotheism is universalistic. And yet, it remains a fact that this universalistic Judaism is inseparably attached to Jewish national existence. This is, indeed, a baffling paradox. It is natural that individual Jews should lay stress either on the universalistic or the national features of historic conceptions according to temperament and religious or political inclinations. Thus, in the camp of the Jewish national movement Judaism became the national religion, whereas liberal assimilationism converted it into a vague, non-committal, theoretical universalism, divested of its historic national basis. It is time to free ourselves from such one-sided theologies and sincerely try to face the whole problem presented by the peculiar combination of national existence and a universalism that cannot recognise national barriers.
  In order to understand this combination, one must bear in mind that the term Religion as normally understood among Western peoples is not applicable to Judaism. In fact, in Hebrew there exists no word that expresses what is usually meant by that term. The nearest biblical expressions to what is commonly meant by Religion are “Da’at ha’ Shem” or “Derech ha’ Shem” (the Knowledge of God and the Way of God). Judaism is not a system of creeds and dogmas; it is not concentration on “divine worship” at certain places and certain times, nor is it mystical intercourse of the few selected ones with God; it is intended to be Knowledge and Teaching, it is a Way.
  Knowledge of God means that the whole system possesses only one fundamental belief, the belief in a personal God. Everything else is knowledge, i.e. it is either logically derived from the basic idea of the personal God, or it is revealed in history. (The thirteen “Ikkarim”*<i class="footnote">* Not to be confused with the “Ani Ma’amin”, which, though based on Maimonides, was formulated later, undoubtedly under the influence of the importance of the credo in Christianity.</i> (Dogmas) of Maimonides are no credo, they represent a theological disputation with other religious systems.) And the Way of God is the way that men should walk as a logical outcome of their belief in God. Although it is impossible to define it in a few words, it probably comes nearest to the truth to say that Judaism is no “religion” but a Way of Living based upon the belief in a Personal God. That the idea of a Personal God should lead to the Way of Living is perfectly logical. For a Personal God means a personally ever-present God; a God continually looking on, continually looking at you. It means that all life is always and everywhere life in the presence of God. The conception of life given by God and to be lived in the perennial presence of God must inescapably lead to a definite way of living. For God is looking on to see, and in giving us life He has given us the chance to show what we are. God’s Eyes, watching us, render life always and everywhere the God-given testing ground of men. Wherever we are, whatever we do, we are being tested and watched. This is the situation with which man is confronted as long as he lives. The conception of life as the inescapable testing ground of man demands a Way of Living that embraces the whole of life, every branch of it, every moment of it; a way that must be signalised by an awareness of the eternal Divine Presence and by the endeavour of man to stand that test always and everywhere without relaxing for one moment.
  This is not the place to develop this thought and to show in detail how Judaism tried to realise the consequences of its basic belief in a Personal God, Creator of the Universe. Enough to say that Jewish monotheism aims at forcing the <i>whole</i> of life into a clean-cut direction which will uplift it and give it meaning.
  The whole of life is primarily the whole of one’s personal life. But the individual life is never a whole, it is inextricably interwoven with innumerable other individual lives. To be able to master one’s own life as a whole, one must make common cause with all the other individual lives to which one’s own life is related, socially, economically, politically, in short with all the many relations that matter in life. Life is always a whole bundle of life. That is why the Way of Living can never be the task of the individual. One can worship God individually, one can have faith individually, but one cannot succeed as an individual in moulding the whole of life, even so far as one alone is concerned. For the life of the individual is always part of a larger life, and only where this larger life can be, so to speak, mobilised is the Way of Living to be realised. The power to do this, so essential for the realisation of Judaism, is never possessed by the individual, it always belongs to the whole life-circle of which he is only a constituent part. Only a whole life-unit or circle can ever be independent enough to be able to exercise the controlling power necessary to shape living reality in accordance with the monotheistic conception of God.
  Judaism cannot be realised by the individual. It must be grounded on an autonomous life unit, which, of course, is no quantitative but a qualitative term. The number of those confessing Judaism is not decisive; even millions of individual adherents, spread all over the world, do not make the realisation of Judaism possible. They all would belong to diverse social and economic groups following entirely different directions from the one demanded by Jewish realisation. They all could believe in Judaism but not live it. The autonomous life-unit is no gathering of individual believers; it is an organic group with command over its own social, economic, cultural, and political relations. Theoretically it is conceivable that if a sufficient number of adherents extricated themselves from their former surroundings, and came together in some unoccupied place, they could start the realisation of their ideals; in that case they would soon find themselves changing into an organic group. Whether or not it was something similar that actually happened at the beginning of Jewish history when Abraham left his father’s house and native land, as related in the Bible, is not important in this connection. The only thing of real importance is the fact that the first Jew had to be the father of a nation, for the organic group that is the necessary basis of the realisation of the Way of Living always appears in human history as a biological unit, the tribe, the nation, etc. That is why Abraham did not establish a school or a church; he had to stand at the head of a national unit. This does not mean that the national unit is the frame enclosing Judaism; it has nothing to do with national religion. The organic tribal or national group is the smallest possible unit within which monotheism can be realised. The intimate relationship between Jewish national existence and universalistic Judaism is conditioned by the fact that the organic group is the unit of realisation. Universalistic monotheism is not individualistic, it is collectivistic; it cannot be realised by individual believers, but only by organic groups of believers.
  
  
  
  The consequences of such a conception of Judaism are, I think, quite clear.
  It repudiates the universalism of assimilationist liberal Jewry. This Jewry trying to dispense with national existence in the name of the universalism of the prophets is actually changing the essence of Judaism. Such Jews can dispense with the national unit only because they discard the most important feature of Judaism, the Way of Living. Judaism is no longer a way, it becomes a church, it ceases to be Judaism.
  But neither, on the other hand, does the collectivistic conception of Jewish universalism allow for the ordinary forms of nationalism. The Jewish national unit is an instrument serving a higher purpose that in its very essence is a-national. But, in order to be an effective working instrument, the national unit must control its own life. This means that for Jews to live dispersed all over the world in the midst of strange surroundings, necessarily moving to the rhythm of a life different from that of the Jewish national unit, is an unnatural form of “judaistic” existence. Galut may at times be an historic necessity, it may produce its own great values, but it must always be looked upon as a period of transition, something temporary, not only from the national point of view but also from that of the realisation of Judaism. Complete realisation is an impossibility in the Galut. Many important precepts of the Torah have to be put into cold storage, as it were, for the duration of the Galut, simply because Jews lack the concrete basis to which to apply them. The whole system of Jewish jurisprudence, for instance, has been shelved, for naturally enough in the Galut there exists only “Dina d’Malchuta”, the law of the state in which Jews happen to live. All the social and economic regulations relating to the possession of national land are Hilch’ta l’Mshicha as long as Jews live in exile. Even where realisation is possible, it is only partial and stunted. For instance, the Dinim of the Even ha’Ezer section of the Shulchan Aruch, which in normal times constituted the law for an important part of Jewish family and social life, have been more and more reduced in the Galut to a mere religious ceremonial. The “legality” of that sphere of Jewish life rests on the respective marriage and divorce laws of the state in which Jews happen to live. What has remained of the Talmudic order Nashim in actual practice is a mere shadow of the original. This is also true of many other parts of Judaism in the Galut. It is natural that the Sabbath as envisaged in a Jewish community determining its own social and economic life in accordance with its own conception of a Day of Rest is entirely different from a Sabbath observed in the midst of a society which takes its rest in its own manner on its own Sunday. In respect of every Jewish activity in the Galut we are confronted with the fact that Judaism, being a Way of Living, can only be realised to a limited extent in the midst of surroundings over which Jews have no decisive influence. Galut Judaism is bound to remain a shadow Judaism. Jews have always made the greatest sacrifices to maintain their Judaism, to keep it alive in spite of the Galut. It is an awe-inspiring story of faith and courage and hope, this determination of Jews to realise their Judaism in the midst of antagonistic forces and in defiance of them, that heroic determination of millions and millions of Galut Jews not to bow to these alien forces, not to acknowledge them, and to go on living as if they did not exist. But the very fact that Judaism in Galut has become identified with sacrifice testifies only too painfully to the anomaly of Galut existence. Judaism is sacrifice when it has to be realised by Jews whose everyday life is determined by an alien environment. Originally it was the harmony in the existence of a nation which produced the rhythm of its own life. For us Jews monotheistic universalism requires a Jewish national unit where the potentialities of Judaism are fully realisable, i.e. a Jewish nation master in its own home. Judaism may be able to survive for yet a long time in the Galut, but only in the Jewish National Home can it be naturally and completely realised. The national unit is the instrument, the National Home the place of realisation.
  Let us not forget too for a single moment that we cannot start anew today: we can but continue. For that reason the place of the Jewish National Home is historically given. There is only one Zion and only one Jerusalem, one Holy Land, one Eretz Israel.
  As the purpose of the Jewish national unit is primarily to serve monotheistic universalism, it cannot cut itself off from the rest of the world. It must always remain conscious of the fact that monotheism is meant for the whole of mankind, and recognises no frontiers as barriers between man and man. The universalistic application of the idea of a Personal God forever places the national unit in its proper relation to the rest of the world. Realisation through the national unit is only part of the great pattern that is to be formed through world-wide realisation, each nation serving in its own way the One God, the Creator of the Universe, the Father of all mankind. Serving God, the national unit is a constituent member of that all-embracing and ultimate unity—Humanity.
  
  VII; Galut and Eretz Israel
  
  
  
  
  
  ACCORDING to our main argument, no regeneration of Judaism is possible without the renewal of Jewish national existence in the Jewish National Home. Only in the National Home can we create the full Jewish existence that Judaism has lacked since the destruction of the Temple, and without which harmonic and normal organic development is stunted and complete realisation impossible. We have further argued that the upbuilding of the new Jewish life in Eretz Israel must be guided by historic continuity; and that, as this continuity is already broken, we have to restore it by giving ourselves back to the past, filling ourselves with it, through the rediscovery of Judaism. This implies that the problems inherent in our present existence, as already indicated in a former chapter, the great religious and cultural problems of modern Jewry, are, for the time being, insoluble. Judaism is in fetters at present. It is bound by its historically determined rigidity, as a result of which it is now lacking the elasticity which it originally possessed, and which is needed to give answer to the changing questions of changing generations. For a long time to come we shall have to exercise very great patience. We must extricate Judaism from its fetters, free it from its rigidity, and place it in a position to give reply at some future date to the questions of the passing day from its platform of eternity. Ours is the task to prepare Judaism for the future in such a way that our children or children’s children can begin to solve the problems of modern Jewry.
  Liberalistic reform refuses to recognise the fact that these problems are at present insoluble. Instead it is giving up Judaism little by little under the pressure of what we have previously called the “Christian existence” of the Jew. Naturally, the conflict between Judaism and modern life is considerably alleviated by “reform”, for by sacrificing Judaism the sharp edge of Jewish problems will eventually be dulled. Life in such circumstances will be more comfortable, but Judaism will be completely lost. Liberalism or reformism is the organised march of modern Jewry into oblivion.
  However difficult it may be to bear the strain of such a position, to leave pressing questions without a reply, we have to face the facts—facts from which there is no escape—if Judaism is to continue. For the moment, we can only prepare and wait patiently. The problems of modern Jewry will have to be kept at arm’s length until the necessary preparatory work for tackling them has been done. I believe that the more headway we make in the present task of preparation, the easier it will be to bear the strain. The rediscovery of Judaism will further the spread of genuine Jewish knowledge, and modern Jewry will come more and more to realise the greatness of the system of Judaism which is still waiting for its application to life proper; at the same time, the return to Eretz Israel will bring into clear relief the place where its application is both possible and necessary. With such a development the strain of the present insoluble conflict will serve as a great impetus, driving us towards the vision of our goal.
  The present task must be shared between Eretz Israel and the Galut. The place for the creation of the full Jewish existence is, of course, the Jewish National Home, but the rediscovery of Judaism will, to a very large extent, probably be better done in the Galut; firstly because of the greater material resources of the Galut, with the incomparably larger Jewish masses in need of it there, and, secondly, because a rapidly expanding community in Eretz Israel will not be able to exercise the patience and care necessary for the success of such an endeavour. But although the preparatory task will have to be divided between Galut and Eretz Israel, organically regenerated Judaism can arise nowhere except in Eretz Israel. Even if the great majority of Jews still remain in the Galut, from Zion alone can the teaching come, from Jerusalem the word of God, for which modern Jewry is waiting. Though the conflict between Judaism and the “Christian existence” of Jews in the Galut will always remain, for this is the inevitable discord between the two different rhythms of living, it will no more penetrate the mind and heart of the Galut Jew. His mind and heart will be at rest in the harmony of a regenerated Judaism that will give him the instrument for solving the problems of his religious, moral and intellectual being. The conflict will be reduced to a difficulty of practice; for instance, how to close a Jewish factory on the Sabbath in the midst of an economic system which allows rest on some other day of the week. However, we may be assured that as soon as Jews know and understand, as soon as they find spiritual and religious satisfaction in their Judaism, they will be prepared to make sacrifices, and not to yield to the pressure of circumstances around them; or, if they do yield, the sense of failure remaining with them will keep Judaism much alive in other fields where the pressure of outer circumstances is not felt too severely. And this would indeed mean a re-invigorated Galut-Judaism.
  
  
  
  This division of labour between Galut and Eretz Israel does not imply a strict demarcation line between the two spheres of Jewish existence. For both, Galut and Eretz Israel, will be working out the same problem, each of them different parts of it, and only the contribution of both will provide the whole solution. Eretz Israel and Galut will be cause and effect to each other, and through continuous and reciprocal influence will together direct the way towards Jewish regeneration. The growing Jewish achievements in Eretz Israel will react more and more on the Galut. In many respects they will determine the spirit brought by the Galut to the task of rediscovering Judaism. On the other hand, every result of rediscovered Judaism will necessarily contribute to the upbuilding of the Land, for it will be introduced into the country not only by means of cultural interchange, but by the builders of the country, the Jewish masses returning from the Galut to Eretz Israel. The Galut will build Eretz Israel and Eretz Israel will build the Galut. An organic cycle of Jewish endeavour will gird the two centres of Jewish existence. More and more will Galut become Eretz Israel-determined, and in its own turn will it influence the moulding of the new life in Eretz Israel. And so the tragic gap between teaching and reality might begin to be bridged over. Out of co-operation between Galut and Eretz Israel the old partnership of Torah and Life might emerge anew.
  Strictly speaking, the complete Jewish realisation we are envisaging is truly possible only in Eretz Israel. Yet we must not forget the importance of the Galut in the complete and harmonic Judaism of Eretz Israel. Without Galut material considerations would gain the upper hand in the struggle between the demands of the spirit and the urgencies of newly-budding development in Palestine. In the long run, the latter would reduce the place of the spirit to that of a convenient handmaid to those physico-chemical processes which modern man has come to call life. In the Galut, because of the absence of a normal national existence, it would be possible to take up that disinterested and detached attitude which is needed for the recognition of the spiritual claims on life. On the other hand, normalised national existence in Eretz Israel will protect the spiritual activities of the Galut from building castles in the air, continually exhibiting as it will that life to which all spiritual endeavour has ultimately to be applied. In other words, Eretz Israel will protect the Galut from the assimilationist, the “Luftmensch”, liberal missionaries with their individualistic conception of Jewish universalism, and so on. And an Eretz Israel-protected Galut will, in its turn, protect Eretz Israel from “Sabraism”.*<i class="footnote">* In the sense of a narrow Jewish nationalism that negates the positive values and the Judaistic—though not nationalistic—necessity of the Galut.</i> (We do not wish to use this expression in the somewhat offensive sense of the word “Sabra”, meaning “born in Palestine”; we indicate by it an attitude that is entirely determined by exclusively Palestinian considerations.) Seen under this aspect, Galut should be considered as something utterly undesirable only so long as it is the sole field of Jewish existence. In the right balance with Eretz Israel, it might be no less important than Eretz Israel itself. The fulness of Judaism is symbolised rather by the ellipse with its two foci than by the circle with its one centre.†<i class="footnote">† I learn from Dr. S. Rawidowitz that he too has used this simile in one of his articles in “Haolam.”</i> For the full realisation of Judaism Galut and Eretz Israel are both essential. Once we have freed ourselves from the narrow-mindedness of nationalistic formulae, it becomes clear enough that Eretz Israel without Galut is also an anomaly of Jewish existence. Just as today the rebuilding of Eretz Israel is a <i>sine qua non</i> of Jewish survival in general, in the same way, had we only Eretz Israel, the rebuilding of the Galut might become of importance for Judaistic survival.
  It seems to us that the whole history of our nation, with its continuous fluctuations from Galut to Eretz Israel, from Eretz Israel to Galut and back again, is slowly but surely evolving a well-balanced double-centred existence (of course, very strongly affected by the fact that Jewish history takes place in a world that has neither understanding nor tolerance for anything that does not fit into its own fabric). Most probably, we have never reached this state of equilibrium. Jewish existence, as yet, has tended to be one-centred, either in the Galut or in Eretz Israel. The circles, whether Palestinian or of the Galut, have again and again had to be forced open and Judaism pushed towards its elliptical equilibrium.
  A double-centred existence is, in fact, the historic consequence of what we have called the collectivistic universalism of Jewish monotheism. The collectivistic element points to Eretz Israel, the universalist to the world. Through Galut Eretz Israel becomes open to the world, through Eretz Israel Galut remains bound to its collective foundation. Through Galut Eretz Israel should be saved from nationalistic degeneration, through Eretz Israel Galut will be protected from individualistic dissolution. The double-centred existence, Galut and Eretz Israel, represents the two roots of Judaism: collectivistic realisation within the framework of a universalistic conception.
  
  VIII; Organising the Golah
  
  
  
  
  
  OUR suggestions so far of necessity represent a long-term policy. It cannot be repeated too often that until the rediscovery of Judaism in conjunction with the newly created Jewish environment can yield tangible results, we shall have to exercise patience and more patience. But there are certain steps possible that can be called the short-term policy of Jewries in the Galut. These can not only alleviate the strain of patient waiting but will provide Judaism outside Palestine with the organisation needed for the execution of any long-term scheme, and create those institutions through which practical effect will be given to the academic rediscovery of Judaism.
  Even short-term planning demands that the whole of the Golah be organised in accordance with certain basic principles. There is nothing new about these principles, which we will discuss presently; they are almost as old as is the life of Jews in the Galut. We only intend to apply them anew to a situation in which they are apt to be entirely forgotten.
  Jewish history teaches us that at any point in our Galut existence we possessed certain forms of inner-Jewish organisation that were of the greatest importance for survival. Today, the principles behind organised Jewish life in the Galut are in danger of falling into oblivion for two reasons. First, for about a hundred and fifty years now a misdirected Jewish emancipation has sapped all the foundations of Jewish life. Secondly, with the destruction of Central and Eastern European Jewries the mainstay of historic Judaism has fallen. Most of the institutions which kept alive a flourishing Jewish organisation in the Galut are no more. Outside Eretz Israel, Judaism has mainly been left now with only two Jewish centres on which to rely, Anglo Jewry and American Jewry; both with comparatively short histories and, what is more important, both belonging to a period that was not very conducive to development on the lines of historic Judaism. Those who were engaged in creating the necessary Jewish institutions in the two countries had continuously to wrestle with a “Zeitgeist” that was working against such institutions, in addition to being handicapped by their own lack of experience.
  If English and American Jewries are successfully to shoulder the responsibilities which the Jewish tragedy in Europe has laid upon them, they will have to learn from certain experiences of the now prostrated European Jewries. We do not suggest blind imitation, but careful adaptation to the prevailing circumstances, considered not locally but in relation to Judaism as a whole. The torch has been passed on to their hands. They must carry it from now on. At present, however, in spite of their immense and highly admirable charitable efforts, they are still spiritually unprepared for the task.
  <i>A</i>. COMMUNITY AND SYNAGOGUE
  1
  What are the institutions of European Jewries that should be carefully considered, adapted, and even improved upon as far as possible?
  If we deduct beforehand all the assimilatory aberrations of European Jewries, we can rightly say that the organisation of Jewish life in the Galut has for millennia been based upon the fact that Judaism is not an ecclesiastical body, not a church providing for “religious needs”, concerned merely with religious feelings and beliefs, but a system of living, to be realised by an organic national group and not by an incoherent mass of individuals. Because of this fact, the centre of Jewish life in the Galut was not the synagogue but the community, the “K’hillah”. The task of communal Judaism was not merely to provide Jews with the opportunity of saying their prayers in an assemblage of at least ten people, as prescribed by the Law, or to bury their dead in traditional manner; its aim was to direct <i>all</i> the affairs of the community and to shape <i>all</i> its life in faithfulness to the demands of Judaism.
  The K’hillah was not a society that had to be founded by an official act. It did not consist of “members”. Nobody could enter the K’hillah, for the K’hillah was the group of Jews living at a certain place. Or, it might be said, one entered it by being a Jew. One could be useful to the community, just as one could be a liability to it; but as long as one was a Jew, one automatically belonged to it. One was born into the K’hillah. It followed from this that one could only leave the community by leaving Judaism. This did not involve compulsion or the regimentation of conscience, for the reason that the community was the Jewish national entity in exile. Its boundaries were identical with the boundaries of Judaism. As always in communities, an official or orthodox line mostly prevailed within the K’hillah. But the K’hillah was not tied down to the rule of a certain “official Judaism” to the exclusion of all other possible conceptions. The K’hillah, as such, allowed for the free expression of all kinds of tendencies. In fact, before the great all-European catastrophe a large number of political and religious parties, ranging from the leftist “Bund” to the extreme right and orthodox Agudas Israel, worked together in administering the affairs of great Jewish communities.
  From our definition of the community it follows that only one K’hillah could exist at any one place. At certain periods of Galut history there were of course attempts to split the unity of the K’hillah by the formation of sects (the Karaites, the followers of Sabbaty Z’vy, the Frankist, etc.), but all such cases only proved that leaving the community meant leaving Judaism. The cases of two or more communities at the same place which we come across in modern Jewish history all belong to the period of Jewish emancipation. They have been set up by Jewries with “successful” assimilatory experiences. They would never be found in Eastern European countries with their large and compact Jewish masses. The “Austritt”-idea,*<i class="footnote">* The leaving of the central local community and the foundation of a separate congregation on account of religious divergencies.</i> whether orthodox or liberal-reformistic, was in its essence a consequence of assimilatory emancipation. It was only possible in countries where the bonds of national existence had been very much weakened. It made Judaism a clerically-sponsored religion for the individual instead of a collectively-organised mode of life for the community. The synagogue usurped the place of the community. In such circumstances it was natural that if a man did not like the service in one synagogue, he simply walked out and became a “member” of another that suited his conscience or temperament better.
  In short, it is true to say that Jewish history all through the Galut shows that the natural basis of Jewish organisation is the K’hillah. And, so far as Jews had control over their own destinies, all fields of Jewish existence came under the direction of the institutions of the K’hillah. Religious, cultural, educational, social, and national policy, all forms part of the great communal task of realising Judaism in the broken and incomplete life left us in the Galut. (There is no better illustration of this point than the various “T’kannot ha’K’hillot”, the Regulations of the Community, at different times and places.) This follows from the very essence of Judaism. It cannot be repeated often enough that we are no “congregation”, no society of worshippers, but an organic group of people pursuing a Religious Art of Living. As far as this Art of Living is a possibility in the Galut, it must be based on the existence of the organic group, i.e. the community. And as far as is compatible with the surrounding social and political order, the community must be the driving and directing force. This may mean a certain amount of communal autonomy. There is no need to be afraid of the word. Even we Jews have a just claim to manage our own affairs as we think fit, so long as we do not interfere with the rights of other people. And if communal autonomy in certain matters, such as education, Jewish taxation, etc., is deemed necessary for the solution of important Jewish problems, it cannot be denied us except by the denial of elementary justice. This is essential for the very survival of Judaism; only strong communal organisations can create the instruments for a planned Jewish renewal.
  What is even more important is that Judaism without communal organisation has always at its root a very serious distortion of its whole spiritual structure, leading to the imprisonment of God Himself in the synagogue and replacing the Art of Living by religious ceremonial. Without community-existence Judaism in the Galut is bound to degenerate into a philanthropic clericalism which lives on the memories of the past, on faint reminiscences of what once was Judaism. There is no creative force in “Jewish clericalism”, no capacity for development. It cannot reassert Judaism, it can only remember it. As generations pass by, each remembers the memories of the preceding one; so a Judaism arises that consists of memories of other people’s memories which ultimately recall a generation that could still remember when Jews lived who had a clear picture of what Judaism was like when their grandfathers were alive. This is the way of disintegration and ultimate dissolution of Judaism.
  The living community is the basis of Judaism in the Galut; without it we shall succeed in nothing, without it no regeneration is possible, without it we are doomed.
  2
  But what of the synagogue? Are we not detracting from its importance by making everything dependent on the proper functioning of communal organisation? Unfortunately the synagogue has so little influence in English-speaking Jewish communities that it is hardly possible to exaggerate its unimportance. It tends more and more to become a place set aside for the recitation of the Kadish and the traditional remembrance of the dead, with no relation whatever to life. Assuming that the present state of affairs continues, a competent statistician could almost name the date when synagogues will be preserved only as religious curiosities for sightseers.
  The only way to save the synagogue is by liquidating “Synagogue Judaism”. The place of worship is not to be separated from the life that surges around its walls. The quality of worship is determined by the quality of the worshipper, which is moulded by forces outside the synagogue. These forces, if they are to create Jewish character, must be directed and applied by the spiritual strength of the <i>living</i> community. The synagogue, therefore, always mirrors Jewish life outside its boundaries. If it is without influence, this shows that Judaism has lost its hold on Jews. Without Jewish practice outside the synagogue there is no true devotion inside it. Without Jewish living there can be no Jewish praying. The true synagogue is no place of escape from life, but of critical and searching meditation on it, on its failures in the past and on its new resolves for the future. It is no place for forgetting but one for remembering. The most important thing in the synagogue is our life outside it. It is this inseparable relation to life which makes the synagogue an institution of the living community. Only as far as it is set against the background of the living community can the synagogue hold its own. If it represents only the “praying congregation”, i.e. “members” assembled for the sake of prayer, and not the praying community united for a common purpose in life (entering the synagogue to deepen and to purify this communal purpose), it is bound to wither away. The synagogue has its proper place and function as part of a communal whole. It must have its root in the community, and its strength is derived from the strength of the community.
  It is important that Jewries experiencing the decline of the synagogue should realise this. All the religious propaganda for the return of the masses to the empty synagogues is a waste of time and money, and, what is more serious, it is diverting our attention from the real evil. There will be no return to the synagogue unless a meaning is restored to Jewish life through the communal organism. There can be no better illustration of this truth than the revival of the synagogue and all its activities in Germany in the years that followed 1933. Synagogue services and all kinds of functions run by the synagogue were often overcrowded. The great majority of German Jews spent unforgettable hours in their synagogues during those trying years. The synagogue had a stirring message for most of them; not, as might be thought, because of the increase of religious feeling, but because the Jewish tragedy in Germany had given a meaning to Jewish life outside the synagogue. There was no place for the Jew but in his Judaism, and so the living community was re-established. As long as the synagogue was the centre of Jewish life in assimilationist German Jewry, it was gradually losing its importance. At the moment, however, when it had to give up its central position to the more important task of organising and caring for the tragically shattered community, it started to revive and to flourish. It was the experience of true communal existence that made the synagogue great.
  Another important example is given by the Divine Services that are held by certain youth groups of the Chalutz movement. There we are witnessing the revival of the synagogue amongst a youth that, in spite of, and possibly because of, its religious orientation, is being driven out of our pompous but empty palatial synagogues. In the most primitive circumstances, in the humblest of places and of course without any paid officials, this youth assembles for prayer and creates in fact the greatest synagogue in the whole country. Compare their way of praying with the usual youth services, arranged by the ministers of our congregations. The difference is staggering. Our organised youth services are a hollow and monotonous show, whereas the chalutzic synagogue has opened up a new approach to true prayer for youth. The reason for this difference is not that that chalutzic youth of whom we are thinking here is more religious than congregational youth. This need not always be and often is not the case. The distinction between them lies in the fact that congregational youth is united solely for the purpose of praying, whereas chalutzic youth is united in living before it enters the synagogue. The K’vanah, the devotion, in the chalutzic synagogue originates in the common life-purpose of the group outside it.
  This holds true for the whole history of the synagogue. There can be no other strength in the synagogue but the strength that originates from the experiences of communal existence. We do not intend to discuss the point in relation to any particular conception of Judaism. But from whatever angle (orthodox or liberal) we approach the matter, we shall find it essential that in any form of Jewish realisation the purpose of life should be dictated by the living community. The synagogue is incapable of regeneration of itself; it is lost standing alone. It can only live by the strength that it receives from the community. This characteristic is deeply rooted in the origin and whole history of the synagogue. The synagogue replaced the Temple Service in Jerusalem insofar as the latter was a national obligation. For that reason the synagogue was never anything but the “Tsibbur”, i.e., the community, the nation at prayer. It never was a clerical organisation of believers but a national institution, in the sense that it was based on the national unit and had to further the task of the nation outside the synagogue.
  3
  We believe, therefore, that the regeneration of the synagogue is inseparable from the regeneration of our communal existence. It is, however, worth considering whether certain changes could not be effected within the service of the synagogue which might produce some immediate alleviation of its present plight.
  There is, first of all, the introduction of the language of the country into the synagogue, as the only language that the majority of Jews can understand at the present moment. The case for praying in the language that one understands is, indeed, a very strong one. The idea of K’vanah, the inner concentration on the prayer, on the meaning of every word, is very deeply implanted in Jewish tradition. For this reason, it was explicitly permitted to recite the important communal prayers in “any language one is able to understand.”*<i class="footnote">* See Talmud Sotah, 31a and Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim, § 101, 4, etc.</i> We have to face the fact that Jews today, unfortunately, know next to nothing of Hebrew, the language in which our prayers have been handed down to us. As they cannot follow the meaning of the words they utter, they cannot of course be inspired or influenced by them. Thus, praying often degenerates into a mere senseless exercise of babbling tongues. The question is not whether it is allowed to conduct synagogue services in any other language but Hebrew. It would not be difficult to prove that, in principle, such an arrangement would well conform with the Halachah. The decisive point is whether the replacement of Hebrew can be of any help to us, whether it can give back to praying the meaning it used to have in our midst. Is it a remedy or not?
  It is important to realise that in the present circumstances it is impossible to devise a new order of Divine Service deviating in fundamentals from the traditional one, without destroying the basis of the synagogue. For, as we have pointed out, the synagogue is the place of communal and not of individual prayer. Any change in the services can be determined only by the Community. But the Community at large is not identical with the local community. In other words, the local community is certainly no authority to deal with such a matter. The experience of communal existence, which is what alone gives vitality to the synagogue, is not to be found in any one group of Jews in their separateness, but belongs to the consciousness of the smaller group only as a constituent part of the greater Community, i.e. the whole national unit in exile. Any local Jewish group can be looked upon as a community only so far as it is consciously striving in its own life to realise a Jewish destiny. At the root of communal experience is the sharing in the destiny of all communities. It is in this sense that the synagogue is a place of communal prayer. As “Communal” embraces all the communities, only a national authority can establish a new and up-to-date synagogue service. Unfortunately, we do not possess such a national authority. This is no mere accident; it is not accounted for by the facile explanation that Jews are intolerant of authority, that they are more quarrelsome than other people, that each one of them clings obstinately to his individual convictions. We have no national authority because we <i>cannot</i> have one, because no nation living dispersed all over the world without a home of its own can possess an authority of the standing that would be needed to accomplish a thorough revision of the Service Order in our synagogues. The competent body to undertake such a task is a Sanhedrin functioning as a constitutional authority in the Jewish nation with its seat in Eretz Israel.
  Naturally, local committees may meet to work out for themselves new prayers and modernised services, to be recited on their Sabbath day; but this, even if well done, and with the most sincere and truly religious intentions, can never be of “communal importance”. All such endeavours will come under the category of T’fillat Yachid, whether accepted by one Jew or by millions of Jews, whether practised in private houses or in magnificent buildings (so-called synagogues), the product still remains individual praying. There is nothing against it, if it is sincere and additional to the synagogue. But if it is to replace the traditional service, then the historic synagogue has ceased to exist. Of course, a new church with strong biblical influences might be established at any time. Anybody may embark on such a venture. Should the founder possess the necessary religious genius and attract to himself a number of disciples, there is no reason why the experiment should not be successful. The possibility cannot be excluded on <i>a priori</i> grounds. Such a departure would be of no direct interest to Judaism. It does concern us for the sole reason that owing to the absence of religious genius such a departure has not yet taken place. The modern experiments in this direction are unfortunately very much our concern, for their shortsighted bungling, devoid of all sense of history, does affect Judaism from within.
  It is a great pity that the subject of a revised synagogue service has become a point of controversy between Jewish parties. It has little to do with the controversy between Orthodoxy and Liberalism or Reformism. Such a revision, even if it be very necessary, cannot be undertaken, not because it is “forbidden”, but because, owing to the unfortunate circumstances in which we Jews find ourselves at the moment, it is an historic impossibility. The work of the Anshey K’nesset ha’ G’dolah can only be revised by an authority that is looked upon as their constitutional successor. This is indeed unfortunate, but there are many more unpleasant things in the anomaly of our Galut existence which we have to put up with, for the time being at least. <i>We</i> have to put up with it, we Jews and nobody else. The gates are wide open for all who want to desert. But we who remain must realise that Judaism is a living organism with its own unique history. The laws of development that have prevailed in the past cannot but influence the future. They do not lose their validity because of the strain they impose on the present generation.
  What remains possible of revision in the Service is of a very limited extent indeed. Additional new prayers in the language of the country would be conceivable, or the translation of important old ones for the purpose of reading them in the synagogues. But would this be the right way of re-invigorating the failing appeal of the synagogue? We doubt it very much. Additional prayers, if they are to be of any worth, must be of the communal order. It should be possible to read them in any synagogue in the world in the same way as they are being read in the synagogue in which they were originally introduced; they must not be “Zeitgeist-prayers”, i.e. prayers of today that would become meaningless tomorrow.
  Prayer of the communal order can only be the outpouring of religious genius. It cannot arise out of the mere necessity for additional prayers, it cannot be made to order by scholarly and intelligent officials of the synagogue. It cannot be “prepared”, it must surge up as the overflowing of a religious genius. It cannot be “written”, it must be there because it has been prayed. Needless to say modern Jewry has so far not produced the religious genius that has prayed new prayers of the communal order. The case against new prayers is a very simple one: modern prayers of the communal order do not exist. We shall have to wait until a modern genius arises who will pray in English, French, etc., and who will do so not because the modern Jew is ignorant of Hebrew, but because the language and the style of his new prayers will be the only possible and natural form in which to express his religious feelings and thoughts. It may be regrettable, but it is the fact that prayers cannot be produced like other commodities to satisfy public demand; they have to be prayed. It is nonsense to expect that anybody can pray as honorary officers of the synagogue think it necessary in the public interest. The religious genius prays as he must. He is choosing nothing, and certainly not the language in which he prays. He is pouring out his heart because he cannot help it. It is the prayer that chooses the language and the phrase that is congenial to its own soul.
  The question of translating our Hebrew communal prayers is not very different from that of introducing new prayers into the synagogue service. For the translation of a prayer is only its translation; it is something quite different from the prayer itself. It may give you very nearly the thoughts of the original, but thoughts are not prayers. The actual words in which the thoughts or feelings are clothed are inseparable from the prayer. The words are of the very essence of the prayer, and they must be prayed in the original. As long as a translation remains a literary activity, it cannot be more than an individual commentary on the prayer. Only if the translator himself is praying, only if his translation is the re-praying of an old prayer, i.e. only if he is re-creating rather than translating, only then is there any hope that the outcome will be a genuine prayer. But even then, there is no guarantee that the re-praying of an old prayer in a new language will be a prayer of the same order as the original. A communal prayer may well be transformed into one of the individual type, if for instance it is re-created by someone for whom the communal existence and the historic experience of the nation have no interest. What is necessary before a “translation” of an old Hebrew prayer can become a prayer of the same order is the sympathetic re-praying of the original in the new language. This is only possible where the translation is based on a religious experience analogous to the original one, accompanied by a similar need and an equal ability of expression. But this does not differ at all from the praying of new prayers. Whether new prayers or “translation” of old ones, neither can be willed; they must be there as the expressions of a religious genius.
  As prayers cannot be made but must be prayed, there is no such problem as that of introducing a new language into the synagogue. The only thing that is worth introducing is new prayers. Of these we have none, not by mere accident but of necessity. No new praying is possible amongst Jews who are step by step severing the ties by which they were bound to Judaism. We have no new prayers in the languages that modern Jews understand because nowhere among us is there a religious urge and the need for a new religious expression. The call for a new language in the synagogue is mostly the negative demand for the abrogation or limitation of Hebrew because of the growing ignorance of the language among Jews. This is due to the process of the dissolution of Judaism; and there can be no hope for the synagogue in applying palliatives to this process.
  4
  In spite of all this, we believe that even today there are certain possibilities of reform in the synagogue, not so much on the lines of introducing novelties as of abrogating old abuses.
  Take, for instance, the office of Chazan (the Reader) that has fallen into decay thanks to our “great” Chazanim and to a public that, lacking religious culture, has allowed the synagogue to be degraded into a stage on which more or less talented singers can satisfy their vanity and ambition. The office of Sh’liach Tsibbur (Deputy of the Community), was the highest in the synagogue: today it is the most slighted.
  What are the qualifications for such high office? The most important of them all is that the Sh’liach Tsibbur should be worthy of representing the community. He must be worthy on the score of his character. His private and social life, and the sincerity of his Jewish convictions, must be unimpeachable as measured by the moral and religious standards of the community which he is to represent. Nothing can compensate for the lack of this fundamental requirement. In addition, the Sh’liach Tsibbur must be a “Ba’al T’fillah”, a man who prays, a master of prayer. Before he can be this, he must be able to read the prayers and of course understand them too. He must have a thorough knowledge of the language of our prayers. Now reading Hebrew is not so easy as it sounds. The language is not alive in the Galut, and correct reading demands a certain amount of grammatical knowledge which a great many of our Chazanim do not possess. There is not much sense in calling such Chazanim “readers”, for the thing about which most of them understand nothing is proper reading. The disfigurement of the noble language of our prayers in the synagogues is very painful. It is hardly bearable when, as is often the case, it is accompanied by the continuous manifestation of ignorance of the meaning of the text. Most of our Readers not only do not know how to read, very often they do not know what they read. Add to this that they hardly ever try to pray but think only of their singing, and you have an exhibition which can only be called religious barbarism.
  It must be admitted that the Chazanim are hardly to be blamed. We get the Chazanim we deserve. (Sometimes, in exceptional cases, we have even better ones than we deserve.) Owing to widespread ignorance and religious indifference, we have long since forgotten that the task of the Sh’liach Tsibbur is to pray. So the fundamental qualification of being worthy of office has been converted into being “suitable for service”, for example, being young enough, so that many years of service may be expected of the Chazan before the congregation is burdened with the financial responsibility of pensioning an official. And instead of Hebrew knowledge and a heart to pray, we ask for musical training and a voice to sing. It is true that a musically well-trained and pleasant voice is helpful, but it is of secondary importance. Singing in a synagogue is permissible only insofar as it is consistent with prayer or as a special form of prayer. Musical training and a pleasant voice must be subordinated to praying: their function is to adorn those motions of the heart that are being expressed in the prayer. In the synagogue the worst voice praying is to be preferred to the best and most beautiful one only singing. The proper place for great “singers” is the concert-hall or the Opera; there is no reason whatever why the synagogue should become the asylum for artists who are unsuccessful in those places where they actually belong.
  The present practice has indeed destroyed the office of the Sh’liach Tsibbur. The Sh’liach Tsibbur should be leading the community at prayer whilst remaining part of it. As singing replaces praying, however, the praying community becomes converted into a listening audience with the Chazan no more leading communal prayer but “starring”: moreover, as often as not, doing it badly too. That second-rate musical acrobats are uncritically admired by a public that should be a praying community demonstrates a lack of musical culture just as much as a lack of religious sincerity.
  What kind of religious inspiration is to be expected from a so-called synagogue service in which there can be no sincerity because it is dominated by the ambitions and vanities of singers to whom it never occurs that their task is to pray and not to sing, and who, instead of making music a servant of prayer, twist and turn every word, disfiguring and maltreating the language of our great prayers to make it suit their cantillation?
  There is, indeed, one great reform that must play an important part in the regeneration of the synagogue: the re-establishment of the high office of Sh’liach Tsibbur, with all the qualifications really needed for the office. They are still those which have been laid down by Talmud and Shulchan Aruch and which have been summed up as follows:*<i class="footnote">* See Talmud Ta’anit 16a, Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayim, § 53, etc.</i> nobility of character, religious sincerity, knowledge of the Bible, understanding of the Hebrew text, correct reading, and a pleasant voice. Only a Sh’liach Tsibbur who understands what he is praying and who is familiar with the language and spiritual background of our prayers, only a man who knows how to pray and of whom the community feels assured, on the ground of his conduct outside the synagogue, that he indeed means what he prays, will be able to lead and to inspire the community. He will be able to impart his own devotion to the community, even though the community will have no great knowledge of Hebrew. For as the greatest prayer ceases to be prayer if it is read without devotion, without K’vanah, so may anything, even words in a strange language, become a prayer through the presence of devotion; with K’vanah it may very well be felt as a prayer. The ultimate key to the understanding of prayer is not the dictionary meaning but heartfelt devotion. Ideally one should have a Jewish community knowing Hebrew; for then it could be inspired directly by the beauty and the depth of our prayers. Unfortunately this is rarely the case at present; the more reason then to insist on the restoration of the office of the Sh’liach Tsibbur in its full scope; the more imperative that the Sh’liach Tsibbur should be an inspired religious personality who, on account of his thorough knowledge of and intimacy with the Jewish world of our prayers, and conscious of his great responsibility, is able to impart his own devotion to the community that he is to lead. The Sh’liach Tsibbur, far from starring before an audience, is the unifying bond within the synagogue; only his inspiring lead can weld a congregation of individuals into a praying community.
  A pleasant and well-trained voice, musical training and knowledge are of course important, but only insofar as they serve the purpose of the office; beyond it they must be rigorously excluded from the synagogue. The task of moulding a congregation of individuals into a praying community demands a definite style of praying, a Nussach ha’ Tfillah, the intrinsic musical expression of communal praying. The Nussach ha’ Tfillah can certainly not be sensational, for the sensational can never impart devotion, but will only distract from religious concentration. It is not too elaborate, for this again will mean a concentration on musical expression that disturbs K’vanah. The sensational and complicated does not allow the community to partake in the K’vanah of the Sh’liach Tsibbur, it compels them to listen; it does not lead, it exhibits. The Nussach must always be clear and plain, so that it can be actively followed by the community and not merely listened to; it must be familiar to the community, not because it has been learned by them through frequent repetition, but because it is the natural musical expression of the religious emotions that are felt and understood by them; so much so that when they hear the Nussach even for the first time, it should somehow belong to the community, as if they had heard it long ago; it should remind them of something that, maybe, they have forgotten, and call it back to memory. This explains why the traditional Nussach is mainly anonymous; why, in popular belief, it is often dated back even as far as Sinai. Being the musical expression of communal prayer, there is nothing individualistic about it, and as its significance lies in its familiarity, it was never new. It is as old as the praying community itself. As was only to be expected in these days of decay and degeneration of the calling of the Sh’liach Tsibbur, we have many a famous composer but only a very few whose work has any relation to the Nussach. The new compositions have usually been written without any respect for the words to which they are set and have very little to do with either praying or the community; for the most part they lack Jewish significance just as they are musically childish and unimportant.
  To be creative on the lines of the Nussach, to develop a genuine synagogue style, the Sh’liach Tsibbur must be guided by a thorough knowledge of Hebrew and by the spiritual forces that have found expression in that language; he must be moved by religious sincerity and an urge to express himself in a religious manner. Ultimately, he must be deeply conscious of the communal historic experience of his people which alone can give his creation communal significance.
  Here we have indeed a great chance of reorganisation that will have the most beneficial effect on the synagogue. If we give up our hankering after the “great Chazan” and insist more on the great Sh’liach Tsibbur, we shall be moving in the right direction again.
  5
  In this connection we might consider two more points which could help to maintain the dignity of the Divine Service.
  The Reading of the Law constitutes a very important part of the service. True Lainen is a great art which has fallen into neglect in these times. Very often, the reading is done so carelessly and unimpressively that it fails to hold the attention of the congregation. In many synagogues the congregation has no part in it. The Reading of the Law is performed in such a perfunctory manner as to give the congregation the feeling that the whole matter is an unimportant ceremony having concern only for the very few people directly connected with it, like the Ba’al Kriah, an honorary officer, and the man who is being called up, but in which no one else has any interest. Lainen should be communal reading of the Law; instead, whatever little community may exist in the synagogue during the prayer usually disappears during the Lainen. Here again, the ultimate root of the trouble is widespread ignorance which prevents the great majority of modern Jews from following intelligently the reading of the weekly portion of the Law; the more reason for competent and well-disciplined Lainen. The task of the Ba’al Kriah is today much more difficult than it was in former times, when he could count on a community that knew its Bible. Today, he must perform his task so impressively that even an ignorant community should be moved to listen respectfully. Now if ever the public Reading of the Law must become an educational factor.
  Lastly, there remains a factor which, though a mere technicality, nevertheless would considerably ease the task of both the Sh’liach Tsibbur and the Ba’al Kriah, the shortening of the Service. The demand for a shortened Service is justified, not for reasons of mere convenience, but because it is imperative in the best interests of devotion in the synagogue. An unduly long service is bound to have detrimental effects on religious concentration. With good reason there exists a very old and important halachic tradition against a long Service in the synagogue. It is a fact that since the Service Order was first established its main structure has been burdened more and more with additions. There is the Yotzer, the Piyyut, the S’lichah, and many other things, added to the basic order. While the Reader rushes through these additional portions, the congregation usually takes little or no interest in them. This hardly serves to enhance the devotional atmosphere of the synagogue. It should be realised that many of the prayers inserted in later ages cannot stand comparison with the classical form and conception of the original order; often they are not prayers at all; sometimes they are even written in a style devoid of dignity or taste. As they are non-essential and for the most part only hamper and destroy communal devotion, let us cut them out as far as possible.
  This does not mean that any ignorant nonentity is the right authority to decide how the shortening of our services should be undertaken. The task must be performed on the basis of those traditional principles that have always ruled in the synagogue. The shortening of the Service must have a basis in the Halachah. There is ample scope for this purpose in the Halachah, and we must use it boldly and with imagination in the interests of the synagogue.
  
  
  
  <i>B</i>. RABBINICAL AUTHORITY
  1
  From time immemorial the decisive authority within the community has been the Rabbi, the spiritual head of the community. Today, in modern Jewries there hardly exists such a thing as Rabbinical Authority. Unfortunately, this kind of “Modernism” does not mean progress. It is one more sign of the dissolution of Judaism we are witnessing in Jewry. Jewries that are gradually losing contact with historic Judaism cannot be presided over by an authority embodying the spirit and ways of a Judaism from which modern Jews have become estranged. This is a fact that must be recognised. Rabbis who remonstrate with their communities on the matter of their authority betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. No community can bestow authority on the rabbi. Rabbinical authority is of a spiritual nature and cannot be <i>given</i> to anybody; it must be accepted by those over whom it is to prevail. This is only possible where rabbinical authority represents an ideal that is commonly acknowledged and revered by the community. This is the fundamental point in connection with the problem of authority within the community. There is such a thing, for instance, as the authority of the beadle in certain matters, or that of the honorary officers, etc., because this kind of authority can be bestowed on people by their respective offices. Rabbinical authority, however, is not that of the office; it is the authority of a calling, of an ideal.
  Let us consider what is meant by Rabbinical Authority. The only title attached to the name of Moses is that of “Rabbenu”, our rabbi, our master. In Jewish folk lore the prophet Elijah is often referred to as Rabbi. And indeed, in the Jewish conception the prophets were the great rabbis of their times, just as the rabbis of later generations performed the task formerly undertaken by the prophets. The rabbi is the successor to the prophet. In the tractate “Avot”, where the succession of the teachers of the Torah is given, it is said that “the prophets handed it (the Torah) down to the men of the Great Synod” (and in the G’mara we come across an actual Halachah that the rabbis learned from the prophet Haggai). It can hardly be doubted that such was the historic way of passing on the Torah, from the prophets to the rabbis. The succession was much more than purely historic, it was functional also. In later times the rabbis stood exactly where the prophets had stood before them; fulfilling the same function within the life of the nation in much the same spirit as their great masters, the prophets.
  Rabbinical authority was not ecclesiastical. The rabbi was no cleric. There could be no place for the cleric within a nation that never admitted any division between the religious and the secular spheres of life. A system of living like Judaism, that embraces all spheres of life in one great unifying spiritual structure, cannot allow the existence of a special caste, endowed with special power and dignity and charged with special responsibilities for the guidance of the community. It is of the very essence of the Jewish art of living that all should share in the same responsibility of practising it. If this responsibility means priesthood, then, indeed, the task before us is to become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”, but it is incumbent upon every Jew to the same extent. The rabbi was the national leader towards the realisation of Judaism only as the most outstanding layman. That he should be a scholar was important, because Jewish life is impossible without knowledge; it is equally impossible for any Jew. The study of the Torah is a nation-wide obligation and has never been limited to a select group of individuals. The Torah is not theology but the knowledge of the Jewish Art of Living. As a Jew one cannot move properly without it, just as no European can dispense with a certain minimum of general ethical and social knowledge.
  There were no special rabbinical colleges. The rabbi had no process of education to go through different in any way from general Jewish education. Within the old Jewish school system one did not prepare oneself to become a rabbi but to become a Jew; one did not choose the “rabbinical career”, but grew into the rabbinical calling as one succeeded in becoming a Jew. A whole community of rabbis was very well imaginable and possible. And it was, indeed, the ultimate aim of Jewish education. The rabbi was the type of the well-educated Ba’al ha’Bayis. He was no official of the synagogue. The rabbis never constituted a caste within the community separate from the mass of the people. They were themselves “laymen” without any power of office. They had no privileges, and had the same duties as any other Jew. They were to be found in all walks of life. They were craftsmen, labourers, traders, professional men, teachers, etc. They worked in all occupations open to Jews. They were poor or rich as the case might be, and earned their living like any other Jew in their respective occupations. This was the case even as late as the close of the Middle Ages.
  Naturally, as in all living communities, throughout Jewish history there were certain offices that had to be filled by people with special qualifications, but even when these offices demanded learning and scholarship, the candidates were drawn from the large mass of learned laymen, and never represented a distinct class of experts. Anybody was eligible for office. The knowledge demanded, for instance, for the office of Dayan, or judge, was of the same kind and quality that could be expected from any Jew who had a proper Jewish education. Such offices did not provide careers. One did not pave the way to a splendid future by preparing oneself for such offices. There were no salaries attached to such posts. It was understood that the teaching and administering of the Torah should be done freely and without payment.*<i class="footnote">* See Talmud, K’tubbot, 105a.</i>
  The great examples set by Moses when he protested “Not one ass have I taken from them”, or by Samuel when he exclaimed, “Here I am: witness against me before the Lord? … whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded, whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I taken a bribe to blind mine eyes herewith? …” were always before the eyes of the nation, and it was in this spirit that rabbis and judges worked in Israel. They lived as best they could, and as other Jews did; and by voluntarily fulfilling certain important functions within the community they were performing a task that could have been required from any other Jew. At all times they were the communal leaders because they were the great Jews of their generation. Their authority rested upon what they actually were, the best representatives of the nation and of all that the nation stood for. It was an authority not of office but of being, the authority of a personality in which an ideal has taken concrete shape.
  Even at later periods after the Middle Ages, when the rabbi had become more attached to the community in an official way, receiving a fixed salary, his position and authority did not change. He was one of the people who had been asked to devote himself entirely to certain communal tasks, and who could therefore not earn his living as he used to do. His authority was not a consequence of his office, but on the contrary it was the authority already possessed by him as a personality representing and living Judaism which he now used in the communal interest. It was he who by identifying himself with the office rendered it authoritative.
  Rabbinical authority was the authority of living Judaism, the authority of the ideal in the process of its everyday realisation. And as the ideal was the driving force in all spheres of national existence, the rabbi was the communal leader, the politician, the statesman, the national authority.
  2
  It is natural that in Jewries within which Judaism is in a process of dissolution there can be no such thing as the authority of the ideal embodied in the rabbi. There is no room, nor is there any call, for rabbinical authority in communities that have reduced Judaism to synagogue ceremonial and the sentimentalism of the Jewish cemetery. This clericalised relic of Judaism is in need of nothing more than officials to give it service; and so arises a new priestly caste. The community consists of the laymen on the one side, and on the other side, of those who have been initiated into the mysteries of giving service. There is certainly no sense in expecting every Jew to be able to preach a sermon or to conduct a service, etc. Once the unity of Jewish life has been broken up into a religious and a secular sphere, once it has been admitted that there are certain hours and places for religious concentration, then life itself becomes governed by entirely different principles from those upon which true Judaism insists. Then it becomes necessary to establish a clerical order with the task of rendering unto God the things that are God’s, whilst the great majority of laymen are busy rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. And so in modern times the rabbi has been replaced by the “Minister of Religion”. The minister of religion is, however, not the modern rabbi but the modern priest, a man expected to know all about service and religious ceremonial, for he has been especially trained for the “job”; a man who is of course socially active in charitable undertakings, as becomes a servant of the synagogue; a man who is expected to lead a life different from that of any other Jew, a “holy man”, specially engaged by the community with the duty of being holy within the limits of the “modernism” of the congregation that pays him. Whereas the function of the rabbi was to lead and to guide Jewish life as a whole, and, whenever necessary, to adapt it to new circumstances, this modern priest, as with all priests, has to fit into an existing scheme, good or bad. He has to “serve”, and woe unto him if he does not come up to the expectation of the authority of the synagogue, the social powers actually dominating synagogue Judaism. Certainly such synagogue authority may do excellent work. Possessing the social influence which in a capitalist society is usually associated with wealth, it can organise, it can administer, it certainly can “manage” the affairs of a community; what it cannot do is to lead the community, determine its development, plan its future, for it lacks the Jewish knowledge, culture, and historic consciousness, which alone can give the requisite sense of responsibility and imaginative power.
  It is true that in these days we have learned to look to political leadership for guidance and planning. No one will deny that political leadership is of great importance, but it is very doubtful whether by itself it can shape the future of Judaism. It is beyond any question that political leadership will be disastrous in its results if it comes to represent ultimate authority within the nation. What we should look for from our politicians is a successful struggle for political rights; what we cannot hope for is that they will infuse the nation with the desire to use political rights in such a way that the intentions of historic Judaism should be brought nearer to realisation. It is certainly very unpleasant to live without elementary human rights, but we have managed to do so for quite a long period; what we have not been able to achieve as yet is to survive without Judaism. Even today, after the great tragedies of European Jewries, the real crisis is not a political one, but rather of a spiritual nature. Our very survival is in jeopardy, not because a barbarous anti-Semitism has crushed European Jewries—they will live again—but because Judaism is ceasing to be the spiritual strength and moral backbone of the nation. Political leadership, in its preoccupation with political problems, is losing contact with the spiritual problems of Judaism, and may one day find itself in a position in which, after having concluded a victorious struggle for Jewish rights, there are no Jews left to enjoy the long hoped-for fruits of political endeavour. On the occasion of one of the early Zionist Congresses Achad Ha’am boldly asserted that the Jewish nation will not be redeemed by politicians and diplomats but by prophets. It is a grave sign for modern Jewry that his words not only remained unheeded at the time, but that there is hardly any one among our politicians who seems to be aware that they have ever been uttered and that they do indeed deserve some attention.
  3
  It was Achad Ha’am who pointed for all time to the kind of national authority and leadership from which alone we can expect ultimate guidance. It is clear that we cannot produce to order the prophets that will redeem the nation; they must happen to us like a miracle. But the ground must be prepared on which the miracle may happen, and the soil must be ploughed from which alone the prophetic personality can emerge. The prophetic type must have its appropriate background, and its emergence only becomes possible where there is a group from which it can grow organically. Ultimately, all this depends on nation-wide education, on the spirit prevalent within it, and on the way it determines the character of the average Jew. A nation that looks for its salvation from prophets must first reestablish an authority of prophetic quality, and that means the authority of the historic ideals of Judaism embodied in living personalities; which again means the re-establishment of rabbinical authority, in the historical sense of the term.
  It should be clear by now that we do not ask for rights and powers to be delegated to the rabbinical office; we certainly do not urge more respect and deference to be shown to its holders. But we do urge the need for personalities to exercise rabbinical authority in the sense of national leadership based on the decisive influence of Judaism in all spheres of Jewish life. It cannot be said that we have the personalities we need, and that the trouble is that because Judaism is no longer the decisive force with us their guidance remains ineffectual. If, as is only too true, Judaism is without real influence on the modern Jew, then it is part of the task of rabbinical authority to help to change this. And rabbinical authority only exists so far as it is effective in performing its task. True, rabbinical authority as we have known it in the pre-emancipation period hardly counts any more because Western Jewries have gradually lost contact with Judaism; this means that a certain rabbinic type, which at one time served us very well indeed, now belongs to the past. It may linger on for quite a long time, and even may be preserved as an impressive monument of bygone days, but it is no more a living force and it never will be one again. Parallel to the regeneration of Judaism runs the regeneration of rabbinical authority. Just as we have to plan to bring about the great spiritual renaissance, so we must, as part of it, consciously create a new rabbinic type as the bearer of a regenerated rabbinical authority.
  At a time like today, with a spiritual crisis arising out of the tragic break between Jewish teaching and the non-Jewish surroundings dominating the everyday life of the Jew, no guidance is to be expected from the rabbi of the past who is not clearly aware of this dualism. It is certainly true that in the ghettos, and even later in many of the Eastern European countries, there lived great rabbinical personalities who displayed the highest idealism, great nobility of character, and all the qualities of spiritual national leadership. Often, by the mere fact of their existence, they set an inspiring example of a great humanism shaped entirely by Judaism. They were, indeed, incomparable. But they were the products of their time and in later days have become scarcer and scarcer. For Judaism in their times was, as yet, essentially untouched by any European civilisation that could compete with it. The unity still present in the existence of the Jew brought forth that great rabbinic type that was in so many respects exemplary. Since then Jewish emancipation has basically changed Jewish existence in Western European countries and even in Eastern Europe. The conflict between the traditional world of the Jew and his modern life shaped by a new and dynamic civilisation shattered the spiritual unity within the Jew, and to the extent that this happened, the old rabbinic type disintegrated.
  Melancholy though this may be it is nevertheless a fact of history, and cannot be altered. The past cannot be called back, and moreover it should not be called back. The great rabbinical personalities of the past are not the men to solve the problems of modern Jewries. We can hardly make any greater mistake than to call in the old type of Gaon of the Russian or Polish Jewries to assist us in our difficulties. The new situation demands new men. They must be men who themselves are children of this new situation. They must themselves have suffered all the agonies of the dualism in the life of the modern Jew. The conflict of the two worlds must have torn their own hearts and minds, without this they cannot realise how genuine and serious the problems are, nor begin to seek for a remedy. As long as the present period of transition lasts, it is vital that leadership should grow from the great spiritual travail in the clash of the two civilisations. This can only happen where men actually live in the two worlds. Living in two worlds obviates one-sidedness in two respects. It obviates the one-sidedness of a rabbinical authority rooted in the past, and the one-sidedness of exclusive attachment to Western European civilisation. Neither the Gaon of yesterday nor the Am ha’ Aretz of today is the man we are in need of. The rabbi who is fitted for authority and leadership today in Jewry must be deeply rooted in both historic Judaism and modern European civilisation. He must be a Talmid Chacham and a scientist, philosopher or historian in one. Europe and Sinai should meet in his soul. And only so far as he is able to maintain his Judaism in his own personal experience of the conflict will he be able to give guidance to Jewry today. Only a personality harmonised within itself, after a struggle of conflicting ideas, will be able to reveal the message of Judaism to this generation, for such alone will be in a position to translate it into the terms of our century.
  Such an achievement demands knowledge and character; real knowledge of Judaism combined with critical insight into the structure and working of Western civilisation, and a character that is strong enough to bear the strain of leaving many problems unsolved, strong enough to think sincerely while deliberate in translating thought into act, cautious and yet bold.
  Owing to the complexity of a situation that makes such manifold demands on the limited faculties of man, we cannot expect from the new rabbi the vast and often all-embracing knowledge of traditional Jewish literature which we so often admired in the great personalities of the past. We can no longer expect the knowledge of the whole to be always present in any one man as we have had it before. What we must insist on is the ability of the rabbi to concentrate at any time on any one part or theme of our traditional literature with a thoroughness and ingenuity that should be akin to that of our former great scholars. We may go still further and say that Jewish knowledge can even be deepened today, firstly through our ability to point out previously unseen significance in Jewish conceptions by contrasting them with related ideas in non-Jewish thought; and, secondly, by applying to the study of the traditional literature of Judaism modern methods of research.*<i class="footnote">* See Chapter V, 2.</i> For his actual behaviour the rabbi of today can have no better and more inspiring example than that of his predecessors in Jewish history. The personal humility and great idealism of the noted rabbis of the past, their deep sense of social justice, their unwavering stand by what they thought right, combined with meekness and gentleness of character—to mention only a few of their outstanding virtues—will for all time remain a guiding beacon for all who follow them in carrying the burden of rabbinical responsibility.
  We believe that it is possible to evolve the type of rabbi needed today, and that when he appears he will be as successful as his forerunners. It is improbable that he can be trained to a fixed pattern, but Jewish education, when it is worth its name, should be able to produce him.
  
  
  
  <i>C</i>. JEWISH EDUCATION
  We must confess that the rabbinic type we have just described as yet hardly exists, for Jewish education is not worth its name. We must exclude from our considerations of Jewish education the many promising and often successful forms elaborated in different parts of the European Continent that have been so grievously stricken in the European tragedy. We cannot tell what will remain of them for the time when the period of Jewish reconstruction begins there. What else there is of Jewish education hardly deserves the name. There are a few crippled remnants of the old comprehensive, successful, and virile educational system which the immigrants brought from Eastern European countries to England in the form of the Cheder or the Yeshivah; no more so comprehensive or successful as they were in the countries of their origin, but still almost the only educational asset of Anglo-Jewry. Even they are continuously losing ground and influence. There is that farce of Hebrew classes which only go to lull our conscience into the mistaken belief that everything possible is being done for the Jewish upbringing of our children, when in fact they are only being bored for two or three hours weekly with the lifeless and unimaginative representation of a few scanty crumbs of what Judaism once was. The rest is the perpetually recurring problem of Jewish education.
  This is often misrepresented. It is often thought of in terms of organisation, of setting up committees, establishing classes, engaging teachers, appealing for money, distributing responsibilities among different authorities, etc. It is not often realised that the trouble lies not in the very great number of Jewish children who do not attend classes, but in the fact that even those who do so are not having a Jewish education that will shape their character and determine their attitude to life. Poor attendance and lack of proper teachers or adequate funds are not causes that can be eliminated by propaganda. They are symptoms of the evil that lies much deeper. The problem is not one of quantity but of quality; the problem of Jewish education is a spiritual one and not one of technical organisation.
  The educational problem is a direct outcome of the basic spiritual malaise in the life of the modern Jew, of the breach between Jewish teachings and the realities of life around us. Where this has led to the dissolution of the Jewish heritage, where Jews have actually lost all essential contact with historic Judaism, there can, of course, be no hope for Jewish education. The best educational machinery, the most authoritative committees, will be unable to alter this hopelessness. Without Judaism there can be no Jewish education. But even where Jews have contrived to stand up to the strain of our modern existence and have managed notwithstanding many unsolved problems to preserve to a considerable extent traditional Jewish culture, even within such sections of modern Jewry, Jewish education is in a very critical position. We have to face the sombre prospect that whatever little remains of Judaism within modern Jewries will be further diluted with every generation. And Jewish education, as it exists today, has not the force to halt this tendency; it certainly does not hold out any promise of re-invigorating the withering branches of Jewry. At the best, it is no more than a brake, slowing down the pace of dissolution.
  The root of the problem lies in our modern double-track existence, as Jews and as Europeans, which has led us to attempt a double-track education. We educate our children in accordance with the general Western European pattern, to which we add some kind of Jewish training. The result is an education simultaneously conducted on two different and divergent lines. Yet if anywhere, unity and consistency is essential within the educational sphere. Dualism has played havoc with Jewish education.
  What are the consequences of this double schooling? First, it places Jewish education in an unnatural situation. For every minute spent on it is an additional burden on the Jewish child, the necessity and importance of which he can with difficulty understand. From the beginning of Jewish education, we demand from our children a sacrifice of the leisure and relaxation left to them by their general schooling. An education that can only be conducted on the basis of continuous sacrifice on the part of the children is handicapped from the first. As long as the feeling of sacrifice is there, and that is for most of the time, it has to wrestle with the resentment and the inward opposition of the child. At every step this feeling is aroused, as the child is called upon again and again to give up his precious, because limited, leisure in order to enable him to continue his Jewish education. Such conditions produce in the child a feeling of irritation against what he regards as an unnatural imposition. Thus the relation between pupil and teacher becomes antagonistic, and the teacher has without respite to struggle to overcome the psychological barriers erected against him by his pupils. But how few succeed in doing so! Many a teacher who in normal circumstances would give quite a satisfactory account of himself fails here owing to this anomaly of Jewish education. In order to become a successful Jewish teacher in the present circumstances one is compelled to be almost a pedagogic genius. Owing, however, to the lack of a genuine Jewish educational urge, the social status of the Jewish teaching profession has sunk so low within modern Jewries that it offers an unsafe and sometimes disgracefully underpaid existence. Only in very exceptional cases, and only from motives of a very noble idealism, will men be attracted to it who do possess the necessary pedagogic qualifications.
  Again, this chaotic double schooling presents a technical difficulty which must seriously hamper even the best educationist. The very limited time that can be allotted to Jewish education is an enormous disadvantage. The most important of the subjects to be taught, the Bible, is in Hebrew, a language that the pupils do not understand. Before the teacher can start with education in Judaism, he has to spend a considerable part of his very limited time in struggling with his pupils through the difficulties of grammar and vocabulary. The actual knowledge of the Bible, for instance, that can be imparted under present conditions is infinitesimal and utterly unsatisfactory. Even what can be taught is only superficial, and often distorted, as the pupils never achieve a mastery of Hebrew sufficient to help them to an intimate understanding of Biblical expression. They can acquire no ear for the beauty, force, and incomparable style of the Hebrew Bible, they cannot be inspired by the majestic simplicity of the biblical narrative or by the profundity of the biblical word. Lack of adequate knowledge of Hebrew bars the way to the Bible, not to mention other essential sources of Jewish thought and knowledge which are not to be approached without knowledge of Hebrew. All our efforts to give our children a proper idea of the thoughts or feelings embedded in our great prayers break down on the difficulty of the language. What we are able to impart to them is necessarily of very narrow scope and second-hand in quality. We are not in a position to introduce Jewish youth directly to the world of Judaism, to bring them face to face with it. We are unable to give them a thorough knowledge of the essential Jewish ideas, of Jewish history, of the Jewish way of living. The time allotted is insufficient for what Jewish education should be, so we develop a travesty of it to quieten our conscience. The result is the spreading of ignorance. The Am ha’Aretz is becoming more and more the typical Jew.
  Even more serious than the points just noted is the fact that on the present lines Jewish education in the true sense is an impossibility. Even if the aforementioned difficulties could be overcome, we should still be a long way off from Jewish education. For education does not mean pedagogical technique, or providing the growing generation with knowledge. Its aim is to develop and mould character and personality, true to certain moral, religious, political, and social standards that prevail within the educating society. It is not neutral knowledge that children are being taught at school. The knowledge they receive is “biassed”, for it is always selected and presented in such a way as to bring about the educational result most in conformity with the cultural character of the society that educates. It is not merely dates and events that are placed before the child in the history lesson, but a “biassed” presentation of history that is being impressed on him, a certain method of looking on historic events or personalities, so as to judge and weigh them by the prevailing standard of values. It is these values that are really being taught in the history lesson. The same holds good of course for all the other subjects. The teaching of literature, for instance, is regulated by certain cultural formulae current among the respective educational authorities, who wish to safeguard them for the future by carefully selecting what literature should be read and prescribing how it should be read. Not even scientific subjects, like physics or chemistry, are free from the bias inseparable from school education. There, too, a definite practical aim is envisaged that is utterly “unscientific”, and belongs to the social purpose behind education. This social purpose is never neutral, it is determined by the basic ideological conceptions upon which the surrounding society rests. Not knowledge is taught, but through knowledge a style of thinking and living. The aim of education is to produce a certain type of man, and, therefore, unity of educational direction is indispensable. Dualistic education is bound to fail.
  If we apply these general considerations to our problem, it follows that the double schooling in modern Jewries is at best a continual wrestling of two worlds for the soul of the child. Through history, literature, and science the Jewish child at the general school is being taught a definite conception of life which we refer to as Western European. He is being educated to the Christian way of thinking and living, as understood in modern Europe. On the other hand, he attends Hebrew Classes or the Cheder, there to receive his Jewish education. Now if Jewish education is what the word implies then the child in the afternoon, for instance, is taught a way of thinking and living that is Jewish and completely different from what he learnt the same morning. In the morning he is educated to a pattern essentially Christian, in the afternoon to one that should be Jewish. What is to be the result of an education in which two different, and often opposing, forces are trying to shape the personality of impressionable youth? It is to be feared that the situation is not often seen in this light. Jewish education is usually thought of as a purely religious education, added to secular education to complete and perfect it. It is considered to be the Jewish counterpart of the Christian Sunday School. Such notions arise from the misconception that secular education is neutral towards what are called the religious spheres of life.
  But, as we have said, even secular education cannot be neutral; and the bias of modern secular education is Western European or, what is the same, essentially Christian. The neat separation between secular and religious education is itself Christian, in the sense that it is the natural outcome of Christianity as understood and lived by Western Europe in modern times. It is shortsighted not to see that the secular education in which our children participate is Christian secular. Its aim is to produce, to use a current phrase, “the gallant Christian gentleman” (whatever this may mean), who is certainly far different from what should be the product of a Jewish education. It is quite evident that to combine Christian-secular education with a Jewish religious one is no escape from educational dualism. Actually for the most part we do escape it, for the combination is badly balanced. The Christian-secular part in the education of our children is so overwhelming that the little Jewish education is unable to compete with it.
  It is important to realise that even if one treats Judaism as purely a religious system it is none the less true that one cannot teach religion by teaching <i>merely</i> religion. In the school syllabus there is no lesson less suitable for the teaching of religion than the one actually set aside for it. Religion is not a subject but an attitude towards life and its problems. It cannot be taught as a “subject”, only developed as an attitude. For this purpose any subject is suitable, science, history, literature, but not religion as a subject in itself. In the Hebrew classes one can teach the history of Judaism or its principles, but not Judaism itself, which can only be learned by application to life; to make this a possibility many of the secular subjects would have to come within the scope of Jewish religious education. This is quite beyond our Hebrew Classes, where all that can actually be taught is some knowledge of religion, but not a religious style of living, not religion itself. Their presentation of Judaism superimposed on secular education produces a somewhat unpleasant lack of consistency; this, however, along with the dualism it involves, is easily obliterated. Dualism exists only as long as Judaism remains Judaism, i.e. a self-consistent way of living embracing the whole of life. Once, however, Judaism is taught as “Religion” in Hebrew classes, a strange un-Jewish element is introduced into it that distorts it into the clericalised synagogue formula previously described. This is the outcome of assimilation that in conformity with Western European civilisation divides life into a secular and a religious sphere and consequently “christianises” Judaism, so that it becomes a church only lacking the dogmas of Christianity. And thus, naturally, we escape educational dualism, but at the cost of abandoning Jewish education.
  This is the way modern Jewries are drifting, though it is not always clearly apparent; for there is still a considerable amount of what might well be called a Jewish style of living in many a Jewish house. But those who know the situation are aware that in the great majority of cases the result of our present Jewish education is lamentable. The catastrophe is not always obvious, because the influence of the house or environment may for the time being shield the miserable remnants of Jewish education from complete collapse. Even in such genuinely Jewish surroundings, however, Jewish education is but slowing down the process of continuous assimilation and dissolution. At its best, under present conditions, it is only a brake on this process, the effect of which is bound to be felt less and less as the remaining Jewish substance gradually disappears.
  2
  The only remedy against the oncoming catastrophe is the Jewish School. It is the only hope of Jewish education. The Jewish School does not mean merely the old combination of secular and religious education, this time under Jewish management. The Jewish School means a unified Jewish education, i.e. education governed in all its aspects by Jewish spiritual values. Its object is to convey to the child a picture of the world around him as seen through the eyes of Judaism. It aims at creating a consistent picture of the whole, by the application of Jewish moral, social, and religious standards to all the important manifestations of life. It provides the child with a standard by which to measure things and events; it teaches him the Jewish way of thinking. It imparts to the child a Jewish “Weltanschauung”, always bearing in mind the ultimate aim—the Jewish way of living.
  The Jewish School, in order to achieve its purpose, must introduce our youth to the world of Jewish thought. But this world is essentially Hebraic, and the only key to it is the Hebrew language. Without a knowledge of Hebrew we can give our children only second or third-hand Judaism, one that has gone through the shallow channels of translation, losing its vigour and lustre in the process. Hebrew is not a mere technicality, the mastery of which gives us the luxury of being able to enjoy the original. It is an essential part of the expression of the Jewish spirit. The language in which our prophets, thinkers, and teachers expressed themselves bears the stamp of their soul; only a thorough knowledge of their language allows one to participate in their innermost dreams, thoughts, and feelings. For this reason the Jewish School must be to a considerable extent a Hebrew school. It must be bi-lingual, certain subjects, and not only “religion”, being taught in Hebrew and others in the language of the country. One of the most important aims of the Jewish School must be the gradual hebraisation of the Golah. This is not a question of nationalism but of Jewish culture. It is a <i>sine qua non</i> of Jewish education.
  In the Jewish School it is possible to give our children a thorough introduction into the world of Judaism made familiar through a knowledge of Hebrew. Once the misery of translating from a strange language has been eliminated, we shall have a chance to show our youth the startling greatness of the Bible, a greatness in which they are asked to believe today, but of the nature of which they have not the least notion. Besides, we shall be able to introduce into the curriculum other important parts of Jewish literature, such as selected portions of the Midrash, Mishnah, Talmud, Maimonides, etc. All this is essential for Jewish education. For Judaism is not just the Bible, but the Bible in the process of its realisation in the history of the Jewish nation. In post-biblical literature alone is the documentation of this process to be found, and no pedagogue would try to teach Judaism without due regard for these documents. It is crass ignorance to think that post-biblical Jewish literature is antiquated and without meaning for modern civilisation. If that were so, Jewish education could of course dispense with it. But then, we could dispense with Jewish education too, for then Judaism itself would be antiquated and of no importance to us today. In fact, however, the teachings of Midrash and Talmud are more up-to-date than most of us realise; they are more humane, more alive, than those standards by which modern civilisation is dominated, and certainly less hypocritical and less mendacious. Jewish education is impossible without the inclusion of carefully selected parts of post-biblical literature.
  But Jewish education does not end with the teaching of Jewish subjects; it demands the Jewish teaching of all the subjects of the curriculum. It is not for Jewish education to accept without question the national and social prejudices of the countries in which Jews are living. It is not for the Jewish School to propagate, for instance, the nationalistic distortions of history that are so common in the schools of all countries. We want a Jewish presentation of World (or any particular National) History, history seen through the eyes of the prophets and their successors within Judaism. It is not in keeping with the spirit of Jewish education to foster in Jewish children an enthusiasm for the killer-heroism of the “great men” of world history. It is for us to teach them to judge the “great men” in accordance with Jewish precepts; for instance, “Who is a hero? He who subdues his passions”. Naturally, the Jewish child would acquire an entirely different conception of greatness from that which he is being taught today. Many a great man in world history will become in his eyes a detestable tyrant, and a large number of humble, previously inconspicuous, personalities will grow before him into real greatness. If such Jewish teaching of world history were to be consistently carried out, we should be presenting the Jewish child with a new picture of the world; and this is exactly what is needed if Jewish education is to have any real meaning.
  We want the discussion of social and economic problems to be carried on along the lines laid down for instance by Amos and Hosea and further developed by the masters of the Oral Law. We want the teaching of any National Literature to aim fearlessly and uncompromisingly at defining the Jewish attitude to those human problems with which the literature is dealing, whether or not it conforms with what is generally accepted. Even the approach to scientific subjects should be Jewish and not merely technical; for the aim is not to educate future engineers who would be good bridge-builders, but engineers who would be good Jews in being good bridge-builders. We want scientific education not just for the sake of record production, mastery over nature, accumulation of power in the hands of man; we want production, mastery, and power to serve a life purpose that, as far as we Jews are concerned, is set by Judaism.
  We want the teaching of scientific subjects to be related to those Jewish ideals of Life, Community, God, Man, Creation, etc., with which the Bible, the Midrash, the Mishnah, etc., try to imbue the Jewish child. It is time that we realised, for instance, that the teaching of Biology, Physics or Chemistry is today, from the point of view of religious education, almost as important as the Bible itself. It is there that the Bible is being put to the test at school. Scientific subjects may constitute the greatest danger to religious education, but also its greatest opportunity. Science can both lead man away from God, and show him the way to God. It can undermine the moral conscience of man, but it can also deepen it. It can produce the basically a-moral and completely mechanised “superman”, and it can engender humility, awe and a sense of responsibility in man. All depends on the spirit in which it is approached. Jewish education can certainly not accept the principle of science for its own sake so widely prevalent today. The Jewish school is not a laboratory charged with the task of exploring the laws of nature; it is, as any other school should be, an educational institute with a moral purpose. In all its activities, therefore, the unity of its educational purpose must prevail. For this reason even purely scientific subjects must be taught with a definite Jewish moral and religious bias.
  Only a total Jewish education in a Jewish School can create around the child the atmosphere essential for the success of any education.
  Naturally, the Jewish School will not simply copy the syllabus of other schools. It will draw up its own syllabus in accordance with its own needs. As it is already bi-lingual it cannot spend as much time on modern or classical languages as is customary. It can only teach Hebrew at the cost of English, French, Greek or Latin (always paying sufficient attention to the language of the country). Owing to the introduction of a considerable amount of Hebrew literature, part of the lessons dedicated to the teaching of the respective National Literatures will have to be cut out. But what of that? Hebrew is as good a language as any other; and Bible, Midrash, Mishnah, R. Yehudah Halevi, Bialik, etc., are as good a literature as anything else taught at school. What is more, they are most suitable for the education of the Jew. Jewish History, for instance, might well become the nucleus of all the historic material, for World History can easily be related to it. All that the average educated man need know of Egypt can be taught at a Jewish School while discussing the relations between Israel and Egypt in different periods of Jewish history. Important phases in Hellenic as well as Hellenistic history can be adequately described while the connections (political, cultural, etc.) between Hellas and Judea are being considered. Rome played a decisive part in Jewish History; it is in this perspective that the history of Rome should be presented by Jewish education. And so one can go on. It is surprising how much one can learn about Spain, Germany, Russia, etc., through a proper political, social, and economic study of the history of the Jews in those countries. Jewish History must not be taught as the anaemic “biblical and post-biblical” history dished up today even in the best of Hebrew Classes. It must be taught as the World History of the Jewish Nation,*<i class="footnote">* Compare the title of Dubnow’s great work, <i>The World History of the Jewish Nation</i>.</i> and as such it is entitled to the lion’s share of the history lessons at a Jewish School. World History is, unfortunately, only too well mirrored in the history of the Jewish nation.
  3
  The conception of a total Jewish education demands, of course, an organised system of schools in which kindergarten, elementary, and secondary schools, etc., have their proper place. Nor can it work without adequate facilities for the training of teachers. Jewish Teachers’ Seminaries or Colleges are an essential part of a Jewish educational system. In addition, it would be well to retain that one-time very successful instrument of Jewish education, the Yeshivah. A course of one to two years at the Yeshivah could well be conceived as a normal continuation to the Jewish School as described above, whether elementary or secondary. For this purpose it is important that the Yeshivah should be modernised in the sense that it should not ignore, and certainly not thwart, the education of the Jewish School but consciously carry it on and deepen it. This could be done, for instance, by the inclusion of certain subjects in the curriculum of the Yeshivah, such as modern Hebrew Literature, Jewish History, and appropriate lectures on different aspects and problems of modern life in general.
  The New Yeshivah, as an important link in the system of Jewish education, offers great opportunities. An ever-increasing proportion of Jewish youth should go through it. Whatever their future occupation or profession, Jewish youth should spend some time at the Yeshivah. The business-man, the craftsman, the professional man, the Jewish teacher, and certainly the rabbi, all should go through the Yeshivah. On the other hand the New Yeshivah should be sufficiently alive to the needs of the time to keep in touch with the rising generation even after they have entered on their careers. The New Yeshivah should become a spiritual and social centre of part, at least, of the Jewish youth in the Jewish community.
  The only milieu for the realisation of such or similar conceptions of a total Jewish education is of course a well organised, active community thoroughly aware of its all-embracing responsibilities as the basis of the Jewish nation in the Golah. Only the community can bear the financial burden that such a plan would entail in practice, and only the community can guarantee the systematic continuity of educational endeavour so necessary for success. Only through the backing of a unified community will it be possible to impart stability to Jewish education and to give the Jewish teacher the high social status and economic safety that he deserves, and without which no capable person can be expected to devote himself to the teaching profession.
  The success of Jewish education will naturally be influenced by the spiritual situation within Judaism. The more precarious the Jewish spiritual situation in general, the more difficult it will be to make headway in the educational field. For this reason the modern Rediscovery of Judaism and the regeneration linked with it will be of the greatest importance for Jewish education. It will continually direct Jewish education and provide it with new stimuli. It is bound to arouse a new educational enthusiasm, and to sustain it. On the other hand, the exigencies and the many problems of a total Jewish education will serve as an impetus for the great process of Rediscovery. The relation between the work of Rediscovery and the tasks of Jewish education is similar to that between the research laboratory and the medical clinic, the achievements of Rediscovery being applied to Jewish education, and the problems of education goading on the Rediscovery to new exertions and aspirations.
  It may take the lifetime of a whole generation, or even more, to put a complete educational plan into practice; but now is the hour to begin.
  
  IX; Not Because of Our Sins
  
  
  
  
  
  IN these days of transition the problem of our relations with the world around us is amongst the most important matters on which we have to clarify our ideas. In any Jewish planning this plays a decisive part. Being a people who do not possess the kind of power that alone counts among nations, we are at the mercy of others. Whatever we may plan might easily be frustrated by lack of understanding on the part of our neighbours. We may work hard and yet in vain, because of lack of good will on their side. We might be just about to reap the harvest of Jewish endeavours and sacrifices, but overnight all might be brutishly trampled down by one of those familiar explosions, the pogroms, the so-called “wrath of the people”, and we have to start anew from the very beginning. How much of our energy, of our strength, of our resources, has thus been senselessly annihilated!
  We are not concerned here with the political consequences of this abnormal situation. What does interest us is that the sore and unsolved problem of our relation to the world has distorted our own perspective. For centuries Jews have struggled desperately with this obstinate problem. It has become their main preoccupation; Jewish conduct has often become a mere reaction to the “problem”, continuously changing, as the Jewish problem has been seen in a different light at different times. This reflex-action has been so powerful as to determine not only our attitude towards our neighbours, but even our conception of Judaism. It has created all kinds of Jews and all kinds of Judaisms. Jews have often been prepared to distort the whole structure of Judaism in the hope of easing or normalising their relations with their neighbours. If their neighbours were pacifists, then of course they discovered that Judaism was nothing else but the purest expression of pacifism. Was nationalism the vogue, then Judaism was the proud expression of the spirit of a proud nation. Was there a war around them, then there was no higher Jewish commandment than to serve the country with the sword. In a socialist society Jews made out Judaism to be the first socialist system of any importance, while in a capitalist one they found that there was nothing holier in the Bible than private property. Not that Jews were insincere in allowing their Judaism to be always determined by the prevailing ideas in the world around. The continuous stress of the problem of external relations had taken from them the ability to think independently and to behave naturally. They have been thinking and behaving, especially in these last hundred and fifty years, with the question foremost in mind: How will the world take it? Will it approve or not? Instead of taking Judaism as they found it or leaving it entirely, many Jews have twisted and turned it to fit their reactions to the Jewish problem. In such an atmosphere there can be no proper realisation of the needs of Judaism; nor is any Jewish cultural planning possible that could lead to regeneration. Jews are bound to fail so long as they are afraid to take their stand on nothing but Judaism. Jews will go on to become slow-stepping assimilationists or defiant nationalists, or some such reaction-types, according to external circumstances, while Judaism will speedily move towards its end. There is no other way for Jews to free themselves from this unfortunate reaction-behaviour and reaction-Judaism but by tackling the problem of their relation to the world from the standpoint of morality and not of political and social expediency.
  Nothing can show more clearly what is meant by this than anti-Semitism. Usually, anti-Semitism is explained as a just or, at least, intelligible reaction to certain faults and defects in the Jewish character. And Jews often pay too much attention to such explanations. We have often to witness the painful spectacle of Jews excusing themselves and apologising for Jewish faults on the ground that for some historic reason or other Jewry is not to be blamed for them. This of course is an easy line to follow, for there is much truth in the argument. The peoples amongst whom he has lived have driven the Jew from agriculture and industry, forbidden him for long centuries to own land, and excluded him from the trades and crafts, leaving him nothing whereby to earn a living but by moneylending (with the continuous threat of expulsion and looting hanging over him) or dealing in old rags. And those who have condemned him to such an unproductive existence accuse him of being a parasitic moneylender or a peddler. What judge would be impressed by such an indictment! No impartial observer can fail to see through the reasons given for anti-Semitism, for they change from time to time and from country to country. Today it is suggested that Jews are being persecuted because they no longer live up to the ideals of genuine Judaism as they did in former times; but in former times they were burned at the stake because they did live up to them and did not intend to live up to anything else. There they are hated as capitalists, here because they are Communists, and so on without end.
  But such considerations are not to the point. Jews certainly have faults, but these have little to do with the reasons for anti-Semitism. Jews are not hated on account of their faults. Their faults are the pegs on which to hang a smug anti-Semitism. This can easily be tested, for love and hatred are widely enough spread over the world. When in history did nations or masses hate faults of character and love human perfections? When were national loves or hates decided by moral standards? World History has always been dominated by irrational impulses and bloodthirsty passions, by lust for power and ruthless ambitions leading to robbery and murder in the name of nationalism or imperialism; far more by these than by moral indignation about rights and wrongs. The history of the Jewish nation is part of world history, and there is no logic in trying to explain it by laws which have no relevance to the historical stage in general. Always and everywhere there has been plenty of hatred, not for what was evil but for anything that dared to oppose human selfishness, that stood in the way of successful gangsterdom. To try to explain anti-Semitism as being caused by Jewish faults in the face of such evidence is either naïve or hypocritical. Two thousand years of Jew-hatred because of our sins, because of the evil in us! Such a conception of anti-Semitism credits our civilisation with a sustained moral indignation that is contrary to all historic experience.
  Even Jews are often at a loss to understand why, if they do not deserve it, they are alone the continuous object of hatred and persecution. This would indeed be a perplexing question if the record of the world were a clean one apart from the treatment of the Jews. But who would dare to maintain this? The record is cruel and bloody, especially where it treats of the plight of the weak and the helpless. The treatment Jews have received from the nations has always been in exact keeping with that record. Where it was brighter and cleaner, there they too had less reason to complain; where it darkened, there their life darkened too.
  There is no need for a separate explanation of Jew-hatred. There never has lived a nation on earth which has not been hated by someone or other and has not been among the haters. Hatred is the natural outcome of the egoism and self-love so deeply rooted in human nature. Individuals and whole nations are generally wrapped in self-love to such an extent that they resent anything outside of their own narrow life-circle, everything strange to them, everything that differs from themselves. The more unusual it is, the stranger it appears, the more they resent it. Of course, civilisation does exercise a certain control over these primitive emotions. Since, however, expediency is to a much greater extent than morality the driving force in the development of civilisation, primitive emotions are often kept under control only as far as it is useful to control them. Too many individuals, and probably all the nations, have only controlled their desires as far as it suited their interests. But whenever men are shortsighted enough not to see that it does pay to be civilised, or whenever they are powerful enough to think that there are better and quicker ways to satisfy their egoism, they will be likely to throw the control of civilisation overboard. Peace, for instance, is an acknowledged ideal of modern civilisation, not because of the Sixth Commandment but because in long and sad experience man has found out that retaliation follows an attack on a neighbour. If one uses his fists, then so will the other. Where, however, one is so strong that there is little fear of retaliation or, at any rate, that it will not be effective, then man shows very clearly how little he has progressed beyond his pre-historic ancestry.
  Such is the civilisation in the midst of which Jews are living, and its own structure completely explains the treatment they have received from it. This has only been what could be expected from a civilisation whose history is drenched with streams of blood and tears. It has hated Jews because it has hated; it has persecuted them because it has persecuted. Any nation in their position—homeless, the eternal stranger everywhere, and without the power of hitting back—whatever its qualities, would have been and actually has been treated exactly in the same way as the Jews.
  Anti-Semitism is only part of the general resentment and hatred against the other man, the neighbour, the stranger, which is deeply rooted in human nature. Resentment and Hatred have always been there looking for a target, even before anti-Semitism. And only because they are already there can they be directed against the Jew, and in the majority of cases will first of all be so directed; for there is nothing less dangerous for haters, nothing easier and cheaper for them, than to hate the Jew. Anti-Semitism is there not because of what Jews are but because of what anti-Semites are. It is a symptom of a moral disease in the character of men. As a symptom anti-Semitism reveals a stunted consciousness of justice in general. The Jewish tragedy is but part of the great tragedy of the failure of justice and humanity in this world. Jews carry on their shoulders the burden of the sins of the nations. It is because of the sins of the nations that Jews suffer and not because of theirs. In all those periods of World History, only too rare, when justice and humanity were respected among men, there was less Jewish suffering. In the same measure as these human ideals lost influence, Jews felt that the ground was slipping from under their feet. The Jew is always as happy as the world is just. There is no exception to this rule. The measure of justice meted out to the Jew has always been the measure of real justice available for mankind in general.*<i class="footnote">* This seems to us to be the modern application of Isaiah 53. It is time we revised the meaning of the more popular idea so often expressed by the prophets, that Israel has suffered as a retribution for its sins. If retribution has a meaning at all, there must be a just relation between sin and retribution. The incredible amount of suffering in the course of the history of the Galut, however, overwhelmingly weighs down the scale if measured against Jewish sins. This is no retribution but plain cruelty. Who would dare say that today Jews are suffering all over Europe because of their sins? The idea of retribution can only be accepted in the sense that because of the sins of the Jewish people God does not interfere with the natural course of Jewish history, as He has so often done according to Jewish tradition, in order to save them. In other words, Jews are suffering because of the sins of the nations; the miracle of salvation by God’s merciful interference is ruled out by their own sins.</i>
  If there is anything indivisible in man it is his sense of justice, his humanity. There can never be two standards in one man in this respect, one for the Jew and one for the Gentile. An individual, a society, a government, or a nation that is prepared to condone injustice for any reason whatever done to any man is undermining humanity among all men; it is crippling man’s sense of justice and morality. He who denies justice to the Jew will deny it to anybody whenever it suits him. He who repudiates fair dealing with Jews will do the same with non-Jews whenever he can afford it. He who tramples underfoot the human dignity of the Jew will have no respect for the dignity of other men. Because of the indivisibility of justice and humanity the quickest and surest way to train a nation or a group of people to hatred, aggression, and brutality is to train it to hate the Jew and to deny him his right to live; this will soon corrupt its whole nature and undermine its moral strength.
  Jews can do nothing about anti-Semitism. Whatever they have undertaken, however they have behaved, has been of no avail. It could not be, for no disease can be cured by treating the symptoms. The disease is not theirs, the nations have to cure themselves of it; not of anti-Semitism but of hatred, injustice, lack of humanity, of selfishness, and self-love. The hope of the Jews is justice in the world. As justice spreads, anti-Semitism will diminish.
  
  
  
  The case of anti-Semitism very well illustrates the question of our relations with the world, the Jewish Problem, in all its aspects. It is, and has always been, part of the unsolved problem of a sane and just relationship between men and nations. So far, two attempts at the solution of the Jewish Problem have been put forward, assimilatory emancipation and national restoration.
  Jewish emancipation has failed in two different forms. It has failed lamentably on the European Continent, ending in untold sufferings for millions of Jews deprived of the most elementary rights of human beings. In the democracies, on the other hand, it has failed in a more genteel and quiet manner. While giving the Jew a considerable chance of a normal civic existence, emancipation has brought about the withering away of the whole religious, cultural, and social strength of Judaism. Both the “successful” emancipation in the democracies and the unsuccessful on the Continent, somehow come to the same thing: the end of Judaism. The one in Europe has led to the violent destruction of the physical body of the people; the other, in the United States of America, Great Britain, etc., saps their spiritual vitality. The failure was not accidental but the natural outcome of the basic injustice involved in the condition on which alone emancipation was granted to Jews. This condition, as we have already pointed out,*<i class="footnote">* See Chapter I.</i> was assimilation. For the rights “graciously” granted to them Jews were made to pay with their souls and hearts, with Judaism. They were expected to give up their peculiarity, their own personality, and to assimilate themselves to their surroundings. Behind this generous emancipation was the barbarous conception that the “stranger” was not entitled to equality and justice. The old formula of <i>cuius regio eius religio</i> was in a more enlightened period exchanged for <i>cuius regio eius natio</i>. No matter how long Jews had been living in any country, they remained strangers as long as they did not identify themselves with the ruling nation. They had to assimilate themselves and become English, French, German, etc., in order to qualify for the enjoyment of civic and human rights. This had nothing to do with the other, purely inner-Jewish question, whether Jews indeed represented a separate nation or were merely followers of a religion. The issue was not whether Jews were a national unit or merely some kind of a curious Oriental church. The injustice consisted in the fact that assimilation was a condition inherent in emancipation.†<i class="footnote">† The argument that assimilation was not always an explicit condition of emancipation is beside the point. The outstanding feature of Jewish Emancipation in Western Europe was that it granted civic rights to the Jew as an individual and not as a member of a national minority with a civilisation and a distinct way of life of its own. Thus the existence of a Jewish national group was ruled out <i>a priori</i> and its needs ignored. The individual Jewish citizen was emancipated, but not the Jewish national group. That is why assimilation must be looked upon as a condition inherent in emancipation. In the course of modern history every European nation has been emancipated as a national entity, only the Jews have been “legally” manœuvred into the role of individual citizenship.</i> The real trouble was that elementary human rights were, as it were, sold to the Jews. They were granted freedom on conditions. They were promised equality before the law, if, in exchange, they would live up to the expectations of the masters of the countries in which they lived. They were freed from disabilities, if they would irritate Europe no more with their strange appearance and habits. It occurred to no one that every human being, even a “stranger”, Jew or Gentile, black or white, has an unconditioned and inalienable claim to freedom and justice, and decent treatment. It was not realised that although men might possess physical power enough to rob their fellow-men of their natural right, no power on earth can give man the right to live his own life, because it is his already. It did not occur to the shapers of modern Europe that justice was no commodity to be sold by auction to the highest bidder.
  It was the curse of Jewish emancipation, as we have seen it, that other nations thought they were entitled to tell us what to be and how to be it, in order to be worthy of the blessings of emancipation. It was the first great betrayal of the ideals of the French Revolution of 1789–91, for it meant: Freedom, Equality, Fraternity—yes, for everybody who is like us. For the Jews too, if they become like us. This limitation of the universal ideals of the “Grande Revolution” was the first step on that tragic way that has led Europe to Fascism and Nazism. Once “We”—this magnified “I”—has been made the source from which justice is to be derived, excluding everybody as far as he has no share in the “We”, everything will depend on what is meant by “We”. It may be the cultural and political unit that was the nation during the period of liberalism; it may just as well mean anything else, and why not the racial group or the totalitarian state?
  The Jewish tragedy of assimilatory emancipation does not end with the sufferings on the European Continent, or with the spiritual dissolution of Judaism in the democratic countries. The tragedy was deepened by the fact that Jews were unable to grasp the world-wide moral issues at stake. It was their historic task to be steadfast, to remain “the strangers”, and continually to point to the intrinsic hypocrisy that ruled relations between men and nations as revealed in the fundamental injustice of assimilatory emancipation. It was their duty to remain what they were, a group of people different from the masters of this world; as such to insist on their human rights based on a moral code that the world in general did not accept. It was their duty to insist that Freedom and Equality and Brotherhood were not to be limited to any majority or only to the powerful the “We” represented. By accepting the formula “to the Jews as men everything, as Jews nothing”, by agreeing to pay for human rights, by endeavouring to become good Englishmen, Frenchmen, etc., in order to deserve the blessings of citizenship, Jews have become accomplices in all the hypocrisy and mutilations of justice of which this kind of emancipation was one symptom. Through assimilatory emancipation Jews have, by betraying Judaism, betrayed humanity.
  That very different experiment of solving the Jewish Problem by the restoration of the Jewish nation to its ancient home in Eretz Israel also shows how inseparably the plight of the Jew is linked up with international morality. The heroism of a section of the Jewish youth has worked miracles in Eretz Israel; without regard for sacrifice, swamps and deserts, the neglect of two thousand years, have been converted into flourishing gardens. The language of the Bible has been revived. A new Jewish type has been created. As an experiment to prove that the homeless Jew, deprived of his land for nearly two thousand years, was able to rebuild the ruins of the past and to return to the land of his ancestors, the colonisation of Eretz Israel was an incomparable success. As a solution of the vast Jewish Problem to normalise the existence of a nation of sixteen millions, the five hundred thousand Jews settled in Palestine constitute only a very limited success. (For the time being even, it can hardly be said that the problem has been definitely solved for the five hundred thousand settled in Eretz Israel.) The very limited success of the restoration of the Jewish nation in Eretz Israel is the exact expression of that very limited amount of international sanity which has governed the world during the last twenty odd years. The Balfour Declaration was only possible as part of a great vision of a just world-order. In the same measure as the vision faded out in the years between the two wars, the Balfour Declaration was dangerously near becoming one more of those famous “scraps of paper” littering the scene of world history. Naturally enough, in the ignominious days of appeasement, at the time of the great betrayal of justice and international law and order, the Declaration has indeed become a dead-letter. After the many years of continued stupidity and moral rot, the dream of a just world-order was expiring, the Palestine Mandate was no more workable. Of course not! But then, neither were honesty, justice, and truth.
  There is every reason to believe that the Mandate, and maybe even a bolder conception of Jewish national restoration, will again become workable, and the dead letter of the Balfour Declaration will come to new life, as the moral conscience of mankind recovers from its present eclipse. There is just as much hope for us as there is for humanity in general; no more, no less. A just solution of the Jewish Problem is the surest touchstone of the coming moral recovery of the world. Whether the nations like it or not, there is no escape from it: whatever new plan for a New World is adopted, it will have to prove its value by its application to the Wandering Jew. There will be just as much justice in the plan as there is justice done to him. New World Orders may mean freedom and humanity, but may just as well be the outcome of a new balance of power, hidden behind these frequently misused words. Jews play no part in any distribution of the balance of power, whether inter-social or inter-national. They are very weak; in the mad game of power politics they are a <i>quantité negligeable</i>. Jewish claims, therefore, are backed by nothing but their moral weight. The only ally Jews have in this world is the sense of justice in all men, and for that reason its worth and the degree of its maturity is most surely and easily gauged by what it means to the Jew. There are many practical reasons why a certain amount of fairness should be observed in the treatment of any social group of any small nation settled on its own land. There is only one reason for the just treatment of the Jew, justice. The plight of the Jew is the moral barometer of mankind.
  
  
  
  From our argument it follows that the only hope for the solution of the Jewish Problem and for normal relations between Jews and the nations rests on a world-wide realisation of the ideal of justice. The solution of the Jewish Problem is therefore essentially a non-Jewish task. The historic mission of the Jewish nation consists in having the courage to face the world, insisting that justice should be done even to the Jew. The greatest service Jews can render to humanity is obdurately to insist on a just settlement of the Jewish Problem. In proportion as Jews succeed in convincing the nations of its necessity, they will have succeeded in convincing them of the necessity for sane and moral relations between all men. They can never fail, for the least they can do is to confront the world with the unwavering attitude of faith in the ultimate triumph of sanity on earth. If Jews have done this, they have done much. Never must they accept suggestions to solve the problem of the Wandering Jew that are not basically just, however advantageous they otherwise might be. By acquiescing in injustice done to them, they become collaborators in evil, they become guilty of the sins around them that alone make the sin against them possible. Whatever the price, Jews must remain the testing ground of humanity; and they must declare frankly and with no uncertain voice what this means to them.
  Firstly, they do not intend to “pay” for their rights with assimilation. There is not the slightest reason why Jews should pay for what is theirs and of what they have been robbed for thousands of years. They will not pay for their rights; either with money, or with their soul; either with the promise of “good behaviour”, or with the endeavour to earn the recognition of their “benefactors”. They do not wish for rights to be <i>granted</i> to them as if they were privileges. For to have “rights”, and especially to have them granted to one, usually means that one’s right is being suppressed. They <i>have</i> their own right to live just as anyone else on this earth. They ask that there should be no interference with their right to live. What they demand is that that right should be respected.
  All, Jews and Gentiles, must learn that Jews owe to no man their gratitude for justice, freedom, and humanity. Nobody should expect them to be grateful simply for the absence of persecution.
  Their good right to live implies that Jews have the right to be themselves, to be it independently of the whole world, without regard for what others would like them to be. They may think what they like, worship as they like, follow whatever party they choose. They need not be conservative just because the world around them is so, neither need they be liberal for the same reason. They need not be nationalists when people go mad with nationalism. It is for them alone to decide how to educate their children. Whether they are believers or atheists, that is their own concern. They are under no obligation to accept on <i>a priori</i> grounds the morals or the manners of others. And there is certainly no necessity for them to look to their neighbours for the standards by which they should try to live.
  The right to live means that Jews have the right to differ. That the nations choose to call them “strangers” because they differ from them is a matter of taste that is solely their own concern. Whether strangers or not, this has no bearing on the enjoyment of human rights. “Stranger” may mean not speaking the same language or not being of the same stock or of the same culture; it must never mean not having the same rights. Justice knows no strangers. Justice forbids the idea that one has to be an Englishman in England, a Frenchman in France, a Russian in Russia, etc., in order to be entitled to the rights of citizenship. We refuse to acknowledge that this world belongs to those who have had the power to conquer it, or who have come earlier and possess it in abundance, or who are so many that they have the strength to keep out the few. We refuse to acknowledge it because it has nothing to do with justice. Every bit of this earth belongs to all of us who live on it. Wherever a man lives, he is there in his own good right and not on sufferance. And wherever a Jew lives, though he appear ever so “strange” to the majority, he is no stranger in respect of rights or duties.
  We often hear of the one or the other country having too many Jews. This is exactly what one may expect to find in this civilisation with its bombers and concentration-camps, where everyone who has the power seems to have the right too to declare that the chair on which the other fellow sits is his living space, and to proceed accordingly. There is no other logic behind the too-many-Jews theory. The only reason that it is the Jews who are too many is that they are too few and too weak and can therefore be driven out. One cannot lend a hand to any too-many-Jews policy without becoming a party to the kind of international brigandage behind it. There can be no country on earth with too many Jews; not because Jews are good Poles, Rumanians, or as the case may be (it is enough for Jews to be good Jews), but because no country belongs to the majority that lives in it but to every human being living there.
  The fact that national restoration in Palestine is the essential part of any just solution of the Jewish Problem does not imply that we accept the role of “strangers” in any other part of the world. Justice demands that wherever an individual Jew lives he is entitled there to full and equal human rights with any other citizen of the state. Justice demands too that the fact be recognised that Jews are a nation with a culture of their own and a history to be carried on. In earlier chapters we have tried to show how Judaism is bound up with the realities of Jewish national existence. Even if there were not a single persecuted Jew in the whole world, national restoration would still be an indispensable condition for Jewish survival. Jews do not retreat into national restoration; they see in it the only possibility of living their own life. Jews do not retreat, for retreat would mean surrender to successful injustice, and they are not accustomed to surrender. They have not the intention of colonising some desert in order to save their skins; this would be retreat, and would imply the acknowledgment on their side that people have only the right to live where they are strong enough to be masters. Jews cannot do it; it would be a complete break with their past. It would be a new beginning and they cannot start anew. They have not lived in order to survive, they have survived in order to live; that means to live on, to continue. Thousands of years of Jewish history determine that to continue means national restoration in Palestine. Without it Jews cannot remain themselves, without it they are lost. Justice to the individual Jew is justice on the spot (wherever that may be); justice to the Jewish nation is justice in Eretz Israel.
  What are the hopes for the solution of the Jewish Problem on the basis of a justice as we have described it? From our argument it follows that they are as tangible as any hopes for a future world order of reason and humanity.
  If the suffering millions of this tormented world are not to be cheated again, one of the fundamental principles of a New World will have to be the abrogation of national sovereignty to a very considerable extent. If the present tragedy is not to repeat itself in every generation, wide and sane federations of states will have to be established. Political and economic rights in such inter-national federations can not be conditioned by national qualifications; they will have to be based on all-embracing humanitarian principles. Different nations will have to live together; they will have to learn that everyone has the right to be what he is and to live as he likes, as long as he is doing his duty as a citizen. In such a world, freed from the curse of sovereign nationalisms, there is a well-founded hope that the right to live as Jews, with all it might imply, will be acknowledged more and more, and that there will develop a growing understanding for the economic, cultural, religious, and national needs of the Jewish nation.
  There is no justification for much optimism, nor is there reason for despondency. As yet, we are very far from a New World of justice and lasting peace, very far therefore from the realisation of our hopes. The essence of the Jewish tragedy has always been that the plight of the Jew is also the plight of reason and humanity in this world. At the same time, it is an assurance of a happier day to come, the day of the future triumph of this same reason and humanity. True, it will not be soon, but Jews have learned to wait. In the meantime they must put their own house in order. In the meantime they have to bring about the spiritual regeneration of Judaism as far as possible in the present abnormal circumstances. They will wait, but woe unto them should they be caught unprepared.
  
  Glossary of Hebrew Terms
  
  <i>Aggada</i>.—The non-legal part of the Talmudic or Midrashic literature as distinguished from Halachah; including stories, legends, etc., derived from “Hagged”, to tell, to narrate.
  <i>Aggadic</i>.—Adjective to Aggada.
  <i>Am Ha’Aratz</i>.—The Jew who is uneducated in Jewish matters. Literally “the people of the land”, the peasants.
  <i>Anshey K’nesset ha’Gdolah</i>.—The members of the Great Synagogue, also called the Great Assembly; its first President was Ezra.
  <i>Avodah</i>.—Work, Manual Labour; also Divine Worship.
  <i>Baal Ha’Bayis</i>.—The average married Jew, settled in a community. Literally “Master of the house”.
  <i>Baal K’riah</i>.—The reader of the weekly portion of the Law in the Synagogue. Lit. “master of reading”.
  <i>Bachad</i>.—Abbreviation of B’rit Chalutzim Datiim, movement of religious pioneers for Palestine.
  <i>Bet Ha’midrash</i>.—The “house of study” where people gather to listen to the lectures of the rabbis.
  <i>B’rerah</i>.—Lit. “clarification”, an intricate principle of Talmudic Law, by which legal consequences which are linked up with certain conditions are valid now, even though these conditions can be clarified only in the future, if the conditions are already inherent in the situation and are bound to emerge at a later date.
  <i>Chalutz.-</i>—Pioneer for Palestine.
  <i>Chasakah</i>.—Lit. “holding”; “presumption” in the legal sense; also “usucaption,” etc.
  <i>Chazan</i>.—The Reader in the Synagogue, also under <i>Sh’liach Tsibbur</i>, plural, <i>Chazanim</i>.
  <i>Cheder</i>.—The Jewish school in former times; lit. a room.
  <i>Din</i>.—A law or precept, plural, <i>Dinim</i>.
  <i>Eretz Israel</i>.—The land of Israel, Palestine today.
  <i>Eretz</i>.—Land, today often used for Palestine.
  <i>Even Ha’Ezer</i>.—The third part of the Shulchan Aruch.
  <i>Galut</i>.—Exile.
  <i>Gaon</i>.—Great Jewish scholar (referring to traditional literature).
  <i>Gittin</i>.—Title of one of the tractates of the Talmud, meaning “Documents of Divorce”; <i>Gittin</i> plural of <i>Get</i>, usually a divorce document.
  <i>G’mara</i>.—The greater part of the Talmud, explaining the Mishnah.
  <i>Golah</i>.-—The people in exile.
  <i>Halachah</i>.—The legal part of the Talmudic or Midrashic literature; adjective, <i>Halachic</i>.
  <i>Hilchot</i>.—Plural of <i>Halachah</i>, meaning Laws or actual decisions.
  <i>Hilch’ta Li’ Mshicha</i>.—A Law for the time of the Messiah, not applicable today.
  <i>Kaddish</i>.—Prayer usually recited by mourners.
  <i>Kerem b’Yavneh</i>.-—The seat of the Great Sanhedrin in Yavneh after the destruction of the second Temple, figuratively called “the vineyard in Yavneh”.
  <i>Kibbutz Galuyot</i>.-—“Home-gathering of the exiled”, the Messianic return of the Jewish people to Eretz Israel.
  <i>K’tubbot</i>.—Tractate of the Talmud, meaning “marriage contracts”, plural of <i>K’tubbah</i>.
  <i>K’vanah</i>.—Inner concentration on prayer, devotion.
  <i>K’vutzah</i>.—Collective Jewish settlement in modern Palestine.
  <i>Lainen</i>.—The Reading of the Law in the Synagogue (Yiddish).
  <i>Ma’amad Sh’loshton</i>.—Lit. “the stand of the three”, a principle of Jewish Law according to which a creditor can assign a debt by oral notice to his own creditor in the presence of his own debtor.
  <i>Meshek</i>.—Agricultural settlement in modern Palestine.
  <i>Midrash</i>.—Earliest traditional exegetic literature explaining the Bible.
  <i>Mishnah</i>.—The Teaching (derived from “Shanah”, to repeat), the Oral Tradition in its systematised, and partly codified, form.
  <i>Mishnayot</i>.—The six orders of the Mishnah.
  <i>Nashim</i>.—The third order of the Mishnah and Talmud, treating mainly of marriage, divorce laws, etc., and many aspects of family life, as well as the relations between the sexes. Lit. “Women”.
  <i>Nussach</i>.—See <i>Nussach Ha’T’fillah</i>.
  <i>Nussach Ha’T’fillah</i>.—The traditional musical style for the recitation of the prayers in the synagogue.
  <i>Piyyut</i>.—Early religious poetry, introduced into the Synagogue as additional liturgy to the original order of the prayers.
  <i>Sanhedrin</i>.—The High Court in Jerusalem, later in other places in the country.
  <i>Shabbos Goy</i>.—Gentile lighting the fire, etc., in an orthodox Jewish house on a Sabbath.
  <i>Sh’liach Tsibbur</i>.—The “Deputy of the Congregation”, the Reader in the Synagogue; see also <i>Chazan</i>.
  <i>Shulchan Aruch</i>.—Lit. “The laid Table”; the generally accepted code of Jewish Law consisting of four parts, compiled in its present form by J. Caro (died 1575), who adopted the order of the “Turim” by R. Jacob ben Asher.
  <i>S’lichah</i>.—Additional liturgy for the days preceding the New Year, the Ten Days of Penitence and the Day of Atonement. Lit. Forgiving.
  <i>Talmid Chacham</i>.—The Jewish scholar (referring to traditional literature), opposite of <i>Am Ha’Aretz</i>.
  <i>Talmud</i>.—The great record of the Oral Law, consisting of the Mishnah and G’mara.
  <i>Talmud Torah</i>.—The study of the Torah.
  <i>T’fillat Yachid</i>.—The private (individual) prayer.
  <i>Torah</i>.—The Bible, the Teaching, the Law.
  <i>Torah im Derech Eretz</i>.—Lit. “Torah combined with the way of the world”; the principle of Neo-Orthodoxy in Germany meaning, very differently from its original sense, the combination between Judaism and European civilisation.
  <i>Torat Mosheh</i>.—The Torah of Moses.
  <i>Yotser</i>.—Part of the liturgy, late addition to the original order of the Synagogue service.
  <i>Y’shivah</i>.-—The Talmudical College, a kind of Talmudical High School and University. Plural <i>Y’shivot</i>.
  <i>Y’shivah Bachur</i>.—A pupil or student of the <i>Y’shivah</i>.