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text: Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
  בין אתמול למחר
  merged
  
  This file contains merged sections from the following text versions:
  -Oxford: The East and West library, 1945
  -
  
  Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
  
  Preface
  
  THE sermons in this volume were preached during the darker days of the war. I have tried in them by applying a few fundamental principles of the Jewish conception of life and history to elicit the significance of certain events of these years in terms of a “moral strategy” of the war.
  It is with some hesitation that I submit these sermons to a wider public. The spoken word is essentially different from the written one. Committed to print, it must lose some of the force and emphasis derived by it from both the original situation in which it has been spoken and the oratory of the speaker.
  To my mind the justification for this volume lies in the persistence of the “original situation,” which will most probably not pass for many years yet. In terms of our moral strategy this war will not be over when the soldier has done his work. For a considerable period yet, mankind is destined to grope in darkness between a world that is irretrievably lost and a new life not yet born, the resolute striving for which requires a moral stamina and depth of vision not yet possessed by mankind in general.
  To-morrow will come, but not so soon. I hope that in this no man’s world between yesterday and to-morrow these sermons may be of some help in the clarification of the issues with which they deal.
  In conclusion, I wish to thank Mr. M. Simon, M.A., for valuable help and advice in the preparation of the present volume for publication.
  LEEDS, Chanucah, 5705.—<i>December, 1944</i> E.B.
  
  I; Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
  
  
  
  Section 1
  
  NOT BY MIGHT……
  <i>On the Sabbath after the fall of Paris</i>
  1
  IN the Haftorah of the day we read the famous sentence which seems to be the summing up of the message of Judaism to the world and which expresses the only hope of humanity in this hour of trial and suspense. *<i class="footnote">*Zechariah IV, 6.</i>“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts”.
  Never have human hearts wished these words to be true more earnestly than they do to-day. On the other hand, never was the human mind more doubtful as to the essential truth of this sentence than it is to-day.
  “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit” … there is comfort in this, there is hope in this. But is there more, more than mere comfort and, it may be, unfounded hope, cleverly devised only for those who are in need of such comfort and hope because they are without might and without power? Is there truth in this, truth that can be proved by the facts of our life? Is there historic truth in this?
  It is not a little pathetic to observe how obstinately we Jews—a nation that has long forgotten what real might and power are—have always insisted on the tenet of “Not by might”.
  Again and again in our history we have had to suffer the brutality of power. Again and again we have had to experience in our own life how might rules in this world and how dark and dreary a fate is meted out to those who have nothing more to rely upon than spiritual and moral strength. Never has there been a nation on earth with more reason to respect power than the Jews. But in spite of their experiences no nation has ever treated the exhibition of bare force with more contempt than the Jews. Again and again we witnessed the success of force and material might, again and again we proclaimed: “Not by might but by my spirit, saith the Lord”.
  How is such an attitude to be explained? How can it be so obstinately maintained in the face of innumerable facts that seem to stultify it? Do we Jews not know this world? Do we not know human nature? Do we not know life? Have we not witnessed the course of human history long enough? Have we not seen force march from triumph to triumph, trample upon the creations of the spirit, ruthlessly destroy moral standards of living, and break everything that in the name of justice or right or truth stood in its way? Have we not learned yet that the only thing that is able to humiliate force is more force? Do we really walk about the world with our eyes shut to the facts? Or do we perhaps cling so obdurately to this unreasonable belief of ours in the spirit because we are so utterly powerless that there is nothing more left for us but this comfort of the weak, this hope of despair?
  2
  I believe that Judaism knows man fairly well; it also knows history and understands it, and because of this Judaism declares: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit”.
  This is, indeed, our comfort, this our hope. Not the comfort of weakness, nor the hope of despair; but the comfort of fortitude and the hope of strength.
  Hope comes of strength, it is justified, when there is faith behind it. And it is the entire faith of Judaism that is the foundation of our hope for the ultimate victory of the spirit. It is our faith in God that stands behind it. Faith in God involves faith in life, it means faith in the ultimate value of life, in a moral purpose slowly but surely realising itself in life. Faith tells us that this world has been created by Him not for the purpose of being destroyed by the devil. Faith in God declares that the world can never be delivered up to the ravaging powers of darkness and destruction.
  Our faith in God, our trust in reason, our confidence in life, our unshakable belief in a moral purpose of history, all this has been summed up in the courageous words: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord”. For us who are Jews, this is the very essence of life. If these words do not hold true, life itself is nothing but a horrible nightmare. If the spirit will not conquer, life itself must perish. If justice is to succumb, mankind will be wiped out. If truth is not to be victorious, the whole of the Universe must disintegrate, fall to pieces, and vanish in the void.
  Our faith in the ultimate victory of the spirit is unshakable. It is as strong as life is, and it will last as long as life will last on earth.
  3
  But what about the facts of life? Do they not prove that we are mistaken in our faith? Does not life show that it is always the fittest that survive, the mightiest and most powerful? To this we Jews have <i>lived</i> the answer: No.
  Our own life, our own history gives evidence to the contrary. It is true, often we saw brutal force triumphant, but just as often we saw it humiliated, wallowing in the dust, trodden even by the feet of the weakest. Again and again we witnessed the success of barbarous might, but in many more cases we watched its destruction and annihilation.
  We Jews are the witnesses of human history. There is one thing that we have never experienced: the ultimate triumph of barbarism. Among all the western nations we are the one with the longest memory. We have known almost all the tyrannies of the world, we felt their whip on our own bodies, and to-day we can give evidence that there was not one among them that we have not seen totter and tumble, fall and crash.
  Our very existence, the fact that we are here to-day, able to witness the gigantic bid now being made by brutal force for domination over the spirit and everything that the spirit stands for, the very fact that the Jews are still able to feel the lash of the tyrant’s whip, is for itself proof enough that, at the end, it is not the tyrannies that survive, not barbarous strength that conquers.
  Napoleon said once—and he should have known if anyone—that there were two principles in the world wrestling with each other for mastery, the principle of the sword and the principle of the spirit, and that ultimately the spirit is always victorious.
  It is our deepest conviction that the eternal words of the prophet: “Not by might, nor by power” not only express hope and comfort but also state a fact, explain history and proclaim a truth which has always prevailed and will always prevail.
  4
  Of course, this does not justify complacency; it does not mean that we have nothing else to do but to sit back in our easy-chairs, waiting for the ultimate victory of the spirit.
  Whenever a generation facing a violent struggle between force and spirit trembles in fear lest the spirit might lose the battle, one thing is certain: that this generation has sinned against the spirit. And before the spirit can conquer, the sins must be expiated, the wrongs redressed.
  The sin against the spirit committed by our generation becomes clear when we compare ourselves with our opponents in the present struggle. On their side, the side of brute force, the struggle is carried on with a methodical ruthlessness the like of which the world has never seen. There is one thing of which the adversaries of the spirit know nothing to-day: compromise. They could have avoided this struggle, they could have achieved great advantages for themselves by negotiation and compromise. But, “No compromise” has been the watchword of the forces of darkness. And it is precisely compromise which has been the sin of our generation.
  Had we been as faithful to the spirit as barbarism has been faithful to its own intentions, the catastrophe would never have occurred. Had the democratic world been as sincere, as uncompromising, as thoroughgoing in what it tried to achieve as the world of darkness was in the pursuance of its own detestable aims, the tragedy would have been avoided.
  But, no. They were thoroughgoing and uncompromising; we were not. We adopted the cause of the spirit as our own, but we were not faithful to it. We professed high and lofty ideals, but we were not prepared to make the sacrifices demanded by them.
  We said: Justice! but did not care very much when injustice struck the neighbour down. We shouted: Freedom! and had only pity for those who had been robbed of their share in it. We acknowledged Truth, but were always prepared to accept the <i>fait accompli</i> created by falsehood, treachery, and the perversion of truth.
  There was much selfishness in all of us, and out of selfishness we were always prepared to compromise. This was the great sin of our generation against the spirit. To be sure, barbarism will not prevail; but the spirit can be victorious only through the sacrifices of a faithful and uncompromising generation. This is the only hope for the future. Faithfulness and no compromise. When this terrible conflict is over, there will be more faithfulness, more justice, more truth in the world. It may be that then we shall understand better why all this hardship and suffering and destruction was necessary to bring about that better world for which all mankind is longing.
  There is a saying in the Midrash explaining the deeper significance of the commandment of the M’norah, of which we read in the week’s portion of the Law.
  The question is: Why was it necessary to light a M’norah in the sanctuary? Is the Almighty, who is nothing but light, in want of the light we mortals are able to prepare for him? And the answer is:*<i class="footnote">*Tanchuma, Numbers, B’haalotcha.</i>
  Rabbi Chanina said: The Holy One, blessed be He, spoke to man: That eye of yours, there is white and black in it, and you see with the dark part of your eye and not with the bright one. So am I, the Lord, nothing but light, and that is why I need the light which comes from you, the light that is perceived in the midst of darkness. Because there is no darkness with me, I need your help, for I need that light that breaks forth out of the darkness.
  This is the task of man: to create light out of darkness, order out of chaos, life and happiness out of destruction.
  Darkness there must be, that light may be created.
  Chaos there must be, that order may grow.
  And all this God has put into our own hands; all this depends on us. For all this God Himself is waiting that it may be performed by us; for light out of darkness, for new life and new happiness out of death and destruction; for that great day when it shall become manifest all over the world that it is not by might, nor by power, but by the spirit of God that human happiness can be maintained.
  
  Section 2
  
  TOMORROW WILL COME
  <i>Pesach, April, 1941</i>
  1
  THE other day I read a report in a newspaper of a meeting that took place in London. It stated that over the platform flew a banner bearing this inscription: “To-morrow will come, and we shall make to-morrow”.
  This meeting was not a Jewish one, but the banner bore the Jewish motto. Since the destruction of the Jewish State in the year 70 Jews have been marching to the rhythm of a hope that pointed to the future. We have no To-day; To-day is usually not worth living. We have only Yesterday and we live for To-morrow. We are great masters in the art of going on toiling and drudging in spite of and forgetting the wretchedness of To-day. We have survived utterly unbearable living conditions because we have always known that To-morrow would come, that we shall be there when To-morrow comes, and that we shall make To-morrow.
  All our prophets spoke of To-morrow, of the “Great Day” that will come, that is bound to come because there is a God in the world, because there must be a meaning in life.
  In the Haftarah of Shabbat Haggadol, which heralds the festival of Freedom and Redemption, we read the words: *<i class="footnote">*Malachi i, III, 19.</i>“For, behold, the day cometh, it burneth as a furnace; and all the guilty and all that work wickedness shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch”.
  For this day we Jews have been waiting all the dark years of our life in Exile, the day of the ultimate annihilation of wickedness, for which together with us the whole world is hoping at this moment. But do we realise as we should what our responsibilities are in respect of this day? Do we understand how to prepare ourselves for To-morrow, how to prepare ourselves for making To-morrow, when Tomorrow will be here? These are questions not for politicians only or for War Cabinets, but for everyone of us. And on the reply that every one of us will give to them depends the future happiness of our people as well as that of the whole of mankind.
  2
  There are two things that Jewish tradition teaches us regarding To-morrow. The prophet calls it: †<i class="footnote">†Malachi, iii, 23.</i>“the great and terrible day of the Lord”. Secondly, we are told that God will send us ‡<i class="footnote">‡Ib.</i>“the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day”. Two questions arise from these statements. First, why is it to be a terrible day? A great day, yes. A glorious day, yes. For wickedness will be destroyed and justice will triumph. But, why a terrible day? Why not a day of joy and happiness? And then, why is it Elijah who will be sent to herald this great and terrible day?
  To the first question we may give the answer that it will be terrible because To-morrow must not be the day of triumph for one nation over another, terrible for one and happy for the other; nor must To-morrow be a day of political and military victories alone; but a day of triumph for justice over injustice, for decency over brutality, for truth over lies. It will be terrible because wickedness will be so completely exterminated that, as the prophet put it, “neither root nor branch will remain of it”. Now, where are the branches and roots of wickedness?
  Let us not deceive ourselves. Let us not point to this or that country alone. The roots and branches of wickedness are very widely spread all over the world. They are here, there, and everywhere. In our day, Evil has become a world-power in the shape of Nazidom and Fascism. But it could become such a force in Germany and Italy only because it was mighty and powerful in all countries. When the forces of evil cautiously started to build up their power in Italy and Germany, they found, probably to their own surprise, that they had powerful allies all over the world. Their allies were the “roots and branches” of evil spread among all the nations. Instead of indignation, instead of the wrath of the civilised world, they met with encouragement, understanding, and sympathy, or, at the very least, with timid toleration.
  There was one sin of which the whole world became guilty in the last couple of decades: the toleration of evil. In diplomatic language it was called Neutrality. But are we allowed to be neutral towards wrong-doing, brutality, persecution and the suppression of justice, truth and freedom?
  The world was neutral, the nations were “tolerant” and did not want to realise that the toleration of evil is in itself doing evil. By tolerating evil we all lent a hand in making it the terrible power of destruction which we see it to be in these days. By tolerating evil the whole world has become accessory to the crimes which have been committed by the power of evil.
  Some years ago a famous American author wrote a novel in which he pictured a supposed successful Fascist revolution in the U.S.A. By the very title, *<i class="footnote">*By Sinclair Lewis.</i>“It Can’t Happen Here”, he satirised those people who thought to parry such an event by the constant repetition of this and similar phrases. People do not realise that, after all, there is but one human race and we are all made of the same stuff. It is not the case that one part of mankind consists of mere devils and the other of pure angels. Fundamentally, all men are alike. If wickedness is strong somewhere in the world, it only proves that it is strong in us human beings. And what happens in any one country can only happen there because it may happen everywhere. Only because it is a latent possibility everywhere can it be turned into triumphant actuality somewhere.
  We are accustomed to accuse the totalitarian States of having no respect for the sanctity of the pledged word or promise. But do we ourselves always honour our promises? Have we never broken our word? We call them brutal—and brutal they are—but is there no brutality in our own life?
  We call the dictators, robbers and exploiters, and rightly so. But, is there no robbery and exploitation in the rest of the world?
  They are unjust; are we always just? They know nothing of decency, but do we always act as decency would require? They are liars, it is true, but are we prepared to bring any sacrifice that may be asked in the interest of the truth?
  Let no one assert that there is a fundamental difference between these two sets of shortcomings. There may be a difference of degree, but essentially they are linked together, and only together do they represent the whole picture. Because evil has been strong in us it was able to become a world power in others. Had there been more justice exercised in our small individual worlds, we should have had more justice in national affairs. Had there been more love in each of the nations, we should have had more kindness and understanding between the nations. Had we been more truthful, truth would be mightier. Had we been more just, justice would be stronger.
  We have all become guilty, every one of us has his own personal share in the terrible crimes of our generation. Humanism died out because it died out in us. Civilisation collapsed because it collapsed in us. Man has failed, and we all are responsible. Evil has triumphed, because it has its roots and branches everywhere. Yet, To-morrow will still come. In fact, it is already on its way. To-morrow has already started. For To-morrow is not only a great day, it is also a terrible day, for To-morrow will bring the extermination of evil. Unfortunately, there is to be extermination everywhere; the roots and branches of evil are widely spread all over the world.
  There exists a common guilt in all mankind, and we all have to expiate it.
  3
  To-morrow will come and, because of our sins, it is to be a great and terrible day. But, why will it be heralded in by the prophet Elijah?
  The explanation is comparatively simple.
  One of the most dramatic episodes in the life of Elijah was his throwing down of the challenge to the King and the people in the words: *<i class="footnote">*I. Kings XVIII, 21.</i>“How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him”. Strange words were these. If Baal be the truth, go and follow him. They did something that was even worse than the straightforward and clear acceptance of idolatry; they wavered between two opinions, between two worlds, God and Baal. The nation tried to serve both, God and Baal. It aimed at a compromise between God and Baal. And this, the compromise between the service of God and the service of Baal, is worse than the clear acceptance of Baal, for it is the distortion of the truth that is in God. Compromise between truth and a lie is worse and much more dangerous than a clear-cut lie, for it involves the misuse of the truth in the service of the lie. A mixture of light and darkness is worse than unmixed darkness, for it is the darkening of light. There must be no compromise between God and Baal; rather than compromise, serve Baal wholeheartedly.
  We have said that there is a common guilt in the world because the whole of mankind had—to say the least—tolerated the growth of evil and by toleration helped it to become powerful. It is well to realise that this blind toleration was only possible because, like Israel at the time of Elijah, the world was halting between two opinions, because we were wavering between the service of the truth and that of falsehood. We thought of compromise between justice and its violence, between the forces of freedom and the forces of slavery, without realising that there are certain moral purposes in the life of man which do not admit of any compromise.
  Whatever good we have tried to do we have done half-heartedly. We had democracy, but democracy had no faith in its own destiny. We had a League of Nations, but one that was startled by its own boldness. We wished for peace, but did next to nothing to secure it.
  And if we think of our own Jewish affairs, it cannot be doubted that all our Jewishness bore the stamp of half-heartedness. Whether the issues were national, communal or religious; whether Palestine or the Community or Jewish Education was at stake—we have bungled everything, all our efforts have been covered with the pale cast of unhealthy compromise.
  It is an old Jewish custom to open the doors of our houses on the “Seder” nights to welcome the prophet Elijah. By this custom we wish to indicate that we are still waiting for To-morrow, waiting for Elijah to announce that To-morrow has come. I feel, however, that Elijah’s reply would be: Well, brother, To-morrow will come. But are you still wavering between two worlds, are you still trying to serve God and Baal? If so what is the good of To-morrow, what use are you going to make of To-morrow?
  To-morrow will come. But, are we prepared for Tomorrow, are we ready to make To-morrow?
  To-morrow will come if the common guilt of the past is succeeded by the common responsibility of the future. To-morrow will come if half-heartedness and compromise make way for faithful and unconditional service of God.
  To-morrow comes only to those who are able and prepared to make To-morrow.
  
  Section 3
  
  THE WANDERING AMALEK
  <i>Purim, February, 1941</i>
  PEOPLE speak of us as “the wandering Jew.” The wandering Jew does not travel alone; he is accompanied by the wandering Amalek. Wherever the Jew may go, Amalek follows on his heels. We have known him since first we made our appearance on the stage of the world’s history. Amalek has driven us from country to country, he has followed us from nation to nation. It has always been the same story: Jews fleeing from oppression, wandering on deserted tracks, hoping for rest, longing for safety, and when they thought that they found it at last—*<i class="footnote">*Exodus, XVII, 8.</i>“Then came Amalek”. Jews run from Amalek, but Amalek is everywhere. They say the Jew is ubiquitous, much more so is Amalek. They call us international, much more so is Amalek.
  “Then came Amalek.” Once more Amalek has come; but this time he has laid aside his mask and revealed himself in his true shape. This time he has come not only to us Jews, but, like a lightning scourge, he has swooped down on the nations and the whole of mankind. For the first time in history he has revealed himself in his true colours. Amalek! The enemy of the Jew, the enemy of the world.
  This, of course, must have been a very unpleasant surprise to those who had some sneaking regard for Amalek, the Jew-baiter. There is, however, nothing new in Amalek being the enemy of mankind. This has always been so. Whether people saw it or not, our enemies were always the enemies of progress and happiness.
  For why does Amalek hate us? There are many people, and very often even Jews, who are always prepared to point to certain faults of the Jewish character, or to certain forms of Jewish behaviour, as the causes of anti-Semitism. When a non-Jewish clergyman not long ago in a letter to the Jewish Press suggested in all good faith and with the best intentions that the reason why the Jews were hated was because they were no longer good Jews, we were treated to the absurd spectacle of a number of Jews rushing into print to prove that his theory was ridiculous, and that the faults for which the Jews are blamed are not their faults, or that they are not responsible for them.
  Of course, we do have our faults. We do not wish to be angels. We go even further and declare that in claiming our right to live we claim the right to have faults like any other nation on earth. Whoever denies us the right to human shortcomings is at the bottom of his heart denying us the right to live. Yes, we do have our faults. But only the most narrow-minded can think even for a single moment that we are hated because of our faults. Ask the record of the world to give evidence. When have the nations hated out of moral indignation? How often has it happened in human history? When has the world at large hated faults and loved moral perfection? It is true that once upon a time there lived a Jewish prophet who called for such a hatred and such a love, a prophet who, witnessing social injustice, the exploitation of the poor, the persecution of the weak, called out in the anguish of this soul: *<i class="footnote">*Amos V, 15.</i>“Hate the evil, and love the good”. But when did men listen to him? When did they hate evil as they can hate, and when did they love good as they can love?
  The general history of the nations fully explains the particular history of the Jew. Moral considerations have hardly ever in history determined the objects of hatred or love. The story of love and hatred among nations as told by history shows that nations love themselves and as a consequence they will love the lie that subserves their selfish interests, they will love the evil that will lead to the attainment of their aims, they will love every crime and every vice that will help them to satisfy their boundless self-love. They can hate too, and how they hate everything that stands in their way! They hate justice if it attempts to interfere with their machinations or to curb the gratification of their desires: they hate decency, if it bids them to abandon their plottings against the happiness of others. But faults? They do not hate faults. The idea of an anti-Semitism created by Jewish faults, as an expression of moral indignation sustained for 2,000 years, is contrary to all historic experience, it is a fairy tale that can only be believed by cretins and hypocrites.
  All historic experience goes to show that peoples and nations have always been so wrapped in self-love as to resent everything that is strange to them, everything that differs from them. The more unusual a thing is, the stranger it appears, the more is it resented. Normally, however, the general aversion against the stranger is kept in check by certain considerations. For instance, one cannot always hit him when one would wish to, for most probably he will hit back. But what if there need be no fear of retaliation, and what if the person whom you resent but need not fear is the strangest among all the strangers, differing from you most? Then, naturally, the aversion becomes more intense. Then, there is but one thing that can control it: humanity, justice, the love of good and the hatred of evil. And if people do not hate evil, they will love only themselves and hate everything that is not themselves and can be hated without fear of reprisals.
  These rules derived from historic experience are, in the main, sufficient explanation of anti-Semitism. Jews are hated because they differ and dare to differ without having a hard fist to defend themselves when the necessity arises. We are hated not because this or that is wrong with us, but because much is foul in the world at large.
  Amalek stands for the person who lives by uncontrolled impulses, by animal instincts. He hates because he is a hater. He hates us because he follows the line of least resistance and in doing so he is able to trample justice and human dignity underfoot without risk of retaliation. But he hates not only us. He is the enemy of the world to the same extent as he is our enemy; as he hates us, so does he disdain decency and justice.
  And again Amalek has come; not only over us, but as a consuming pestilence over the world. This time he is mightier than he ever was in the past and for this reason he has had the audacity to strip himself of his old disguise. This time he stands before the world in all his naked brutality and hideous ugliness, exposing himself and all the other little Amalekites who were still pretending to hate Jews because of this or that. He has torn the mask from all of them and has taught the world once again that the enemy of the Jew is the enemy of mankind. It is time that the world learned the lesson.
  He who denies justice to the Jew will deny justice to anyone else whenever it suits his purpose.
  He who repudiates decency in his dealings with Jews will do the same whenever he is able to afford it in his dealings with non-Jews.
  He who treads the human dignity of the Jew under his feet has no respect for the dignity of other human beings either.
  It is time that all this should be understood and acted upon in the best interest of all mankind.
  In these days there is much talk about the coming of a new and better world which is to be built on the ruins of the past. What is to be the place of the Jew, of the Jewish nation in this New World? We hear almost nothing about it. In fact, a suspicious silence is kept on this question. On the other hand, we have witnessed certain actions on the part of those who are fighting for that better world which are not encouraging at all. Remember the shameful regulations concerning Jewish internees in one of the camps in Canada. Think of the disgusting treatment of refugees who were fortunate enough to escape from enemy-occupied territories and succeeded in reaching the shores of Palestine. After having been rendered homeless (partly also thanks to the stupidity and hypocrisy of “democratic” policy in the years before the war), now they have been deported like criminals in their hundreds, men, women and children, to some unknown destination.
  We do not know what this New World will look like. But here I give the most reliable method of proving its real worth: what is the plight of the Jew in the New World?—this will be the test. Have the wrongs been righted, has justice been done to this nation? The answer to this question will tell of the sincerity of the New Order. For here you have a nation, claiming its right to live, which is unable to back up its claim by huge armies and by might, a nation that is claiming its right in the name of right, that can back its claim only by the moral conscience of the world. The measure of justice the world is prepared to grant this nation is the measure for the acknowledgment of all true justice on earth.
  Once more Amalek has come; not only over us but over the whole of mankind. Will the nations understand the meaning of this lesson? Will they learn that justice as well as freedom is indivisible: that there can never be one measure of justice and freedom for the use of the Jews and another for the mighty masters of the earth? Will a new period of human history open in which the watchword will be: “Hate the evil and love the good”? Or shall we again be disappointed?
  
  Section 4
  
  THE BINDING OF THE SONS
  <i>Day of Remembrance, 1941</i>
  1
  ON behalf of the religious authorities of this country we have been asked by the Chief Rabbi to observe this Sabbath before Armistice Day “as a Day of Remembrance and Dedication as last year—Remembrance not only of those who gave their lives in the last war but of those, both of our people and of our Allies, who have given their lives in the present war; and of Dedication to the high cause which has been committed to our nation”.
  Remembrance and Dedication are two words which have worn dangerously thin in the course of human history; they have been used much too often and always in the same unsatisfactory way.
  It is unfortunately the case that in every generation there are those who have to give their lives and have, therefore, to be remembered.
  Unfortunately too, every generation is at least once in its life-time committed to “the high cause” that demands of us to be prepared to give our lives.
  The constant recurrence of these demands only proves that we do not know how to remember or how to dedicate ourselves to “the high cause”. For, surely, the purpose of the dedication should be to create a world in which no man need ever be committed to the famous high cause that necessitates our giving lives in order that future generations may live more happily.
  So far we have failed in this.
  Surely, the meaning of remembering our dead cannot be only to honour their memory and to express our sorrow and our gratitude. The purpose of remembering should be the creation of a world in which there is no remembrance of those who brought the supreme sacrifice, because there has been no necessity to die for “causes”.
  So far, we have failed in this. We have failed because we do not know yet how to remember, we do not know how to dedicate ourselves. Where lies the fault or the mistake?
  It is possible to approach this question from many angles. On this Day of Remembrance and Dedication, however, I will try to approach it through the medium of one of the simplest and plainest of words, the word Mother. We do not know how to remember, how to dedicate ourselves because we have built up a civilisation that has neglected and often even ignored the Mother.
  2
  What I mean is very impressively illustrated in the week’s Sidra. There we read the famous story of the Binding of Isaac. God spoke to Abraham: *<i class="footnote">*Genesis XXII, 2.</i>“Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering”. And Abraham rose early in the morning … eager to fulfil the command of God, and he took his son Isaac.
  Much has been said and written on the subject. We have been accustomed to admire Abraham. But, for the last few years, since the present tragedy of mankind began, whenever we read the story of the “Akedah”, I seldom think of Abraham; I think of somebody else, of somebody who is not even mentioned in the story, who seems to be entirely forgotten, whose share was yet the most tragic in the great drama: Sarah, the Mother.
  Abraham and Isaac undertook to fulfil a command of God, they dedicated themselves to a very high cause, they were heroes. But there was no command for Sarah. She was only the mother and nobody thought of her.
  Take your son, your only son, whom thou lovest, take Isaac, said God to Abraham. And Abraham was a great man, very great indeed; he did not waver. He rose early in the morning and took his son.
  And yet, I wonder, would he not have been even greater if he had answered like this: Almighty, I am prepared to do your bidding. I am prepared to offer you my son. But, you see, he is not only my son. There is Sarah too, and he is much more her son than mine. After all, I am only the father, she is the mother. Let us ask her too. Is she prepared to give her son as a burnt offering?
  But there is no mention of the mother. There was the high cause of a great man and in it a mother had been forgotten.
  Remembering the innumerable Isaacs who have been offered by their fathers to one or the other great cause, we must describe our civilisation as the history of “the great man” who continually commits himself to “high causes” and forgets the mother.
  The “great man” is hardly ever so great as Abraham was: the “high cause” is hardly ever so high and so pure as Abraham’s cause was. In the terrible drama of the Binding of the Sons and their delivering up to the “high causes”, which is being acted by the nations all through recorded history, the place of God has often been taken by some bloodthirsty Moloch and the place of Abraham by so-called great men who have been the mad servants of Moloch. And because of this, unlike the case of Abraham, there is no one to stay the hands of the fathers.
  And yet it seems to me that there is one thing that could check the outstretched arm, chase Moloch from his usurped throne, and call back the “great man” to normality: the remembrance of the Mothers.
  In these terrible years, I have often wondered whether those who are so well prepared to destroy life and happiness ever think of their own mothers. Whether, thinking of their mothers, they would still be able to destroy and to commit all the acts of brutality with which they are dishonouring human nature? Whether, bearing in their hearts a picture of their own mothers, they would not remember that the other man is also a son, a child, and his mother too wishes him to live and to be happy?
  Would there ever be wars if the fathers would realise that their sons are first of all the sons of the mothers? If, instead of being so eager to sacrifice their sons for their causes, they would think for a while of the mothers, and then go to them and speak like this: Mothers of our sons, there is a great cause in the world to which we have committed ourselves. We need the sons, your children, we need their lives in the interest of the great cause. Can we have them?
  Would the mothers, if left to decide for themselves, recognise any other high cause than the greatest and holiest of all causes, that of being a mother, of giving life and protecting life?
  3
  We do not think of the mothers. We forget them. They have neither the place, nor the respect, and certainly not the power that should be theirs. For ours is the civilisation of the “great father” with his “high cause”. And one must fear that so long as this remains so, we shall have to continue remembering generation after generation of those “who have given their lives”.
  The “great father” is usually so small that he does not even know how to remember his sons. He remembers them as heroes who have died for something worth dying for; thus, he is able to see some justification and sense in their tragedy. Remembering them we wish to comfort ourselves for the loss; there is always the high cause that justifies the greatest sacrifice. But, if you justify the loss, if you can find meaning in it, you are already preparing the next war.
  Let us, at least, learn from the mothers how to remember. The healthy instinct of the mother, if not corrupted by our masculine civilisation, does not remember glorious heroes, but children who died before their time, who died because the fathers were stupid enough to allow a world “order” to exist in which war became the readiest way to human happiness.
  At this moment, it certainly is an imperative necessity to gather all the remaining strength of all free men on earth to destroy the forces of darkness which threaten to engulf mankind. But let us feel horror at a world in which such a situation can arise. Let us remember the madness of previous years which has led inevitably to the present catastrophe.
  There are many plans for avoiding the recurrence of such a situation. There were such plans after the last war, there are such plans after every war. So far, they have been of no avail. And sometimes, one feels that they failed because they were drawn up by the fathers. Fathers are prone to commit themselves to all kinds of causes in which they forget the mistakes of the past, the tragedies of the past, and so allow the world to drift into a situation in which the sons must give their lives that Life may be possible.
  To-day, let this be our dedication: to rid the world of every purpose that demands human sacrifice.
  Let this be our remembrance: to remember the sufferings of the mothers all over this unhappy globe.
  And let this be the aim of the peace: no more suffering mothers; never again should a mother suffer because her child is hungry or because her child has no chance of a full and contented life. Never again should mothers be miserable because their children must dedicate themselves to one or other of the “high causes”.
  Remembering the dead, let us remember the mothers. Dedicating ourselves, let us dedicate ourselves to this one aim: Happy mothers all over the world.
  
  Section 5
  
  ON A STRATEGY OF FAITH
  <i>After the British Debacle in Greece, Spring, 1941</i>
  1
  I WISH to dwell on an important aspect of the strategy of this war. Naturally, not on its military aspect. This is not our business, nor is there place for it in a synagogue.
  However, in a struggle like this, which, as it proceeds, reveals itself more and more clearly as a contest between good and evil, there is an aspect of strategy which is just as important as the military one, namely, the moral strategy of the battle.
  Let me try to explain what is meant by a moral strategy.
  In the last few weeks, this country sustained a number of military and political reverses. People went about with gloomy faces. They were disheartened by the long succession of defeats. Perplexed and bewildered, they listened to every transmission of the wireless, they bought every newspaper they could get hold of, looking for some guidance, hoping for some pleasant surprise, for a voice to tell them that, after all, things were not so bad.
  I venture to assert that the reason why their uneasiness was so acute was that they thought in terms of military strategy alone, they thought only of bombers and tanks, of armies and generals, but were unable to judge events by the standard of a moral strategy.
  A war between good and evil, however, should mainly be judged in terms of moral strategy.
  2
  The prophet Habakkuk expressed the basic principle of moral strategy in one short sentence: *<i class="footnote">*Habakkuk II, 4.</i>“The righteous shall live by his faith.” In the context the Prophet in striking language describes that †<i class="footnote">†Ib., I, 6.</i>“bitter and quick nation” which marches out over the wide plains of the world, destroying and devouring irresistibly, until it meets with an inglorious end at the hand of ‡<i class="footnote">‡Habakkuk II, 8.</i>“all the remnant of the peoples”. In that terrible time of trial and suspense, while the “horsemen” of the enemy “fly as a vulture that hasteth to devour”, while they “gather captives as the sand”, “scoff at kings and princes”, “deride every stronghold”, in that time the just will live by his faith.
  How one can live by faith alone, confronting all the might of a ruthless adversary, we Jews should know. In the whole record of mankind there is no nobler and more inspiring example of the sustaining and invincible power of faith than the history of the Jewish nation. Our enemies, always many and powerful, disappeared. We, always few and powerless, have survived. They went under, living by their might. We have survived, living by our faith. They relied on military strategy and were destroyed; we relied on moral strategy and were preserved.
  Bearing in mind this principle of moral strategy, a strategy based on faith, I was not gloomy, I felt no real uneasiness at the disquieting military and political events of the last few weeks. On the contrary, I noted with a thrill of joy the first signs of a future of hope for mankind. For the following reason:
  In this struggle between good and evil one of the most decisive factors will be the rebuilding of faith all over the world. It is the great tragedy of our times that men and nations have lost faith in justice, in freedom, in humanity, in goodness. They do not believe any more that it does pay to be good and humane and just. The Faith of mankind is in ruins. The staggering successes of evil are due to the fact that for many long years so-called democratic statesmen were busy destroying and betraying the faith of mankind. They were stupid enough not to be concerned with moral strategy at all. To re-establish the faith of mankind in justice and democracy, in honour and human dignity, is the first condition for the victory of the just cause. Seen under this aspect, the happenings of the last few weeks mark the beginning of the epoch of justice for which the world is longing.
  What happened was something extremely unusual, most uncommon; something the world has not witnessed for a very, very long time indeed.
  The newspapers reported: Great Britain sent an army to help a small nation. And then: this army was defeated after having inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.
  From the point of view of moral strategy, however, what happened was this: A great Empire, harassed from all sides, fighting for its very existence, struggling with a formidable foe while hampered by the lack of essential military equipment, had thrown overboard all considerations of military prestige and sent help to a forlorn hope in spite of the knowledge that there was no chance of success; and this was done in order to honour a pledge, to keep a given promise, this was done for the sole reason that anything else would have been dishonourable. Thus had begun the reconstruction of the betrayed faith of men all over the world.
  This is how these weeks will be remembered in the future.
  We were witnessing the first important move in the long-neglected moral strategy of the struggle. What we experienced was the first noble effort to blot out the shame of the last two decades, the foolish and sordid haggling of a stupid “democratic” policy concerning the fulfilment of treaty obligations.
  The world will not forget this. The world will gain new courage from this, and new hope. Men and nations will start to learn anew the long forgotten lesson of faithfulness. For the first time, after many years of tragic disappointments during which Machiavellian heresies were current among men and nations, they have seen that a great nation was prepared to lose rather than to betray. In the field of moral strategy this is the first success of the cause of justice. For every deed of decency is a blow against the forces of evil. It encourages humanity. It must bring forth more and mightier deeds of decency all over the world and will gradually build up the invincible power of the just cause.
  The time will come when this great country will reap the blessed fruits of this defeat in the cause of faithfulness in the Balkans. The cause of justice cannot be lost by the exercise of justice, but only by the betrayal of it.
  3
  In these last weeks of uneasiness, I had often to think of the great change that had taken place in the nature of the Jew. We Jews used to be accustomed to catastrophes, to Jewish and world tragedies. We have seen much, but we seem to have changed much. In former times, in the midst of tragedies, Jews were firm, quiet and steadfast. To-day we are nervous, fidgety and doubting. Our ancestors lived by their faith and were the great masters of moral strategy. We, however, are a generation without real faith. For our ancestors Faith meant the idea of a great pattern of universal and cosmic life, devised by God and carrying a deep, though often hidden, sense. All the happenings around them, all the events of their individual lives or those appertaining to the life of the nation and of mankind, wars, epidemics, natural catastrophes, had their appropriate place in one great Divine scheme. The scheme, as they understood it, may often seem to us naive and simple. Its greatness consisted in the fact that no event was taken at its face-value, but was seen in a certain relation to the whole. A disaster did not count as such, it counted only as the part it had to play in the whole system of a life based upon Faith.
  We, however, are a generation without Faith. Because of this we hang on the words of the wireless commentator or the military spokesman; because of this we are sometimes filled with doubt and see no end to this age of darkness.
  The reconstruction of life by Faith is among the foremost tasks of our generation. Real faith in God will mean faith in reason and humanity. Faith in God teaches with an iron logic that wrong-doing does not pay in the long run, that it is not the way of life but of destruction and death.
  Once there is Faith in us and the nations, the downfall of the forces of evil will be in sight.
  Let us build Faith up in the world. Let us learn the logic of Faith and the strategy of Faith, and the world will appear in an entirely new light; even disasters and catastrophes will point to a happier future and a new era of hope for all men and all nations.
  
  Section 6
  
  LET US HAVE CLEAR FRONTS
  <i>May, 1941</i>
  1
  ONE of the most amazing features of our times has been the overwhelming success of evil.
  We are not concerned here with its many military victories in the field, but with its innumerable victories over human minds and hearts all over the world.
  For a number of years, I had the opportunity to watch from close quarters how a once great nation had been systematically drugged with an ideology of barbarism and how it came to hail such an ideology as its only salvation.
  I shall never forget one afternoon in the early weeks after the advent of Nazidom to power. I was sitting in one of the reading rooms of the Institute for Philosophy of the Berlin University when the philosophic quietude of the premises was suddenly desecrated by the crude noise of heavily tramping military boots. The door was flung open and before us stood a tall young fellow, clad in the ill-famed uniform of the S.A. Battalions of terror. At first there seemed to be nothing uncommon in the sight. In those days, we had already become accustomed to the invasion of the precincts of learning by uniformed brutality come to carry out the “Gleichschaltung” of the spirit.
  We continued with our work. But gradually we noticed that, after all, there was something uncommon about the visitor. He moved about not like a newcomer, not with the wary and curious steps of a new landlord who was having a first look round at his freshly-acquired property. He tramped about with mighty, steadfast strides, never wavering and with complete self-confidence finding his way about the maze of books.
  One’s first impulse was to think: what a proof of uniformed efficiency. But no! This would be a mistake. I looked at him again and saw no efficiency; I saw what the world had to learn in the years after: Treachery. I saw all the great books which enclosed us betrayed. The newcomer was no newcomer. His uniform only was new; the mighty tramping was new to him. But he himself was an old acquaintance of ours. He was the young and promising First Assistant of that Institute of Knowledge and Wisdom, the rising hope of the philosophic school. How modestly he used to walk about on well-educated democratic feet, conscious of his responsibilities as one of the foremost young men among the representatives of the spirit.
  No, he was no newcomer. The treason was new, his brutish trampling on Plato and Aristotle, his betrayal of Kant. The selling of the spirit to political success was new. The degradation of philosopy to the role of a handmaid to force was new.
  I shall never forget the shame we felt at such degradation. Since then the picture of the philosopher in the S.A. uniform has served me as a clue to the happenings of our days.
  Year after year, it was the same story that repeated itself before our eyes. Knees bowing to the success of evil and worshipping it. Year after year, the same tragedy of the selling and betraying of the spirit, of morals and ethics, of hearts and minds to successful wickedness.
  It is this “philosopher in the infamous uniform” of whom we must think when speaking of the success of evil as a feature of our times. Not its military victories, but the conquest of minds and hearts achieved by evil represents the real depth of the tragedy.
  2
  One may here be tempted to remark: all this goes to prove that there must be something wrong with Knowledge and Philosophy, with Morals and Ethics; and ultimately—as they all depend on human beings—there must be something wrong with man. It is certainly true to say that, in the long run, everything will depend on whether man succeeds in his own betterment or not. However, this is not enough. Such a general statement regarding the future of mankind cannot satisfy us Jews. For thousands of years, we have lived by our faith in the ultimate victory of what is good and true. And people who live by such a faith rightly demand that the historic events around them should be explained as parts in a great divine scheme which, ultimately, will bring about the victory of goodness and truth, so ardently longed for.
  For us Jews, the question is: how can we, in the many successes of evil around us, recognise the outlines of that victory, and how can they be seen as the necessary preliminaries to it?
  The Psalmist seems to give the answer to such a question when he says: *<i class="footnote">*Psalms XCII, 8-9.</i>“When the wicked flourish as grass, and all the workers of iniquity spring up; it is that they may be destroyed for ever. And thou, O Lord, art on high for evermore”. The meaning of these words is not, as commonly understood, that God allows the wicked to grow mighty and powerful only for the sake of destroying them at the end that His name may be acknowledged forever. This would be neither just nor clever. It would certainly be more reasonable not to let them flourish at all than to wreak vengeance on them after they have become mighty and have been able to cause suffering and sorrow. A more careful reading of the sentence puts the matter in a different light. The Psalmist mentions two groups of people: “the wicked” and “the workers of iniquity”. And two verbs are used: of the wicked it is said that they flourish, whereas the workers of iniquity spring up, break forth, or budding out they become visible.
  Bearing this in mind, we notice a clear difference between the two groups. The wicked will be recognised as such at the first glance. You have only to look at him and you know: “the wicked”. What he is, he is openly. He has courage, he is a known enemy, he is a challenger. The “workers of iniquity”, however, are more modest and not so easily recognisable. They are working slowly, they are working cautiously, they are working hard but secretly, hidden from the eyes of men behind their mask of decency and civilised behaviour. They can only be seen when they “spring up” from underneath their cover.
  But there are times when the “workers of iniquity” do come out into the open. The success of wickedness emboldens them to lay aside their masks. When the wicked are successful, when there is nothing to be afraid of, when the forces of evil with which they have always sympathised in their hearts seem to have gained the upper hand, then the cowardly workers of iniquity creep out from their lairs. Successful evil lures them into the light of the sun.
  Remember the “Philosopher in uniform”. He did not change, he only crept out. He laid down the mask when it was safe and useful to do so.
  Think of the vast and sordid scene of world politics in the last twenty odd years: the cowardly and intriguing workers of iniquity playing into the hands of the wicked. Remember how they became bolder and bolder with every success of the wicked.
  We often thought it was betrayal. It was not. They remained faithful to themselves. They only took off the mask as the moral conscience of mankind withered away under the contaminating breath of successful evil.
  It is this feature of our days which is illuminated by the Psalmist. When the wicked flourish, then the secret workers of iniquity dare come forward from their underground hiding places … there is sense in this. Wickedness must succeed for a while that the hidden servants of evil may be lured into the light, that we may look them into their eyes, that they be known and fought and destroyed for ever.
  3
  If the present war is a struggle between good and evil, let us have clear fronts. Those who in their heart belong to the camp of evil, must be forced to take off their masks. This is an essential of victory. This is indeed what is happening before our eyes day after day. The Quisling is encouraged to reveal himself. Many are deserting the cause of justice. At the moment, it does not pay to be just and faithful. Let them go, it is good that this is so. The fronts are crystallising as we require. The workers of iniquity must not escape under their deceiving masks on the doomsday of wickedness.
  Clear fronts are needed that the weapon of justice may not be blunted and the coming day of deliverance not polluted by the survival of the “workers of iniquity;” that, when humanity has won this war, it may not lose the peace owing to the intrigues and machinations of the forces of evil which have managed to survive under the guise of respectability.
  The success of the wicked is establishing this clear front which is needed in the interest of the just cause and is most important for the future of mankind.
  The course of history in these days is a hard lesson. Remember the lesson of the clear fronts that when the time comes we may rebuild this unfortunate world of ours with clean minds and hearts as well as with clean hands.
  
  Section 7
  
  THE KING IN HIS COUNTING HOUSE ….
  <i>Shavuot, June, 1941</i>
  *<i class="footnote">*Leviticus XXIII, 15.</i>“AND ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall there be complete”.
  We still remember with what deep devotion Jewish mystics used to fulfil this seemingly not very significant commandment of counting days and weeks. One day, another, and yet another day … One week, a second one, and still one more…. Quite so, one may say, but what is the point? Why this intense concentration, which in bygone days used to be applied to a very simple mathematical exercise? The mathematics are all right. Seven days certainly are a week, and fourteen of them do make a fortnight. But what of it?
  This is a very good question indeed, especially if it is understood in its widest sense.
  The mathematics are all right, but what of it?—this is just the question of our times. It is the ominous question-mark behind this so-called civilisation of ours, which is going to pieces before our own eyes. Only if we understand the whole import of this question are we able to realise the meaning of a mathematical process that counts days and weeks, preparing a world which is to be built on the Revelation on Sinai.
  1
  I venture to affirm that what men count and how they use their mathematical talent makes all the difference in the world.
  Our modern civilisation is mathematical. It is based on counting. Its symbol is the number, the mathematical formula; its high priest the mathematician. Our science, our economics, our finance, this whole modern life of ours, would be impossible without efficient counting. If, on a certain day, we forgot our mathematics, our world would immediately come to a standstill. The factories would be idle, the public utility services would stop. No trains or trams, no buses or cars, could run. Men would have to return to the most primitive conditions of life.
  Oh yes, we are very good at counting, and have grown mighty and powerful thanks to exact mathematical calculation. In our days, counting has achieved its greatest triumph. There is nothing in the Universe that cannot be caught in the net of a mathematical formula. This triumph of the number enabled modern civilisation to outstrip completely the achievements of previous generations. What did they know of speed, of production, of division of labour, of efficiency in the modern sense? So far, so good. We are better mathematicians. But are we happier for it than previous generations were? Are we better for it? Are we nearer the realisation of the great purposes of human life as expressed by the prophets and the thinkers among men? Our mathematics are all right, but what of it? Has there ever lived a more unhappy and discontented generation than the present one? Our predecessors did not talk in terms of speed or tempo, but neither had they the slightest inkling of such other mathematical blessings as the bomber and the tank. They knew nothing of mass-production, but neither had they any notion of the unemployment and the slums produced by a society governed by exact mathematics.
  It is true, if we forgot our mathematics, we should have to return to a primitive life, but there would be plenty of compensation for the inconvenience. One of the chief consequences of such a failure of memory would be that this war would stop without delay. All the air forces in the world would be grounded, no bomb could ever be released on innocent children. Mechanised armies would disappear, submarines would be doomed. The world would look very different; it would not be any the worse for it.
  Without the triumph of the mathematical formula the subjugation of a whole continent by the forces of darkness would have been unthinkable, Nazism or Fascism would never have been able to brood over the future of mankind like a shadow of destruction and death. The magic force that is in the number has, so far, been more destructive than creative. It has misled the hearts of men and nations. It has been the Satan of our civilisation, whispering to men and nations: Here I am, your obedient servant, the Number. Use me and you will grow, I shall make you big and mighty and strong.
  Well, we have used it, but how and to what purpose?
  2
  In a modern Russian novel I found a story told of an old kingdom which was ruled by an old king. The old king was not very efficient. His people lived quietly under him. Life had no great excitements nor great tragedies. People did their monotonous work and were content. One day, however, the young prince decided that the old muddle must cease. He thrust his father from the throne and made himself King. He then informed his counsellors that the first great task to be undertaken was to organise the country on entirely new lines. First of all, they must take stock of the realm and of everything that was therein. Consequently, a whole army of officials were sent out to count everything. They counted the cottages and the palaces, the fields and the woods, the mountains and the dales, the lakes and the rivers. Every herb, every flower, and every tree received an official stamp with a number on it. When the work was done, they reported to the King. Look, they said, here is your whole realm, properly registered in these books. There is nothing under your rule for which you cannot find its proper number. The young king was not satisfied. “All this is very well,” said he, “but where are my stars, the stars of my skies? You did not count and stamp my stars”. They decided to build a tower high enough to reach to the sky. The King himself wished to ascend it to count his stars. For many a year they worked on the tower. Thousands of people from all the provinces of the realm were torn from their homes and families and put to slave labour. At last, the tower was ready. The King, clad in his most stately robes, all majesty and grandeur, started to ascend the tower. After years of climbing, he arrived at the top of the tower. He looked round, and as he looked he burst into bitter tears…. What had happened was this: All the years of his rule this very efficient king had been growing big and heavy. When he entered the tower, he was so heavy that the tower could not bear him. With every step that the great king made skywards, the tower sank under his weight. With every step up, the tower went a step deeper into the ground. When the King arrived at the top of his tower, he was just as far from his stars as ever in his life. His mathematics were exact, only he made one grave mistake. All through his life the King had forgotten one thing: himself. He counted everything, he weighed and measured everything, but this great mathematician and organiser forgot to weigh and to measure himself. For everything in his realm he had a number by which he could tell its value, there was no number for himself to tell him his own worth in the world.
  In fact, this great mathematician with all his cleverness, had never tried to find out the mathematical formula by which he could have determined, say, the worth of his head, or the value of the motions of his heart, or the weight of the deeds of his hands. Foolishly enough, he had never thought of valuing this whole counting business of his which he had established in his realm.
  The same seems to be the trouble with this counting civilisation of ours, as well as with the individual lives of most of us. Most of us work all our life to achieve something. And we usually think we have succeeded if we can express our achievements in numbers; in numbers of pounds and shillings, in numbers of “hands” which we keep at work, in the number of the shop-windows which we own. We think we are getting on in life if the numbers over which we have control are rising. Most of us are possessed by a consuming passion for counting. Most of us are toiling all day long, to be able to sit down in the evening to count and count and count. We are so busy counting and slaving in the thraldom of the number that only very seldom does it occur to us to ask the question: What is the sense of all this counting? It seldom occurs to us that while we are busy creating sums and new numbers days and weeks and years pass, days and weeks and years of our short lives which will never come back again. And when we arrive at the end of our life’s journey and look back and draw up the great balance sheet and once more check all the accounts and are able to convince ourselves that all our life long we were good mathematicians and succeeded in piling up numbers upon numbers, then—notwithstanding all our successes—most of us do not feel very happy. Usually, we feel empty and miserable and lonely, and deep down in our hearts we know that, in spite of all our mathematical ingenuity, there was a miscalculation somewhere in life.
  3
  The miscalculation is to be seen in the fact that this mathematical civilisation never heeded the biblical commandment of counting. Let us consider it now anew.
  I suggest we read and translate it as follows. And ye shall count unto you…. And ye shall count days and weeks … that your days on earth may be complete.
  Ye shall count, yes. There is no other way of organising life efficiently but by counting. We must not forget our mathematics. But “Ye shall count unto you”, i.e., all your countings should be related to “you”, to man; to the true needs of man and not to his ambitions, vanities and passions. Ye shall count, yes. But do not forget to count and to measure and to weigh <i>yourself</i> with open and critical eyes. Ye shall count, certainly. But do not forget to take stock of the greatest fortune a man possesses, do not forget to count the days of your life. Did you work all day to amass new sums? Do not sit down in the evening to count the sums and numbers you made; first go into a quiet corner and say: This was one whole day of my short life. Ponder on the day, how you spent it. Was there any sense in it? And how are you to use the fruits of your toiling so that your work may not be the wasting of your days but the fulness of a life lived to some reasonable end and a satisfactory purpose?
  That is how ye should count … that the days of your life may be complete; not rich, nor mighty or powerful, but complete; that there may be completeness, harmony, and perfection in human life.
  This is the way mankind should exercise and apply its mathematical genius. Without it, there is no hope for our world; without it, all our technical achievements will enslave and ultimately destroy us, their creators; without it this “great and exact” civilisation of ours will remain one tragic bluff, one big deception.
  At the present moment, it is nothing more than a tragic bluff. The bluff of mathematical miracles, the bluff of the number, the bluff of counting, is revealing itself in a world in which nothing counts but successful destruction.
  What a bluff those miraculous machines of production are if all over the world they must be used for producing the tools of destruction. What a bluff finance and economics are if all over the world nations are wasting millions and millions daily, throwing them into the jaws of death.
  There is one great lesson which should be learnt in this exposure of the bluff, and this is: that counting in itself does not count, the Number in itself is of no importance; that the only thing which matters is to what purpose we count, and who the man is who does the counting.
  It has never been as clear as it is in these days that all our balance-sheets were miscalculations. They could give us neither happiness nor safety; and to-day, they cannot protect us against the tragedy of the bluff which is being revealed.
  More and more we are compelled to recognise that the only thing which really matters is man himself, the fundamental thing worth counting is the days of man.
  Let us not forget this when the tragedy of the bluff is over. Let us then wipe out the bluff for ever. Let us then count only things that are worth while counting. Let us then use the great power that is in the number so as best to serve the welfare of all men and not only the interests, ambitions, and vanities of the privileged few. Let us then have more respect for the hours and days and years of human life all over the world. Let us then continually weigh and measure the true value of our endeavours. Let us then count the days of our life, search them and scrutinize them unsparingly. And let this be the aim of all efforts and exertions: not might, not wealth, but completeness, harmony, perfection and peace.
  
  Section 8
  
  A SPEEDY VICTORY?
  <i>Pesach, 1942</i>
  THE Jewish communities in Great Britain observe this first day of the Festival of Freedom as a Day of Prayer for Freedom and Salvation. But do we know how to pray and what to pray for? It is very difficult to pray well and to pray for the right thing. It is particularly difficult to pray for the right thing in times of danger, when great mental stress unbalances us and renders us incapable of collected thought. That is why our war-prayers are a mere nervous outcry for help, and we can hardly re-read them without a blush after the peril has passed and peace has come. Mostly they lack religious sincerity and truthfulness, and will not stand the test of a calm examination.
  A prayer must never be just a desperate outcry for Divine assistance: it should be the expression of a moral to-God-ward turning of the human heart.
  How should we pray, then, to-day, and what is it we should pray for?
  1
  There is a word of our masters which can give us counsel in this matter.
  When God commanded the children of Israel in Egypt to prepare the Paschal Lamb, He said of the ceremony: *<i class="footnote">*Exodus XII, 11.</i>“And ye shall eat it in haste.” On which the Yalkut†<i class="footnote">†Yalkut Shimoni, Isaiah LII, 12.</i> remarks: “In haste,”—the haste meant is that in which the children of Israel had to leave Egypt. Another opinion is: the haste meant is that in which the Glory of God left the country. And the Yalkut continues: One might think that the future redemption of Israel will also happen in haste. To exclude this idea the prophet said: “For ye shall not go out in haste, neither shall ye go by flight; for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rearward”.
  What strange discussion is this? Surely, it cannot be that the mere detail that the children of Israel were urged to leave Egypt in haste gave rise to these strange ideas. There must, we feel, be something deeper in these statements.
  If we want to understand the meaning of Israel’s slavery in Egypt, we must realise that their Galut, their homelessness and insecurity, did not commence when they went down to Egypt. Already their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived in exile; they all were homeless.
  The life of Abraham as a Jew began with exile; ‡<i class="footnote">‡Genesis XII, 1.</i>“Go, leave your father’s house and your native land”; that was the beginning. His son, Isaac, was also a homeless wanderer in the world. *<i class="footnote">*Genesis XVI, 16.</i>“Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we”, they said to him. And so was the lot of Jacob a life of insecurity and homelessness.
  Judaism began with exile; not because God intended to punish our fathers, but because—somehow—exile constitutes the way to God. That Judaism might be possible Abraham had to leave his native land, to disengage himself from its culture and civilisation, its religions and ideals. He had to go away. The “Go away” made him the father of our people. And the same is true of Isaac and Jacob. That they might become the “Fathers” they had to live in opposition to the customs and ideas of the world around them. They had to be strangers in the world, they had to be homeless, living in lonely faithfulness to their own life-purpose. Exile made them the Fathers of our people.
  The stay of our ancestors in Egypt was only the logical continuation, it was an inevitable step towards the firm establishment of Judaism and the creation of a people that was destined to become the People of God. In the hard school of Egypt a nation was moulded that was to be different from all the other nations of the world; a nation that in the dark hours of slavery had learned to look for the real value and the true purpose of life; a nation that had learned humility and had rid itself of the infantile diseases of nationalist vanity and lust for power; a nation that was thus well prepared for the service inaugurated at Sinai.
  But was this aim achieved? How often, after they left Egypt, did this people relapse into their old sins! How petty, how quarrelsome, how pusillanimous they were!
  How often did they faithlessly desert their mission! The hard shcool of Egypt did not succeed in transforming the character of the people completely. Redemption came too soon to them, before the people were ripe for the great task that was awaiting them.
  This is the idea to which the above quotation from the Yalkut gives expression. “The haste of Israel” indicates a premature redemption. Redemption came before its time; the people were not yet prepared for it.
  2
  But why were they redeemed before the time was ripe? why did God not wait longer for them? The reason is not far to seek. It is true that exile and suffering may have a wholesome effect on man. They may purify his nature, they may fortify his character, they may make him great, they may ennoble him, but only if they do not go beyond man’s strength to carry the burden of such an existence of pain and sorrow. When, however, the suffering that Galut implies is too hard and surpasses the human capacity for endurance, it can achieve nothing good, it will not ennoble man, it will not make him any better. On the contrary, it will make him miserable and wretched; it will be the cause of his degeneration, it will break his character, and ultimately destroy him.
  The Galut in Egypt was too hard, Pharaoh too cruel. And for this reason Israel had to leave the country before the appointed time. The redemption had to take place in haste. Had the Egyptian slavery lasted any longer, it would have completely broken the nation and rendered them, for all time to come, unfit for the mission for which they were destined. And God Himself had to lend a hand to such hasty redemption, otherwise He would have lost them for ever. “In haste”, remarks the Yalkut, what is meant is the haste of God. Before the date originally intended, God had to hasten to their help. He could only partly achieve His purpose with them, because the trials of their slavery exceeded their ability to suffer.
  Thus, this redemption was not complete. It was a hasty salvation. Israel was saved from destruction; it was not yet mature for its mission. Hence, failure followed upon failure. The nation even lost its Homeland and was sent into the Galut once more, to learn the rest of the lesson.
  3
  The redemption from Egypt was only temporary. The future redemption, however, will not be in haste. “For ye shall not go out in haste,” for the future redemption must be the last redemption and therefore permanent. It must not be premature, it must come at its appointed time.
  This is the important idea that we should clearly understand at this moment. We are living in terrible times. Human suffering has reached a pitch which can hardly be surpassed. And, as usual, we Jews are those who suffer most.
  It is only natural for us all, now and then, to lose courage and waver in our faith, and to pray impatiently for a speedy victory, for a new hasty salvation. It is, however, time that we understood that this world cannot be saved in haste. There are many and great lessons to be learned, and they must be learned by all of us, by all men and all nations. There are the great lessons of kindness and comradeship, of patience, forbearance, and humanity, of social justice and humility, and many more. And people are very slow to learn.
  What would be the good of a victory before its time? Very soon after such premature victory the world would relapse into its old sins and stupidities. It would repeat its old mistakes, and before long it would fall into the madness of a new war.
  To-day, it has already become a truism to say that the Allies won the last war but lost the peace. They lost the peace because victory came to them as a surprise, before they were morally prepared for peace, before they had learned the lessons of that tragedy.
  Let us think of all this as we pray for salvation, and let this be our prayer: Almighty God, we pray unto Thee for Victory and Peace, for Freedom and Redemption, but we do not pray for haste.
  May Peace and Salvation come when the time is ripe, when the world is ripe for them; when men and nations have learned the lessons of this tragedy; when we are prepared for a New World of sanity, when a new heart and a new spirit in men will enable us to use the fruits of Victory well.
  Burn it out of us, Most Merciful, burn it out of men and nations, all the madness and meanness, all the stubborn stupidity of racial as well as social discrimination, of nationalist vanity and lust for power, of selfishness and haughtiness.
  In Thy great mercy burn it out of us; all the vices and criminal inclinations that have rendered the stay of man on earth but one pathetic story of misery and wretchedness.
  It is this for which we pray, and for strength to bear it, to bear it so long as need be that Thou in Thy great mercy need have no pity on us to hasten to our redemption before the hour is fulfilled and our hearts are ready, our minds mature to greet a new dawn.
  May the coming salvation of the world be a “Geulah Shelemah”, may it not be temporary and immature, but complete and lasting.
  
  II; A New World in the Making?
  
  
  
  Section 1
  
  
  
  Section 2
  
  
  
  Section 3
  
  
  
  Section 4
  
  
  
  Section 5
  
  
  
  Section 6
  
  
  
  Section 7
  
  
  
  Section 8
  
  
  
  Section 9
  
  TRIUMPH OF THE SPIRIT
  <i>Day of Intercession, September, 1941</i>
  *<i class="footnote">*Zechariah IV, 6.</i>“NOT by might, nor by power, but by my spirit—saith the Lord of Hosts”.
  These words seem to me to be the most appropriate for this Day of National Prayer; not only because the present war is more and more developing into a battle between good and evil, a struggle between the spirit and the sword, between immortal moral values and their utter denial by the barbarous forces of darkness; but mainly because, looking back at the second year of the war, we may say to-day that we were witnessing the great miracle of the spirit; the Spirit of God in man triumphant over ruthless barbarous force.
  Looking back at the second year of the struggle, we may say that in this country we saw with our own eyes how material might and power were defeated by the spirit and by nothing else but the spirit.
  1
  Let us recall for a moment what was the outstanding feature of the past year. In this endeavour my mind travels back, first of all, to that Black Friday last summer when a stunned world learned the news that Paris, the centre of light in Europe, had surrendered to the forces of darkness. The following day, being a Sabbath, I had to preach in a London Synagogue, and, among other things, I said something like this to the bewildered congregants: “Do not despair; think for a while of our own Jewish life and be reassured. We ‘Asiatic’ Jews are the oldest among the nations of Europe. We have a better and a longer memory than any of them. And we Jews can say this to-day: We have known most of the great tyrants and tyrannies of the world. We have groaned under their yoke. We saw them all growing mightier and mightier. And yet, here we are to-day to proclaim that never did we see them ultimately triumphant. Here we are to-day to give evidence that as often as we witnessed their rise, we also witnessed their downfall. We knew them terrible and mighty, but there was not one among them whom we Jews have not seen down-trodden and wallowing in the dust”.
  And I said to them in that London Synagogue: “Have faith. The very fact that we Jews are still here to-day, even though crouching under the whip of the tyrant, proves that it is not brute power or might that will conquer in the end”.
  Surely, I said, there will be suffering, for there was sin, sin against the spirit by everybody everywhere. Think of the millions of murdered Chinese, murdered because armament manufacturers all over the world wanted more profit. Think of Abyssinia, left in the lurch by the Great Powers. Think of democratic Spain, left to its fate because reactionaries all over Europe wished the “gallant Christian gentlemen” to triumph over humanity. Think of Czechoslovakia, betrayed by the so-called democracies.
  There was much betrayal of the spirit and because of it there is bound to be much suffering.
  But, I said, have faith. Not for a single moment can we Jews doubt the ultimate issue of the battle, for we know that God did not create this world in order that it might be senselessly destroyed.
  Yes, even then, at the most critical moment in the modern history of mankind, we Jews had unshakable faith. But we all knew that the hour of trial for these Islands, and with it for us all, was due to come any moment.
  And when, just a year ago to-day, on September 7th, on that unforgettable Sabbath afternoon, the sirens sounded in London for the third or fourth or fifth time, we all felt that it had started at last. With the fall of darkness the London sky was glowing red and redder, not towards sunset, but towards the East; the ominous sign of the burning of the London docks.
  We knew then that the hour had come and that from now on we would be tested as if by fire.
  In the dark winter months that followed, when the bomber was roaming through the skies of Britain, we, let us confess it to-day, often wavered in our faith. We often asked ourselves how long can man endure all this, how long can man of flesh and blood stand up to such incredible trials. One single raid night appeared to last eternities; and this went on night after night, for weeks and months, and still there was no end in sight. A general breakdown of human endurance seemed a very near possibility and with it everything would have been lost.
  But a miracle happened.
  It is true, there was death and destruction, there was much suffering and sorrow, but in the midst of the tragedy a miracle was happening. In the midst of suffering the most deadly weapon which the devilish ingenuity of men could invent, the Bomber, had been defeated. And the miracle was that the defeat of the bomber was achieved not by the strategy of brilliant generals, nor by the night-fighters or the A.A. guns, but by human endurance. Steel and iron, high explosive and fire, had been defeated by human hearts of flesh and blood.
  One of the greatest miracles in the history of mankind happened before our own eyes. With our own eyes we could see it: the Spirit of God in the hearts of men, conquering, defeating might and power. This Britain, the common people of this country, have conquered this time in the true Jewish manner, through suffering and by faith.
  And this, we feel, will prove to have been the decisive victory in this gigantic struggle between good and evil.
  2
  Up to the Battle of Britain Nazi barbarism achieved amazingly cheap victories: not so much by means of its tanks and aeroplanes, but mainly because, wherever it moved, it found men who were prepared to surrender to the conqueror not only their weapons, but their hearts and their minds as well. Everywhere it was able to find accomplices, but only because, through the many betrayals of the spirit in the last two decades, the faith of men and nations in decency, freedom, and justice had been undermined; because these great ideals of mankind had become empty words; because in a world in which for years the holiest conceptions of mankind had been continually sacrificed on the altar of vested interests the only faith left was the faith in profit and the faith in the tank and the bomber. In such a world of moral decay there was no hope for the future.
  But then, the bomber came to Britain. And the common people in these Isles rose to the occasion and through their exertions set an example to the world. Through their readiness to sacrifice everything rather than yield and surrender to evil, they have restored the dignity of man all over the world. They have begun to rebuild the faith of man and nations in the moral destiny of man. And all over the world people learned anew, and learned eagerly, that love and kindness and unselfishness had not died out among men, for they could point to the new and inspiring comradeship, the freely given mutual aid of the people of Great Britain. And to-day, the eternal watchwords of mankind, freedom, justice, truth, love, shine through the darkness with a new light and give new hope to the nations.
  To-day we may look with more confidence into the future because we have more faith in man.
  3
  There is reason enough for us to thank God for all this to-day, to be grateful for the miracle.
  But let us not forget for one moment that the time for jubilation has not come yet.
  The trial is not over yet. We have gained the present breathing-space only because others, millions and millions of our fellow-men in Russia, are suffering all the time for us, just as we have suffered for them. And who knows what turn the storm may take next.
  Let us remember the incredible amount of suffering that the second year of the war has spread all over the world.
  Let us pay respect to the memory of the many innocent victims of the bomber in this country, of the innumerable victims of tyrannous lust for power in the enslaved countries of Europe and on the gigantic battle-fields in the East.
  Let us remember the heartrending sufferings to which our own Jewish nation is being subjected in all the lands that are now being devastated by the hordes of the barbarians. Not even brotherly greetings, no signs of brotherly love, can reach them from us. They are alone in their sorrow. May God be with them. May He protect them.
  Let us pray for this unfortunate, bleeding mankind. Let us pray for this Britain, the Britain of that common man in the street who once said to me: Victory, not for Britain, victory for justice.
  Let us pray for the victory of justice, of truth, of humanity and kindness all over the world.
  May God Almighty shorten this terrible period of suffering.
  May He help us all to that *<i class="footnote">*See Ezekiel XXXVI, 26.</i>“new heart” and *<i class="footnote">*See Ezekiel XXXVI, 26.</i>“new mind” that will be needed for the upbuilding of a better and happier life for all men and all nations.
  Out of the present world-wide brotherhood of suffering may there rise the brotherhood of peace, the brotherhood of sympathy and understanding among all men and nations, a brotherhood of happiness from which no one is excluded.
  
  Section 10
  
  IN THE MARGIN OF THE ATLANTIC CHARTER
  <i>The Sabbath after its Publication, August 16th, 1941</i>
  1
  YESTERDAY, as I was thinking of a subject for this Sabbath’s address, my mind was occupied with the first few words of the Haftorah. *<i class="footnote">*Isaiah XLIX, 14.</i>“But Zion said, the Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me”.
  I was thinking of the Midrashic remark on the redundancy of expression in this sentence. “The Lord hath forsaken me, the Lord hath forgotten me”. Is not that the same? Or as the Yalkut†<i class="footnote">†Yalkut Shimoni, ibid.</i> puts it: “What is the difference between being forsaken and being forgotten”?
  I did not get very far with my thoughts, when I happened to pick up my newspaper and read the momentous declaration that had been issued the day before over the signature of the leaders of the great democracies of the U.K. and the U.S.A. While reading the declaration I began to understand what the prophet meant when he made Zion say: “The Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me”. I began to understand what was meant by being abandoned and what again by being forgotten.
  I had before me this historic document with its eight points. And I asked myself: What will be the practical consequences arising from this declaration for us Jews?
  There was, for instance, point 3, stating that the two governments “respect the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live”. And I said to myself: The right of all people. Does this mean that we Jews too shall have the right to choose the form of government under which we wish to live?
  And point 3 went on to say that the two statesmen “wished to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them”. Very good. And are not Jews too one of those nations who have been forcibly deprived of their sovereign rights and of self-government? True, this is an old story. It happened very long ago. But the Jewish nation is still there, and is bleeding from a thousand wounds because of the consequences of that old story. And I said to myself: Do they really mean what they say? Are they going to restore to us, too, those rights of sovereignty and self-government of which we have been forcibly deprived?
  Then, there was the most important point 6 declaring that “after the final destruction of Nazi tyranny they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries …” Where are our own boundaries? Do they intend to give us our own boundaries back? And I said to myself: I wonder, is this the right explanation of point 6 as far as Jews are concerned?
  But point 6 said much more. It also stated that the two great democracies were aiming at a peace “which will afford assurance that all the men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.” Involuntarily I began thinking: Are not Jews “the men in all lands”? And is it not the case that millions of us never had a chance “to live out their lives”? And from time immemorial has any nation known less of freedom from fear and want than the Jews? Now, however, this will be changed. Never again will it happen that corrupt and incapable governments will tell the world that all the trouble and rottenness in their countries is due to the fact that they have too many Jews. No, this will not happen again. For there it stood in black and white “that all men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want”. And I said to myself: I wonder, is this what is meant by point 6?
  Bitter memories were roused by the perusal of the next point. “Such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance”.
  In the last few years Jews have enjoyed the freedom of the Seven Seas in a most peculiar way. There were many death-ships crammed with Jews, traversing the high seas and oceans “without hindrance”. The only thing from which they were hindered was to stop traversing the high seas and to land the hundreds and thousands of the innocent victims of international insanity, to land them safely somewhere in this world. They had to go on “traversing”, hunted from port to port, “enjoying” the freedom of the seas. Does it follow from point 7 that never again will this be repeated, and Jews too will be able to traverse the oceans like any other human beings, with a definite goal and destination in front of them and knowing in advance the haven where they will set foot on solid ground?
  2
  I wondered whether I was right in applying this noble declaration, the first important step towards the establishment of a New World, to the Jewish problem.
  And I must confess that there is not the slightest ground for doing so. No, we were not meant. We have no right to say “present”. Not that there is no sympathy with the persecuted Jewish nation. On the contrary, we believe that the two great personalities in whose name the declaration was issued are among our best friends. And yet, we were not meant.
  Whenever plans and schemes for a New World are put forward from responsible quarters and you ask the question: How will these plans and schemes affect the Jews? there is never a clear and satisfactory reply forthcoming. Somehow, Jews are never meant. In spite of the many good intentions and sympathy and understanding for the Jewish cause, Jews are systematically forgotten. We have suffered most in the present world catastrophe; our lives and our rights were the first to be sold in those shameful years when great nations bought peace by sacrificing the weak and powerless. European Jewries will probably never recover from the blows which they have sustained. But so far, not a single responsible word has been uttered on the subject of what is to happen after the war to the millions of homeless, uprooted, and broken Jews in Europe.
  There is a definite policy of not mentioning the question at all, not mentioning the fact that a nation against which the whole world has sinned is waiting for justice and is expecting that the wrongs be righted.
  There is a definite policy of not even mentioning the word Jew. When Jews of Palestine, who have voluntarily joined the fighting forces, lose their lives on the battle-fields, they are referred to as Palestinians. For people might be embarrassed to hear that Jews are fighting for Jewish rights.
  So far, we do not appear on the map that is being drawn for the future. We are being systematically forgotten.
  3
  Thinking of all this I began to understand the words of the Haftarah. “But Zion said: the Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me”. The difference between “forsaken” and “forgotten” becomes quite clear.
  There are those who will never forget us, who are obsessed with the idea of the Jew. Everywhere they behold him, in everything they suspect the hand of the Jew. They are our enemies. And as God often gave us up to our enemies, we often had cause to complain: “the Lord hath forsaken us”. Not forgotten: abandoning us, punishing us, He must have thought of us. “The Lord hath forsaken me”—it was Zion’s cry in the past. But now, it will appear as if a new form of the Jewish tragedy is about to develop. There might be a New World, a world with less hatred and wickedness and stupidity than the one we knew in the past. Maybe, who can tell, even a world without Jewish persecutions. But a world in which Zion will have to mourn: “the Lord hath forgotten me”, for it will be a world in which the Jew will be forgotten.
  This is indeed the kind of future our friends among the nations are preparing for us. For quite a while, perhaps, we shall have rest from bodily persecution. We shall most probably be complimented on our loyalty and good citizenship. Once more we shall be granted an impressive collection of human rights. No doubt, we shall again be decorated with a festoon of minority treaties. But it may easily happen that the future New World will not want to know that we are Jews, that we are a nation and that a nation cannot live on rights alone and on treaties, that a nation must have a home, and that there must be a plan for the Jewish nation, that this plan is an international responsibility and its execution must be part and parcel of a New World.
  I cannot but fear that we are about to be forgotten. In the past it was “the Lord hath forsaken me”; now, it seems to be “the Lord hath forgotten me”.
  4
  Yet we are not to be forgotten for ever; we have not feared that. For did not we hear God answer Zion’s call: “*<i class="footnote">*Isaiah XLIX, 15.</i>Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, these may forget. Yet will not I forget thee”.
  The solution of the Jewish Problem may be deferred, it may be postponed: it cannot be suppressed for ever, for it is an intrinsic part of a just world order. There cannot be two different measures of justice, one for the nations and another one for the Jews. No, we do not fear that our right may be forgotten in a New World of justice. That can never happen and will never happen. We do fear, however, that the imperative demand for a New World may be ignored. In fact, we are quite certain that a generation that does not possess the moral courage to be thorough in introducing the Rule of Justice on earth, a generation that is not prepared to deal justly with all men and all nations without a single exception, is doomed to failure. We are much afraid that the tendency to forget us, not to mention our needs and our rights, again indefinitely to postpone the just solution of the Jewish Problem, is a grave symptom that once more the creation of a New World will be postponed and in its place we shall be given only our old, out-worn world, patched up anew.
  The greatest service we Jews can render humanity at this juncture is to insist courageously on the right of our nation. To the same extent as we convince the nations that justice must be granted to the Jew, we shall have convinced them that relationships between men and nations, be they strong or weak, rich or poor, black or white, must be governed by the dictates of sanity and decency.
  Let no one be forgotten in a New World!
  
  Section 11
  
  ON EDUCATION
  <i>Succot, 1942</i>
  MANY years ago, at a time when the memory of the last war was still fresh, and large crowds used to demonstrate in the streets of the European cities shouting “Never again”, when the Nazi even in Germany was only a ridiculous figure whom nobody took seriously, one of the ablest writers of our times published an essay that unfortunately did not receive the attention which it deserved.
  In the concluding paragraph the author summed up his ideas in two sentences. First, he said, Europe was in a state of chaos; secondly, the only hope for Europe, and indeed for all mankind, the only force that would ultimately bring order into the chaos, was religion. That there was chaos in Europe between the two wars no one will doubt to-day. But who realises that it is Religion, the word of God, that alone can introduce order into the “Tohu va’Vohu” of our times?
  People do not understand it yet because they do not see the cause of the confusion clearly enough.
  1
  Well, let us consider this matter. What was the ultimate cause of the chaotic state of affairs that culminated in this terrible catastrophe in which the whole world is involved to-day? Many answers are given to this question.
  There are people who blame European politics. Politicians, they say, were blind; they were men without foresight, men without principles. And this is true to a very considerable extent. Then, there are those who will tell you that the confusion was mainly due to economic causes, that social and economic inequality within the nations was bound to lead to international conflict. And this too is true.
  There are many clever and good replies, but most of them do not go deep enough, they do not reach to the root of the evil. The root of the evil is not bad politics, not bad economics or bad social conditions; the root of the evil is bad education. The world has failed in all the important spheres of life, in politics, in the organisation of trade and industry, in the solution of social and national problems, because it has failed in the education of its youth.
  You cannot have politicians of character, faithfully serving great principles, unless those whom they represent are people of character, themselves insisting on their ideals in their private life.
  You cannot have decency in politics, if there is little of it practised in the much narrower sphere of our everyday existence.
  You cannot have a just social order, if the sense of justice is not deeply rooted in every one of those of whom society consists.
  Ultimately, everything depends on “the man in the street”. In the manifold failure of our generation it was man, the individual, man, the responsible moral being, that failed. We have witnessed the moral collapse of the human personality. This is a tragedy which represents not a political or an economic or a social problem, but a spiritual problem of the first order that can only be solved by a New Education. We hear much of the re-education of Germany that will be necessary after the war. This is true, but not enough. What is needed—already now—is the re-education of all mankind, of the individual human personality all over the world. Whether the outcome of the war will indeed be the famous New World, so eagerly discussed in these days, depends entirely on this re-education of all mankind on a moral basis. You may have the best of political, national, or international orders, the theoretically most excellent economic or social systems, the finest organisation, yet they all must break down and disintegrate, unless they are deeply rooted in living human beings, in human character.
  The task before the world is not so much the creation of new systems, new organisations, new governments. The fundamental task before all the nations is the creation of the New Man. And that means that the basic condition for a happier future is—Education.
  2
  Naturally Jews are directly concerned in this task. For firstly we are part of the world, and secondly, we are not in the least better off than the rest of the world.
  Just as the future of mankind depends on a successful moral re-education, so does the future of our people depend on nothing else but on successful Jewish education. It can easily be shown that every problem with which Jewry is struggling to-day is intrinsically connected with the problem of Jewish education.
  One of the main conditions of a successful Jewish national policy, for instance, is that such a policy should be supported by an intelligent Jewish public, which thinks in terms of Jewish history, Jewish culture, and Jewish religious faith. This demands thorough Jewish education.
  Or take the case of the Community. If the Community is indeed to mean something more than the Burial Society, or the institution for the organised stammering of the “Kaddish”; if the Community is to be a living organism, the creative and guiding centre of all Jewish activities at any one place, the “K’hillah K’doshah” of olden days, the safeguard of Jewish existence in the Galut; then the community must consist of Jews who know their responsibility because they know their Judaism, and because knowing Judaism they understand the needs of Judaism. But this again calls for Jewish Education.
  In these days, it has already become a truism to say that the Jews are passing through one of the most critical periods of their history. We have suffered defeat at the hand of our enemies as well as at that of our evasive friends. But the Jewish situation is tragic and almost hopeless not because of the nature of our defeats, but because of the nature of the Jews who have been defeated.
  In former generations, when Judaism was alive in Jews, defeats could never be mortal; for Jews had time, they had time to wait, they had time to recover. Not so to-day. To-day time is pressing, to-day we are in a hurry; we have no time to wait because Jewish education has failed in our generation.
  Owing to this failure, Judaism is in the process of rapid dissolution. Before our own eyes a race is taking place between this process of dissolution and the process of salvation. Will the Jewish nation break up from within before salvation is achieved, or will salvation come quickly enough to save, at least, the remnant of the people? This is the harrowing question of the day. We have no time to wait and to recover; we are in a great hurry, because we did not educate. There is no future for this people without nationwide successful education of a Jewish character. If we achieve this, nothing can be lost. If we fail in this, we must fail everywhere and in everything.
  3
  Innumerable problems are involved in the task of successful Jewish education.
  We need teachers; the best of teachers would be just good enough for the task. We have no teachers.
  We need well-tried methods; the best of methods would just do. We have no approved methods.
  We need a proper atmosphere within which the educational process must be conducted; there is no proper atmosphere conducive to Jewish education.
  We need understanding and sympathy on the side of the parents, but parents look on Jewish education merely as a thing which is very useful indeed for such strange creatures as future rabbis or ministers.
  We need money, but Jewish education vegetates on charity.
  We need organisation, a strong educational organisation, backed by the whole community, but we have only weak and fragile private institutions.
  We need a communal educational conscience and we have indifference. There is a tremendous task to be tackled. In order to be successful we shall have to educate on all fronts. We must educate children and parents, families and congregations, teachers and leaders. A great scheme must be envisaged that embraces the whole community. But before this can be done, the whole community must wake up to its responsibility; every one of us must realise that Jewish education is no luxury, but the very bread without which we cannot exist.
  One more word on the kind of education that is needed. It is summed up in one epithet: Jewish education. Not necessarily the education of the “Cheder” in Poland or Russia of old. On the contrary, we need new methods. We need a new and modern representation of the whole of Judaism. Judaism must be translated into the terms of our times. But Judaism it must be. And this means that Jewish education must be basically religious education.
  We have argued that the present chaos in the world was caused by the failure of education, but we must add that the educational failure of our times was due to the complete neglect of religious education. To keep pace with the progress of science, education became secular. And thus the moral basis of education was undermined. For science is neutral. It knows nothing of good or evil. It recognises only one test: success.
  Scientific education is success and career education; it is power education. It has created the mechanised monster of the super-man.
  We do not want super-man; we want man. And one cannot educate man on a neutral basis.
  You cannot educate without a “bias”; you cannot educate without the “bias” God.
  You cannot save Judaism without basing Jewish education on those ideals and intentions by which we have lived in the past.
  There is chaos in the world—educate!
  There is chaos within Judaism—educate!
  But educate with God….
  
  Section 12
  
  EXIT EUROPE?
  <i>On the Jewish Natiodal Day of Mourning and Fast, December, 1942</i>
  *<i class="footnote">*Zephaniah I, 14-16.</i>“THE great day of the Lord is near; it is near and hasteth greatly…. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of waste and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the horn and alarm … ”
  Is this already the approach of the Day? Is this the coming of the Day of Days? Do we already feel the blast of the “great Day of the Lord”? Is the “terrible Day of the Lord” already at hand, the Day of the great Calamity?
  Are these the times of the Messiah of which Rabbi Jochanan once said: †<i class="footnote">*Talmud, Sotah 49B.</i> “Let the Messiah come, but I do not wish to see him”?
  Surely, this is the time which Jewish tradition calls “Ikvot Mashiach”, the time when the footsteps of the Messiah can already be heard, the time of which it was said: *<i class="footnote">†Talmud, Sanhedrin 98B.</i>“On whom can we rely? Only on our Father in Heaven”.
  Four million Jews—our kith and kin, our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters, our people—are faced with ruthlessly planned systematic extermination. And in their hour of agony they are alone. No one can help them. They are delivered up into the bloody hands of a ruthless foe. To whom can we look for help? We, I say, not they. They, of course, will look for help to their Father in Heaven. But dare <i>we</i>, their more fortunate brothers, console ourselves with this thought? Dare we, be it even for one moment only, try to regain peace of mind by saying to ourselves: Well, it will not be so very bad after all; their Father in Heaven will help them, He will be with them? Faith is a great thing if one has it for oneself, for one’s own hour of mortal trial. It is not right to have faith for the sufferings of others.
  The Jewish tragedy has reached a climax when Jews must find it almost immoral to look for comfort in their Faith. The Midrash says: “The Messiah does not come till they have given up hope of redemption,” until it appears as if there is no help and no support for Israel. Is not this, then, the hour, is not this the time for the redeemer to come? What help and support, what hope is there for the once great Jewries of Europe?
  The Day is on its way, the great and terrible day of the Lord. There is no other explanation for the tragedy. We cannot comprehend it otherwise. Inhumanity, barbarism, madness—intensified to a pitch that surpasses every cruelty recorded in history—are words which no longer explain. What is happening to European Jewries to-day cannot be expressed in words for it surpasses human imagination.
  There is but one explanation: the Day of the Lord is on its way. Let the world tremble!
  Let me read to you more about the Day: *<i class="footnote">*Zephaniah I, 17-18.</i>“And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the Lord; and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the Day of the Lord’s wrath; but the whole earth shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy; for He will make an end, yea a terrible end, of all them that dwell in the earth.”
  I feel some of you may think I am exaggerating. For, however terrible this cruel scheme of annihilation may be, it affects only Jews. It is not a world-tragedy, it is only a Jewish tragedy. But the Day of the Lord cannot be just a Jewish day. It must be universal and embrace all mankind.
  I repeat: this is the End. But not the end of Judaism or the Jewish people—the end of Europe.
  People imagine that to persecute and to kill Jews is a comparatively easy affair. How foolish they are, our enemies as well as our half-hearted friends! Yes, it is very easy to start the persecution and killing, and it is even easier to tolerate it, as the nations—let it be said to their shame—did tolerate it in the years between the two wars. But once the persecution and the murder have started, they cannot so easily be arrested in their consequences.
  †<i class="footnote">†Cf. Talmud, Baba Kama 60A.</i>“Once the Angel of Death has been given licence, he no longer recognises barriers and frontiers”.
  No, it is not so easy to persecute and to kill anybody. Persecution and murder are contrary to human nature. The murderer acts against his own innate instincts. By violently destroying the life of a fellow man, the murderer does violence to himself, to the image of God in which he too has been created. With every perverse and vicious act a man commits, he undermines the foundations of his own life. The mass-murderer is always a human wreck. By destroying others he is destroying himself, his own soul, the essence of his own humanity. The victims have a strange and terrible power over the hangmen, a power of vengeance from which there is no escape.
  A whole nation of 80 million human beings has turned mass-murderer on six millions of their fellow-men. Not in a war in which armies stand face to face. There are no armies, there is no fight or battle; there is mere butchery. We do not doubt for a single moment that the butcher nation is doomed for ever. The butchery is so unnatural that it will prove more deadly for the perpetrators of the crime than for their victims. In this unnatural bloodbath Germany is drowning herself, she is destroying the very roots of her humanity. Never again will she recover from this unnatural massacre of the Jews.
  This is the end of Germany as a factor in civilisation and human progress. But, unfortunately, it is also the end of Europe. The greatest nation in the heart of Europe, its very soul polluted with innocent blood; a whole nation of moral perverts, destroyed by their own unnatural viciousness—this is the end of Europe. One shudders to think of the consequences. When the ogre’s castle comes tumbling down there will be chaos the like of which the world has never experienced; chaos in which Europe itself will disappear, never to rise again. The innocent blood of the massacred European Jewries undermines the very foundations of the whole of Europe. It is spreading a moral pestilence all over Europe from which there can be no recovery.
  The doom of European Jewries is the doom of Europe. It is the end of European civilisation as we have known it in the past. No new and good generation will ever again be able to breathe and to live happily on European soil, till an entirely new civilisation arises that has moral power enough to sweep away the contaminated debris of old Europe.
  Exit Europe! The end of the Jew marks always and everywhere the end of a civilisation. In 1492 all Jews who did not accept the Christian religion were expelled from Spain. From that Jewish tragedy imperial Spain could never recover. The “Black Hundreds”, the official organisers of the pogroms against the Jews of Tsarist Russia, were in reality the grave-diggers of their own foul regime. From that Jewish tragedy Imperial Russia could never recover. The present terrible tragedy of European Jewries, compared with which the most horrible experiences of the Jewish past fade almost into insignificance, cannot yet be gauged in its consequences either for Europe or for the future of mankind. But does the world realise that Germany is drowning herself and Europe in Jewish blood?
  The Day is approaching, the great and terrible Day of the Lord.
  *<i class="footnote">*Zephaniah III, 8.</i>“Therefore wait ye for Me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey; for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the Kingdoms to pour upon them Mine indignation, even all my fierce anger; for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy.” These are terrible words. But the time has come when we Jews must have courage to speak them.
  Almighty God, here we are, your people, waiting for you to rise. Rise up to the prey!
  However, it is not enough to mourn and to weep, and to wait and to pray. We must answer the tragedy, we must reply for Judaism, for the millions of Jews who cannot reply.
  Let us be grateful to our Father in Heaven that He in His great mercy has spared us the bitter plight of our brethren in Europe. But let us not for one moment imagine that we have been spared because we have deserved it, because we are better than our brethren all over Europe. We may deserve it in the future, if we realise that we have been spared for a definite purpose. We are out of the interno not that any one of us should be saved, not because of the importance of our individual lives. We have been spared to rescue Judaism, that through us Judaism may live.
  We must realise that the plight of our brothers and sisters in Europe is our plight. We must feel this tragedy as our own. What happens to them is in fact happening to us. There is but one Jewish destiny all over the world. There is but one Jewish question, and not one for Polish or German Jews and another for English Jews. Jewish destiny is indivisible. We must consciously identify ourselves with European Jewry. Has the tragedy, our tragedy, already penetrated our hearts, has it already taken possession of us? If not, we are unworthy of the name Jew. If not, we ourselves are the first to desecrate the memory of the holy martyrs of our people.
  It has been our lot to become the Remnant of Israel. Let us be the faithful remnant of whom the prophet said: *<i class="footnote">*Zephaniah III, 13.</i>“The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies, neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth”.
  In the presence of this inconceivable catastrophe, let us become one great brotherhood of Jews. A great brotherhood, I say.
  Let our answer be: Greatness. Nothing less will do from now on, nothing less than greatness. Let us be great Jews.
  Let our answer be: Judaism, better Judaism, Judaism now more than ever before.
  Let us think of nothing else but Judaism, of serving Judaism, of rebuilding the ruins of our people.
  From now on, let us all have but one ambition: to make our hard-tried people happy again.
  In this hour let us take a holy oath to dedicate our life to the struggle for a just solution of the Jewish problem, a solution that will make the recurrence of such or similar tragedies impossible in the future.
  Let every one of us work hard for the coming of the day when the happiness of our people will no longer entirely depend on the moods or wisdom or good will of other governments and other nations. A nation with our past should trust God and its own exertions.
  The storm-battered flag of Judaism is falling from the hands of the great historic Jewries of Europe. From now on it will be the holy responsibility of Jews in the Anglo-Saxon countries to carry the old flag in humility of heart and loftiness of purpose.
  May God be gracious unto us and unto our children. May He work a miracle for the redemption of our brethren in Europe. We are praying for a miracle, for nothing short of a miracle can save them.
  *<i class="footnote">*Psalms LXIX, 2-3.</i>“Save us, O God, for the waters are come in even unto the soul. We are sunk in deep mire, where there is no standing”.
  †<i class="footnote">†Ib., IX, 13.</i>“He that avengeth blood will remember them. He will not forget the cry of the humble”.
  ‡<i class="footnote">‡Amos IX, 8.</i>“Behold, the eyes of God, the Lord, are upon the sinful regime, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth, but I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob—saith the Lord”.
  
  III; The Breath of His Lips
  
  
  
  Section 1
  
  
  
  Section 2
  
  
  
  Section 3
  
  
  
  Section 4
  
  
  
  Section 5
  
  
  
  Section 6
  
  
  
  Section 7
  
  
  
  Section 8
  
  
  
  Section 9
  
  
  
  Section 10
  
  
  
  Section 11
  
  
  
  Section 12
  
  
  
  Section 13
  
  IN THE COMPANY OF THE LONELY ONES
  <i>December, 1940</i>
  1
  ON the words of the Bible: “There is none like unto God, O Yeshurun*<i class="footnote">*Deuteronomy XXXIII, 26.</i>,” the Midrash remarks: †<i class="footnote">†Bereshith Rabbah, 77, 1.</i>“Rabbi B’rachyah said in the name of Rabbi Simon: ‘There is none like unto God’, and yet who is like unto God?—Yeshurun, Old Israel. For what is said of the Holy one, blessed be He? ‘And the Lord is exalted yet He is alone’. Similarly is it said of Jacob And Jacob was left alone’ ”.
  This Midrash may be understood as trying to define the historic role of Israel in the world as a Mission of Loneliness.
  What is the rightful place of the Jew in the world? Where do we Jews belong?
  There are various Jewish replies to this most controversial question.
  We are, of course, the loyal citizens of the State in which we live. There are Jews who even maintain that in England they are English, in America American, in Ireland Irish, just like any of their non-Jewish fellow-citizens, differing from them only in the matter of religious persuasion. However, if we are sincere we must admit that there is one important condition to our loyalty to the State, a condition that has been sharply illustrated by the Jewish experience of the last few years. We are loyal citizens, if the State deserves loyalty. Nobody had a right to expect loyalty of Russian Jewry to the barbarous regime of the Tsar, which endeavoured by means of pogroms and persecution to divert to the Jews the popular wrath aroused by its mismanagement and corruption. Has anyone the right to expect of German Jewry loyalty to the gigantic gangster organisation that calls itself the Third Reich?
  We are loyal, but as Jews we cannot accept such a maxim as “right or wrong, it is my country”. However patriotic Jews may be, they must never allow the difference between right and wrong to be blurred by slavish subservience to the egoism and egotism of the State. Whatever the flag which we may wish to serve in loyalty and devotion, for a Jew right must remain right and wrong must remain wrong. This is but one aspect of the complicated position of the Jew. In spite of his patriotic duties, which he may wish to discharge to the best of his abilities, he cannot but recognise certain moral standards which at all times remain independent of the State. In reality, of course, the only way of serving the true interests of a State is by adhering to independent moral standards, be it even by denying loyalty to the forces temporarily in authority. But centuries will pass before the nations will have realised and acknowledged this principle. Until then our loyalty as citizens must remain conditional. As a consequence, the Jew, however conscientious a citizen, will remain an outsider. Citizenship does not give the full reply to the quest for the rightful place of the Jew in the world.
  Another and more radical answer is that of a Jewish nationalism, which at least has the merit of a delightful simplicity. Like others, it says, we are a nation. Like others, we have a place in this world—Eretz Israel. We have lost it owing to misfortune and the superior force arrayed against us at a certain moment of our history. But misfortune and force are not valid arguments against the right of a nation. Once more we are claiming our own “place in the sun”.
  This certainly sounds most reasonable. But is this all we have lived and suffered for during two thousand long years of exile and persecution? Can this be a justification for the misery of our life in Exile? Let us assume we shall be very lucky. One day, who knows, we may get our own independent Jewish State. What then? How far shall we be then? If we are not careful, we might be striving for the kind of “happiness” under which all mankind is crushed to-day. One day we too might be in the position of poisoning our youth with the curse of nationalism. The time may even come when we shall be a “proud” and warring nation, driving along victoriously with our own mechanised armies. Naturally, never wanting war, but always prepared to defend the frontiers of our sacred heritage.
  If so, if the Jewish happiness of the future lies in such or similar conditions, I say “No” to this future and this happiness. If this be the place allotted to us in the world, let us rather have no place at all.
  I say this in no pacifist mood towards the present conflict in the world. After human wickedness on the one hand and human stupidity on the other have pushed mankind into the abyss, there is nothing else left but to fight the struggle out to the bitter end. But Jews should not be blind to the facts. It is enough for us to suffer from human wickedness and stupidity, but what reason can we have for identifying ourselves with them by planning the Jewish future on lines that have led the nations into the present chaos?
  2
  Solutions of the problem that overlook the basic feature of our existence are doomed to failure from the outset. “And Jacob was left alone”: this is the burden of Jewish history. We are alone, this is the basic fact of our life. The first condition of any dignified way of living for us Jews is the recognition of our loneliness and the courage to accept the fact.
  We are living in the world, but we do not really belong to it. Wherever we may be, we are strangers. The system of living by which we are surrounded has been devised without us. Of course, use has been made of the conceptions of the Jewish genius, but in a non-Jewish way. We Jews are like the remnants of a species that, according to all scientific reasoning, should have completely died out long ago, but which in some mysterious way still manages to survive. We have no part of our own in the realities of life. We are admitted to a share with the nations in what is theirs. We are allowed to help them, or even to give our lives for the kind of world which they have built, but nowhere in the world is there a piece of life of which we Jews can say that it is ours, over which we as Jews have control. We do not belong here.
  This has been the Jewish tragedy of the last two millennia, put in a nutshell. We have been pushed about all the time. We have always been in the way of somebody. There has been no place for us. But there has been one great advantage in this. If there has been no place for us, then of course we bear no responsibility for what has been going on in the world.
  For thousands of years human history has been an incredible spectacle of cruelty and stupidity; we Jews have no share in it. All the time we have suffered incredibly; thank God, we have not inflicted similar sufferings on others. We have been slaughtered and killed; thank God, we have been no murderers or killers. Like our father, Jacob, we have often prayed to God: *<i class="footnote">*Genesis XXXII, 12.</i>“Deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau”. Thank God, people never had reason to pray: “Deliver me from the hand of Jacob”.
  We are alone. There is no place for us in this world. But great is our compensation that our hands are clean. We have no share in the abominable crimes of human history in the course of the past two thousand years.
  3
  We paid a heavy price for the cleanliness of our hands. We have had to live like the relics of some forgotten past; alone in a world that had no use for us. But sometimes I feel that it was worth while if only for the sake of our clean hands.
  It is true, the strain that such a life involves has often been almost unbearable. There have always been Jews who, overawed by the prospect of a life in loneliness, try to break out of the isolation by all kinds of assimilation, be it religious, national, cultural, or social. But surely, the culmination of Jewish history, the purpose of the Jewish tragedy, cannot lie in fraternisation with the world as it is.
  We are an old nation; we have seen much of human history. Much of what we have seen was utterly contemptible. We are not impressed by the kind of civilisation the nations succeeded in establishing. We are the onlookers. We are waiting in our loneliness and in our solitude for humanity.
  We are no relics of a past. We are the future. We have been alone not because we belong to a race that cannot die, but because we started to live too early for a world that cannot yet live, that is still forming itself in the womb of time. We are alone because—in the sphere of western civilisation anyway—we are the only grown-up nation, having done with most of the futilities of national existence thousands of years ago.
  We are lonely in the world but we are not alone in our loneliness. A greater one than we is lonely too: God. Mighty and exalted is He, but He is alone. We Jews are alone in our misery, so is He in all His might and Glory. There is no place for us, neither is there any for Him. The system of living in the world has been devised without us, neither has God had much say in it.
  God in all His Might and Glory is patiently waiting for the New Man to deliver Him from His loneliness by making Him the corner-stone of human life. God is waiting for the company of a mankind to come. Can it be our task to-day to go out and fraternise with life as it is, to accept life as it is, and thus to augment the solitude of God?
  We are lonely, and it is hard to bear loneliness. But let us not forget that there is a great company of the lonely ones. There is God who is lonely, there are Justice, Truth, Freedom, Goodness—they are all very lonely. Let us remain faithful to their company.
  Only after we have delivered God Himself from His loneliness, only after the great human ideals break through their present splendid isolation and are realised in the everyday life of men, shall we Jews be redeemed from the prison of our solitude.
  We are sharing in the fortunes of God among men, as He is sharing in our fortunes. Thank God for it….
  
  Section 14
  
  BECAUSE OF OUR SINS?
  <i>July, 1941</i>
  ACCORDING to Jewish custom the three weeks from Tammuz 17th to Av 9th are regarded as days of mourning. Twice in our ancient history a double national catastrophe occurred in this period: the piercing of the walls of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. Remembering these tragedies, the Jewish nation customarily observes certain signs of mourning during the so-called “Drei Wochen”.
  Although even the second of those events happened almost two thousand years ago, they are not only remembered, they are remembered because they are still felt by us.
  The Jewish Question is certainly no mere dream of the past; it is the nightmare of the present. It is part of our daily life. Yet the Jewish Question was created 2,000 years ago. Then, when the walls of Jerusalem were broken through and the Temple went up in flames.
  True, this is an old story, it happened very very long ago. And yet, millions of Jews feel it as if it had happened yesterday. For the wound is still aching; it could not heal. It has been kept open by the consequences of that one great national tragedy: the fall of the Jewish State. All the subsequent sufferings of the Jews, up to the present destruction of European Jewries which we have witnessed, all our miseries in the various countries of the world, can be traced back in a straight line to that one important event of 2,000 years ago.
  People often think Jews have too good memories. All our Jewish life to-day is built up of mere reminiscences. For us there is always something to remember that happened so long ago that no other nation on earth would ever care to remember it. The destruction of the Temple, the Fall of Jerusalem…. Why not forget it? What good can there be in nursing the memories of an unhappy past?
  The answer is: that we Jews have no exceptionally good memories. It is not true that we do not try to forget. On the contrary, whenever a Jew has a chance to forget, he is only too eager to do so. Jews, usually, wish to get rid of all the nightmares of their past, even more than is good for them. Whenever they are left in peace, they will forget. Yes, whenever they have a chance….
  But, when are they granted the chance of forgetting? Whenever we are about to forget, something happens to remind us that we are only Jews, homeless and powerless, guests in the world and at the mercy of others; that once upon a time the life of the Jew was different, for there was the Temple, there was Jerusalem, there was a Home for a Jew, a place where he belonged to, there was—there is no more.
  We cannot forget because they in the world around us do not allow us to forget.
  1
  There is, of course, the old question which is so often asked by Jews in these days. Why must there always be some kind of Jewish tragedy in order to remind us of the tragedies of the past? Why must there always be some new destruction of Jewish existence to remind us of the “Churban” of the past? Why should Jewish history be a continuous story of *<i class="footnote">*Cf. the Hebrew name of a weekly portion of the Law, “Matot-u-Massey”.</i>“sticks and wanderings”, of persecution and homelessness?
  The traditional reply to such questions is: All this has come upon us “because of our sins”. The story of suffering that commenced with the destruction of the Temple is due to the sins of our people.
  No longer is this a satisfactory explanation. No longer is it true to say that we have deserved it. We have not, and God Himself is our witness that we have not deserved it.
  I have seen Jewish sins, and I have seen Jewish sufferings. What I have not seen is the just relationship between punishment and sin. We still remember the sufferings of Russian Jewry under the Tsarist state, and later the pogroms in the Ukraine at the close of the last war. Let us speak the truth, however contrary it may be to the conception of “Because-of-our-sins”: Russian Jewry did not deserve it.
  We know of the Jewish persecutions in the “gallant” anti-Semitic Poland between the two wars, and we know equally well that Polish Jewry did not deserve it.
  With my own eyes I have seen the systematic and ruthless destruction of German Jewry and I do not hesitate to declare that, in spite of its sins, German Jewry did not deserve it.
  We know of the mass-slaughtering of Jews in Rumania, of the untold sufferings of millions of our brethren in the whole of that tremendous battle-area in Eastern Europe to-day. Who would dare say that they are passing through such hell because of their sins?
  No, I do not believe in “because-of-our-sins”.
  What I believe is that we have been suffering for two thousand years not because of our sins but because of the sins of the world, because of the sins of the nations in whose midst we have had to live.
  2
  To illustrate the point I have made, let me give one important historic example.
  In Talmud and Midrash we find a number of reasons for the fall of Jerusalem. They all follow the line of “because-of-our-sins”. I will offer an explanation that is much more in keeping with the teaching of history.
  The Jewish State fell because in moral development it was far in advance of the rest of the world, too near to becoming a true Kingdom of God on earth. It fell because the Jewish nation did not sin as much as was needed at that time in order to maintain the existence of an independent State.
  This is our argument: For many a century the record of the Jewish State was as bad as that of most of its neighbours. But it never was as good as at the time of its destruction. It was the time at which the religious reforms of Ezra were the everyday law of Jewish life. It was the period in which the greatest teachers of Israel lived and brought up numberless pupils; the epoch in which Sh’mayah and Abtalyon, the great Hillel and Shammai were the recognised national authorities; the time of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai, who in spite of all his greatness was only the least among his colleagues and friends. If there ever lived a generation worthy of the land, it was this one. But yet, the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem lost. Why?—Because of the sins of the nations around Jerusalem. Because in a world in which barbarous Rome was mistress, in the midst of states ruled by force and crime and intrigue, no state could exist that was striving to become the Kingdom of God on earth, to be governed by the rule of the Torah.
  In the midst of a world dominated by the madness of Cæsars, there was no place for a state in which men like Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai were the great national authorities. Such a state could not exist. It had to disappear, not so much because of its own sins but mainly because the world was not yet ripe for it.
  The same thread runs through the whole course of Jewish history since then. The nations have not yet been able to cede equality to the Jew, who is claiming nothing but his right to live. Just as in the past the world was morally not ripe for a Jewish State, so in the present the nations have not yet grown up so far as to recognise and to accept the existence of the Jewish nation. The endless suffering of our people is the measure of the immaturity of the world.
  Only one thing could change the plight of the Jew: the betterment of mankind. For this we have been waiting these two thousand years. Unfortunately, the process is a very slow one.
  People often ask: Why does God not intervene with some miracle to help us? A miracle would mean changing all the laws of nature. It would mean that the sword should not hurt, the bullet not kill; that a concentration camp should overnight turn into a sort of earthly paradise. Dare we ask for as much as all that? Dare we pray for such a miracle that would change the whole course of world history, only because we are suffering? Are we worthy of such a miracle? Here, I do refer to our sins. One of the reasons why the miracle cannot happen is “because-of-our-sins”.
  We suffer because of the sins of the world; we are not redeemed by some miracle because of our own sins. This is the key to Jewish history since the fall of Jerusalem.
  3
  Speaking of redemption we would add a few words on the new Eretz-Israel.
  For many a month now, we have felt deep anxiety for the Land.*<i class="footnote">*In the summer of 1941 victorious Axis armies were advancing towards the Near East.</i> Eretz-Israel is in danger. But this is no surprise. It is the most natural thing on earth that at a critical moment when all the hopes of humanity are in jeopardy, Eretz-Israel—this great symbol of Justice and Truth—should also be menaced. There would be reason for anxiety if Eretz-Israel could be exempted from a peril that threatens to engulf all the moral purposes of man. Eretz-Israel cannot flourish in a corrupt world. It is too holy, too noble for that.
  There is a saying in the Talmud which may help us. *<i class="footnote">*Cf. Talmud Megillah, 6A.</i>Referring to Cæsarea—which was the headquarters of Rome in Judea—and Jerusalem, it runs: “Do not believe people who tell you that they are happily settled together. Believe those who tell you that Cæsarea is destroyed and Jerusalem peacefully established, or that Jerusalem is destroyed and Cæsarea established…. ”
  In other words: Jerusalem and the symbol of evil and wickedness cannot exist side by side. Jerusalem cannot grow in a world in which wickedness is triumphant, as wickedness cannot flourish in a world in which Jerusalem is happy.
  The living-space of our nation is freedom, truth, justice, and peace. This is the explanation of the Jewish tragedy. The Jewish State was destroyed, we went into exile because there was no living-space for us; no living-space for justice and reason and humanity. This, however, is also the very root of our hope. For we know that one day the power of evil will be wiped out, and living-space on earth will mean—decency on earth. This is all we need for Jewish happiness.
  4
  Of course, people might say: All this is very well, but not more than a hope for a distant future. What about tomorrow? What about the immediate danger to Eretz-Israel?
  There is a reply to this question in terms of what we have called the Strategy of Faith. It was given many centuries ago in the Midrash: †<i class="footnote">†Midrash Rabbah, Genesis 42 and Numbers 13.</i>“On the day of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem the Jewish nation received a perfect guarantee for the future. For it is said in the Bible: ‘The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O Daughter of Zion; He will no more carry thee away into captivity’.”
  This is the faith upon which we shall build the Jewish future. Whatever the dangers and threats, there will be no new exile from the Land. We are living in the period of the re-building of the Land; once it has started it will not end before the redemption has been completed. Whatever may happen, the New Eretz-Israel will remain, thanks to that great Strategy of Faith by which we Jews lived in the past and by which we shall live to see a better day.
  
  Section 15
  
  GOD’S PRECIOUS SON
  <i>A Sermon on the Eve of the Second Day of Rosh Ha-Shanah, 5702—September, 1941</i>
  *<i class="footnote">*Jeremiah XXXI, 19.</i>“SURELY Ephraim is my precious son; is he not my darling child? for when ever I speak of him, I do remember him…. I will have mercy on him, saith the Lord.”
  Commenting on these words of the day’s Haftarah, the Yalkut†<i class="footnote">†Yalkut Shimoni, ibid.</i> remarks: “This is how God once spoke to Moses: Mosheh! Praise Israel before me as best you can. Praise them, Mosheh. For through them I shall be glorified; as it has been said: ‘Israel! To glorify me’.”
  In my sermons all the year round, I am trying to explain Judaism as it should be applied to the problems of our life. Inevitably, such sermons contain severe criticism and admonishment. On Rosh Ha-Shanah, however, I feel that, besides the duty of criticising and admonishing, there is another responsibility incumbent on a Rabbi, and that is, not to criticise, not to admonish, but, instead, to speak up for the community, to plead on behalf of the community on this Day of Judgment.
  I intend to praise to-night, to praise this Jewish nation, for it deserves to be praised.
  It is being harassed from all sides; it is suffering incredibly. Yet it is unwaveringly faithful to the flag of Judaism. Not that the Jews would not sin against the flag; but they would never desert it. There is nothing on earth against which the great mass of our people would be prepared to exchange its faith in Judaism, whatever their faith may mean to them. Whether orthodox or liberal, whether fanatics or reformers, nationalist or cosmopolitan, they all wish to preserve—in their differing ways—Judaism, as they understand it. After two thousand years of continuous persecution there are only very, very few among us who would be prepared to desert in order to escape the hardships, disappointments, and tragedies of their Jewish Destiny.
  Yes, we do have our sins, but even the sinners among us are Jews who in the dark hour of testing, in the hour of destiny, are ready to make the greatest sacrifice rather than betray the old weather-beaten flag of Eternity. It has been rightly said of us:*<i class="footnote">*Talmud Sanhedrin, 44A.</i>
  “Israel, even though it has sinned, still deserves the title of honour: Israel”.
  1
  Yes, we do have our sins and our faults. But …
  We Jews have now been living in abnormal circumstances for two thousand years. We possess a Law which embraces the whole of life, we have no place on earth where we could live our own life.
  We are homeless. We are guests everywhere. Owing to this basic anomaly in our life as a nation, every piece of Judaism that we realise, that we do live, means sacrifice.
  In the present abnormal circumstances, a Jew who observes the Sabbath as it should be observed is almost a hero. Already the Jewish child, if he is to have a Jewish education, has to shoulder an additional burden. He must sacrifice much of his very limited leisure, he has to sacrifice something that is very precious to him. And this is the same in all walks of life. Everywhere it is the same story: if it is Judaism, it means additional burden, additional sacrifice.
  What a different day our Sabbath could be if we Jews had our own place in this world, our own country which would rest on Saturday instead of Sunday. If we lived in normal circumstances, if only we had our land where we would be masters over our lives, the whole of Judaism would have a chance to be what it was originally intended to be: the way of living of the Jewish nation.
  That we Jews offend against the religious and moral code of Judaism is, I am convinced, to a very large extent due to the fact that in the present abnormal circumstances to be a good Jew is identical with being a hero. Thank God, there is many a hero among us, but nobody has a right to expect a whole nation to behave heroically for twenty-four hours daily.
  2
  Yes, we do have our faults and shortcomings. There is many a trait in the character of Jews that we do not like and that we ought to stamp out. But let us not exaggerate them, let us not lose our sense of proportion.
  What do all our sins and faults amount to compared with the gigantic criminality of a mechanised civilisation? How insignificant they appear in the general history of mankind which is, more often than not, a disgusting spectacle of crime and hypocrisy, of persecution and exploitation, of thirst for blood and lust for power. One little genuine pogrom, and all the sins and crimes that Jews—millions of Jews—might have committed in the last two thousand years have been dwarfed to such a degree that, if people had a proper sense of humour, they would laugh at us on learning that it is we Jews who are beating our breasts confessing: “we have sinned”.
  When God looks round in this beloved world of His, and beholds what is going on under the sun, when He watches the crimes of men and nations, He must notice that hardly ever is there a Jew lending a hand to the truly grandiose and masterly crimes of the world. It cannot escape His attention that the hands of the Jewish nation are clean if compared with those of the rest of mankind. When He watches our synagogues and sees the same clean hands beating: “we have sinned”, “we have rebelled”, then I feel sure God Almighty must be smiling, He must be filled with great love for us, and would say to us:
  You have sinned, you? Little bunglers! What do you understand of real and great sinning? You, who have no hands to kill, no hearts to persecute, no brains to plan gigantic and ingenious campaigns of evil and wickedness, of great and heroic barbarism?
  You who have only backs to be beaten and shoulders to carry the burden of the sins of men and nations, are <i>you</i> beating against your chests saying: “we have sinned”?
  Your sins?—Do not mention them.
  3
  Especially this year Rosh Ha-Shanah, we have a right to speak up for ourselves.
  In the course of the last year the Jewish Tragedy has reached a climax which can hardly be surpassed. The Jewish nation is bleeding from a thousand and more wounds. It is bleeding and suffering for God.
  This year we are certainly entitled to speak before God like this: Our Father, Our King! You have your “Sefer Hazichronot” and all our deeds are well noted in your Book of Memories. You want a final account. Good. But down here there is also a “Sefer Hazichronot,” a book of terrible Jewish memories. And we wish that in the great reckoning this book of ours should also be taken into consideration. On this Day of Judgment our sins are weighed, but what of the sins against us?
  We know that “T’shuvah” means repentance of the wrongs done in the past and a new resolve for the future. To-day, we are prepared, we are ready to repent and to fashion a new and purer will for the future. But there is one thing we should like to know: Will there be repentance for the sins and crimes which have been committed against us? And will there grow a new resolve in the hearts of men and nations to do justice to the Jew?
  We are waiting, Almighty God, we are waiting for this repentance. We are waiting for the fulfilment of your unforgettable words, which our faith in you has inscribed indelibly in our hearts: *<i class="footnote">*Cf. the Haftarah on the second day of Rosh Ha-Shanah</i>“I will build thee again, and thou shalt be built, Israel”, and of “I will remember him”, and “I will surely have mercy on him”.
  This year, we are waiting more than ever before, for we feel our strength failing. Almighty God! There is not much time to lose. Soon there may be nothing left for you to have mercy upon.
  Israel, whom you called your crown to adorn you, is down in the dust. Almighty God, step down from your high throne, bend down to the dust and lift up your crown. In your great mercy wipe the dust from off it, and it will appear before you in its true glory, your own son, Israel.
  
  Section 16
  
  MASTER OF HIS DREAMS
  <i>December, 1941</i>
  AS Joseph was approaching his brothers, they said of him: †<i class="footnote">†Genesis XXXVII, 19.</i>“… Behold this dreamer cometh….”
  This Dreamer…. To-day, the term is used in a depreciatory sense. A Dreamer is blind to realities. He is unable to see and to recognise the hard facts of life. Instead of being guided by common sense he dreams of ideals which are never capable of being realised. Most of us are such devotees of common sense that we cannot find any use for a Dreamer. We consider him a pitiable fool.
  The brothers of Joseph knew better. They took “this dreamer,” Joseph, very seriously. They feared him, they hated him, though Joseph was dreaming of “impossible” things. They were so much afraid of this “dreaming fool” that they conspired against him to slay him, their own brother.
  Joseph’s brothers showed a much sounder judgment than our own much more enlightened days. The Dreamer is the only human type that must be taken seriously. The Dreamer is the true creator in human history, just as he is the only dangerous destroyer. The people of common sense trudging safely and securely along well-trodden tracks are of little importance, unless they too dream and use their common sense for the realisation of their dreams. The great thinkers and inventors, the great revolutionaries and prophets, they have all been so many dreamers, continuously fighting the representatives of Common Sense. And in every fight and struggle the Dreamer wins in the end and Common Sense loses.
  1
  At the present moment it is important for us Jews to think of this. For years now we have been losing the battle for the future of our people. We must realise the fact and face it: we are losing. Judaism and the Jewish people are going under. The present is dark enough; the future looms even darker.
  The sufferings of Jews in Europe, especially in Poland and the temporarily conquered territories of the Soviet Union, are unutterable. But how deep must the Jewish Tragedy reach if in spite of our faith in the victory of the democracies the Jewish future appears even darker than the present. Every Jew must understand this: in the present circumstances, the future holds no promise for us. Nowhere among the nations is there an adequate understanding for the true plight of the Jewish nation. Nowhere in the world does the sincere wish exist to do justice to the Jewish nation. Let us not fool ourselves, let us open our eyes: the solution which is contemplated, and which will be offered us when the war is over, is assimilation of the Jews in the countries where they live to-day. In the more progressive countries of the West this will mean progressive dilution and dissolution of Jewries, genteel extinction on noble democratic lines. In the countries of Eastern Europe (Poland, Rumania, etc.), however, it will mean rights on paper, nice empty phrases towards the Jews, and in practice plenty of Jewish disabilities and gradually increasing Jewish suffering.
  We are caught between two fires. Here—venomous National-Socialist barbarity; there—sympathetic but evasive democracy. Whichever side wins, we shall lose. In the long history of Jewish suffering we have never experienced a period as dark and hopeless as the present one.
  However, we have no right to put all the blame on others. How dare we expect understanding for the plight of the Jew and for Judaism from the nations around us, if understanding is lacking among Jews, if Jews themselves have ceased to think of the future, if they themselves do not care what may happen to our people to-morrow, if Jews themselves think only of their individual comfort and what they believe is their happiness, if their only wish is to be left alone and not to be reminded that they are Jews and that there is such a thing as Judaism which demands the surrender of their entire being?
  I am much afraid that we may well be left alone, that the future peace conference may try to forget the existence of a Jewish nation, and slowly but surely Judaism and this people may disappear from the surface of the earth.
  And what is at the bottom of the present tragedy? This question admits of various answers. To-day, however, I would choose the following: We are losing the battle, because in our generation Jews have stopped dreaming the dreams of Judaism.
  Let us call to mind a few facts of Jewish history.
  Jews lived in Egypt in servitude, they lived in the wilderness for forty years, and survived because they were dreaming; of a land they had never seen before, of which they had learned only from the sagas of their family; they dreamed like incurable “fools”, dreamed of this land in despite of common sense, in despite of the great and, to all appearance, insuperable obstacles presented by the might of Egypt and the dangers of the wilderness. And they lived to see the realisation of their dream—the Land, their Land.
  Many centuries later, after the destruction of the first Temple, Jews lived in Babylon, in the shadow of a mighty empire, in despite of which they dreamed of Judaism, of return. They dreamed courageously and persistently and saw a new Jerusalem.
  And again, centuries later, the world-power of Syria was threatening to destroy little Judea. The clever Jews, the common-sense Jews, wanted to appease the enemy, they wanted to come to terms with him, they wanted assimilation with Hellenism and a quiet and comfortable life. Had they succeeded, Judaism would have disappeared. They did not succeed. For a small band of Jews unfurled the Maccabean banner and went on dreaming of God, of Judaism, and continued to live in the spirit of their dreams in defiance of common sense, until the country was freed of the power of Antiochus.
  And what else has been the history of our Galut but the picture of a whole nation dreaming of Justice, Truth, Decency among men, dreaming obdurately against the logic of the overwhelming facts of life around them, and living by the strength they have been able to derive from their dreams? The “clever” Jew, the common-sense Jew, will always lose, only the dreaming Jew, the Jew with faith and ideals, courage and character, will survive and win the last battle.
  You remember the life-story of Theodor Herzl. Herzl,what a “fool” he was in the eyes of the “clever” Jews, what an unreasonable dreamer. But as long as he was dreaming and with him—and for some little time after him—a small band of “foolish” Jews were dreaming, not only of the number of dunams which should be bought in Palestine, but of the future of the people, dreaming great dreams of Jewish regeneration, there was hope for Judaism, there was hope for this people, there was growing understanding among the nations for the great cause of Zionism, an understanding that found its noble expression in the Balfour Declaration.
  The Balfour Declaration itself was not the work of the “clever” people but of the dreamers.
  2
  To-day, we are facing ultimate disaster because in our own “cleverness”, especially in the last two or three decades, we have squandered much of the achievement of our Jewish dreamers.
  The average modern Jew is too “clever”, he is much too clever to take Judaism seriously. He is empty of Jewish ideals, he does not care for Jewish culture, for Jewish religious aspirations. He has neither character nor courage to dream the dreams of Judaism and to live them. He is the clever Jew impressed by the common sense of the market, by the “logic” of the clumsy facts which are ruling the passing hour of an uncertain day.
  In this manner we have unfortunately wasted the only great achievement of modern Jewry—the dynamic force of Zionism. Lately, even we Zionists have been afraid of the great dreams of Judaism, even we have renounced them. Instead of following a great vision, following it fearlessly and resolutely in accordance with the true principles of Jewish history, even we Zionists have started to be “clever”. For the past twenty odd years Zionist leadership has allowed itself to be overawed by political combinations and developments which were inimical to our aspirations. Instead of denouncing these intrigues as an integral part of the world-wide insanity which was heading for the present catastrophe, and so rendering a great service to humanity, Zionist leadership has always been prepared to come to terms with them in the name of common sense.
  The “clever” Jews cannot help us. We need dreamers, Jews with a vision and a faith; Jews who are prepared to bring the greatest sacrifices in order to realise their Jewish dreams; Jews who are not overawed by the powers of the world around us; Jews with courage enough to follow their vision undismayed by lack of appreciation and in spite of the policies of mighty governments; Jews with faith, with a religious faith in the future of our people; Jews who will not haggle for Jewish rights, who will accept nothing less than Justice, who—if this is denied to them—are prepared to go on dreaming against a whole world rather than accept any sham solution which can only lead to dissolution.
  Joseph could not be ignored by his brothers because his dreams were self-consistent. He was the *<i class="footnote">*This is the literal translation of the Hebrew “Ba’al Hachalomot.”</i>“Master of his dreams”. Nor will the world be able to overlook us, if we remain faithful to our dreams, to our own visions and our own ideals.
  “Behold, this dreamer cometh”—this is how the nations saw us in the past; and they hated us for our dreams. To-morrow, however, if only the Dreamer remains faithful to himself, he will be honoured for his dreams. The Dreamer, the man of vision and ideals, can never be ignored. He must be hated, or he must be acknowledged.
  What we Jews need to-day is courage and steadfastness to dream our dreams and to live them, whatever the consequences may be.
  
  Section 17
  
  THE BREATH OF HIS LIPS
  <i>Shavuot, 1943</i>
  †<i class="footnote">†Hosea II, 1.</i>“THE number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered.”
  “The number of the children of Israel”—bitterness wells up in the heart of the Jew as he meditates upon the phrase. Which number cannot be counted? That of the multitudes who have lost their number among the living because they were of the seed of Israel, or the dwindling number of the shrinking remnant of Israel? Life seems to have made mockery of the phrase “the number of the children of Israel that will be as the sand of the sea.”
  1
  What is the number of Israel to-day? What is its measure? What is the weight of the Jew in the world?
  There are three answers to such questions. We are counted and weighed by the world at large, we have our own estimation of ourselves, and lastly there is the estimation of our enemies.
  The democratic nations think that the measure of the Jew is easily taken in these days, his weight is easily established, the number soon counted. And the figure that results is not a very impressive one. Yes, the United Nations have taken our measure and they treat us accordingly.
  Were there in Western Europe to-day, in France, Belgium, and Holland, ten or fifteen or twenty million Jews, who in the event of an invasion of the Continent could rise against their oppressors; were there fifty or eighty or a hundred million Jews in Poland and occupied Russia, as there might easily have been had persecution and slaughter not taken their toll in the course of nineteen centuries of Western civilisation, were there so many Jews in Europe that by the mere weight of their numbers they could become a source of danger to the enemies of the United Nations, how the free peoples would flatter them, how they would woo them, what moving speeches would not be delivered by their great statesmen on the injustice inflicted upon the Jewish nation, what solemn pledges not be given, and what encouraging plans not drawn up in advance for the just solution of the Jewish question.
  As it is, our numbers are not like the sand of the sea. Our measure seems to be so negligible that the United Nations deem it policy to ignore the existence of a Jewish nation.
  Then there is our own estimation of ourselves, which unfortunately is very similar to that of other nations. Jews have lost faith in their own strength. They no longer believe that with their own action they can influence their own future.
  To-day, Jews should be seized by a burning desire to save what can be saved, to plan and to prepare for the future. They should understand that the crisis demands of them courage and faithfulness and vision and sacrifice. The Jewish tragedy of our times should have roused them to the highest pitch of creative exertion. But instead, Jews continue in the old ruts as if nothing had happened; steeped in apathy and given over to fatalism, they wait for a miracle to redeem them.
  The reason of the apathy and of this for Jews so strange a fatalism is “the number of the Children of Israel,” their weight in the world.
  Without knowing it, we have counted ourselves, we have taken our measure, and we have found ourselves wanting. We no longer believe that we are strong enough to meet the forces that are arrayed against us to-day. And yet, the first condition of Jewish survival is the restoration of our faith is the efficacy of our own exertions. We must regain our self-respect and self-confidence. We must re-establish our faith in our own cause. Strangely enough, our enemies can help us most in this respect.
  Our enemies, too, are counting Jews. More than anybody else are they interested in “the number of the children of Israel”. But they do not accept the mathematically correct figure that results from actual counting. To them the number of Israel hides some incomprehensible mystery, some dark and menacing secret. If in a town there are 50,000 Jews, the anti-Semite will insist that the correct figure is 500,000. And if in a country Jews number 500,000, the anti-Semite will believe that 5,000,000 is no exaggeration. Our enemies do not believe that the measure of the Jew is so easily taken. Everywhere and behind everything they suspect Jewish influence and power.
  Even to-day, after the most crushing blows ever suffered by a nation have been inflicted upon us, our barbarous enemies on the Continent still pretend that their quarrel is only with the Jew. When every sane man is fully aware that the Jewish nation has been utterly broken, they still speak of the Jewish menace, and in every stroke dealt at them by the mighty democracies, they see the hand of the Jew. “Stalingrad”, according to them, was the work of World Jewry, and so was the Allied victory in North Africa, and so is everything else that is battering at the foundations of their evil régime.
  In the estimation of our enemies we seem to be the most numerous and the most powerful nation on earth. According to their diseased imagination the prophecy of Hosea has come true; the number of the children of Israel cannot be counted. The number is a great mystery, a diabolical secret, the Jewish strength in the world is overwhelming.
  2
  Who is right? The nations that take so little notice of us; we who have lost all faith in our own strength; or our enemies, who so immensely exaggerate the power of Israel?
  I believe that though all three are wrong, our enemies have come closest to the truth.
  If one wishes to estimate the strength of any nation, one usually expresses it in numbers. How strong Russia?—The answer is given in a long list of statistics. So many inhabitants in a country of so many square miles, of them so many workers and so many soldiers, so many factories producing so many implements of war, etc. How strong Britain, the U.S.A.?—Again the answer is given in numbers. But how strong Israel?—Can one find the answer to this question in a figure? Sixteen, to-day it may be only thirteen, million Jews—is that really all? Sixteen million Jews without a State, without a land, without visible power anywhere on earth—does this give the strength of Israel? With most of the other nations numbers explain the part they have played in the history of the world, but do Jewish statistics explain the part that the Jewish nation has played on the historic scene? Our enemies forge statistics and exaggerate the number because they feel instinctively that Israel is much stronger and considerably more powerful than figures would suggest. And in this one thing they are right. How strong Israel?—the answer cannot be given in numbers, Israel cannot be explained by statistics.
  The Midrash suggests that this may be the idea underlying the verse “and the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered”. Quoting the words from Ezra: *<i class="footnote">*Ezra VIII, 34.</i>“… the whole by number and by weight…. ”, and rendering their meaning as: “everything has a measure, the water, the sky, even the dust of the earth”, it remarked that Israel is the exception to this rule. Israel has no measure, as is written by Hosea: “… it cannot be measured nor can it be numbered”.
  Israel’s strength is not in Israel’s number. Israel represents a force in the family of the nations to which number cannot be applied.
  The Bible has had a more profound influence upon the development of humanity than many a great empire. The Revelation of Sinai and the moral code emanating from it have been among the greatest civilising factors on earth. Can one express this in numbers? How much the Bible? What number Isaiah, Hosea, or Amos? What engine power “Thou shalt not kill”? What productive capacity “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” or “Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger as for the homeborn”?
  The spirit is not measured by inches or yards, ideas and ideals do not go by the pound nor prophets by the dozen. One cannot say it in numbers.
  3
  The power of Israel cannot be expressed by the materialistic conceptions of a materialistic world. But the power is there, if only Jews would have faith in the kind of power Judaism represents, if only they would learn how to wield the weapon of the spirit. For a mighty weapon is the spirit. The whole course of history proves that ideals which take hold of people are much more powerful than guns, tanks and aeroplanes. There is good reason for saying that the potency of Judaism has been vindicated even by the present world conflagration.
  People often speak to-day of the contribution which Jews all over the free world are making to the war effort of the United Nations. Jews in the Forces, the factories, in Civil Defence, and so on. This is not the aspect that should be emphasised by Jews. It is only to be expected that every Jew should serve the just cause conscientiously and to the best of his abilities. But the lion’s share of the Jewish contribution to the war effort lies in a different sphere altogether; and again this contribution cannot be evaluated by numbers and statistics because it is of a spiritual nature.
  Every student of British history and civilisation knows of the influence which the Bible has had upon the development of the British national character. Some time ago, one of the foremost thinkers in this country had the courage to state publicly that without this biblical influence upon the formation of the national character the brave people of this island would hardly have possessed the endurance and moral courage needed to meet the challenge of the fateful summer of 1940 and of the dangerous winter that followed*<i class="footnote">* Cf. the article by E. Barker in “The Observer,” Dec. 22nd, 1940.</i>. Here is an essential part of the Jewish contribution to the war effort.
  Or think of Russia. Soviet Russia is of course not a Jewish country as our enemies pretend; but it is the fact that she came into existence as the world’s answer to the stirring message of a Jew. The Jew was not a faithful Jew and his message not a Jewish message, but neither the man nor his message is conceivable without the impact of Judaism upon the destinies of men. The dreams of a homeless Jewish fugitive have taken shape in a great state and in powerful armies that spell death and destruction for the enemies of mankind. This is another instalment of the Jewish contribution to the war effort.
  Or think of Christianity. The new German paganism hates it, because, if true to itself, Christianity must be a dangerous stumbling-block across the path to world domination. Nazi philosophy sees in Christianity just another means by which Judaism has influenced the life of man. There is no reason why Jews should not accept the accusation. It is the fact that Christianity is one of the ways in which the spirit of Judaism has exercised its power over mankind. We are glad to learn that to-day this emanation of the Jewish spirit is reckoned an obstacle of some magnitude in the calculation of the enemies of humanity. This too is a Jewish contribution to the war effort.
  Our enemies know why they hate us and they have every reason for their hatred. Had it not been for the Jewish contribution in the shaping of the destinies of nations, in the moulding of the characters of men and in the development of the moral standards of humanity, the enemies of mankind would be in supreme control of the world to-day.
  Isaiah says of the Messiah: *<i class="footnote">*Isaiah XI, 4.</i>“And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked”. This is the kind of power that Judaism wields in history, the power of the God-inspired word in whose breath wickedness withers away. Or as the Midrash put it: †<i class="footnote">†Bereshith Rabbah, 65, 20.</i>“As long as the word of Jacob remains alive among men, the barbarous hands of Esau cannot triumph”.
  
  IV; Jews and Judaism
  
  
  
  Section 1
  
  
  
  Section 2
  
  
  
  Section 3
  
  
  
  Section 4
  
  
  
  Section 5
  
  
  
  Section 6
  
  
  
  Section 7
  
  
  
  Section 8
  
  
  
  Section 9
  
  
  
  Section 10
  
  
  
  Section 11
  
  
  
  Section 12
  
  
  
  Section 13
  
  
  
  Section 14
  
  
  
  Section 15
  
  
  
  Section 16
  
  
  
  Section 17
  
  
  
  Section 18
  
  A WAY TO JUDAISM
  <i>Rosh Ha’Shanah, 5702—September, 1941</i>
  THE liturgy of the Mussaf service on Rosh Ha’Shanah is divided into three sections which are known by the Hebrew names:
  (1) “Malchiyot” or Kingship, meaning the Kingship of God, the acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty in the Universe, as we express it in our prayers,
  (2) “Zichronot” or Remembrances, both of the world and of Israel before God,
  (3) “Shofarot” or Trumpets, concluding with the time when the trumpets of the Messiah will announce that God’s Kingdom on earth has been firmly established among men.
  This is the order in the prayer-book; but according to the Bible*<i class="footnote">*Numbers X, 10; cf. Sifré ib.</i> it ought to be the reverse. It should begin with the prayers which are called “the Trumpets”, continue with “Remembrances”, and conclude with the expression of the idea of God’s Kingship. Without entering into the question why we have not adopted the biblical order, I should like to point out the special significance of each of the arrangements mentioned—the traditional one of Kingship, Remembrances, Trumpets, and the reversed biblical order of Trumpets, Remembrances and Kingship.
  1
  The order with which we are familiar conforms to the history of Judaism. Judaism began with “Malchiyot”, with the conception that God is God, that He is the Sovereign Ruler of the world, the Kings of Kings, and that man’s task is *<i class="footnote">*Cf. the “Aleynu” prayer.</i>“to build the Kingdom of God on earth”. “Kingship” was the beginning of Jewish history. All our historic experiences as a nation, all our memories, our “Zichronot”, are but the consequences of the one central thought—God. And it is on account uf their absorption in this one thought that Jews are still waiting on all the highways of the world for the day when the messianic Trumpets will sound to spread the tidings that the homeless nation, the wandering Jew, has found home at last.
  This order—Kingship, History, Fulfilment—is the symbol of Judaism.
  But not everybody is ripe for the Way of Judaism; there must be a prior way too, a way leading to Judaism. And this other way to Judaism must not start with “Malchiyot,” with the realisation that God alone is our Lord and has a claim on man’s whole life, that He matters more than wealth or comfort or success. How many of us would be able to understand this? How many of us can start with “Kingship”?
  Consider, for example, the “modern” Jew. What does he know of God, what of God’s Kingdom on earth? This Jew of to-day is incapable of beginning from the idea of God. He does not realise what the consequences of this word must be for the life of man, in his business or profession, in his thoughts and his deeds, in his behaviour towards his fellow-men. He does not know it; he is morally and spiritually asleep. Before he can even start with Judaism proper, he must be driven out of his indifference, his conscience must be stirred. And therefore this other way back to Judaism must follow a different order. At its inception we find “Shofarot”—Trumpets, or such “sounds” as might awaken the hearts and minds of men.
  But what are these “Sounds”?—They might be anything that would serve the purpose. To-day, they are the mighty sounding of the voice of History, the voice of God speaking to us through tremendous historic happenings. All the disappointments of men, all the tragedies, the terrible sufferings of the last few years, they are God’s own “Trumpets” calling us; forcibly opening ears that did not want to hear.
  Surely, in the last few years History has been a terrible but efficient schoolmaster. What has it tried to teach the modern Jew?—I would say that those of us who have started to think have been taught “Zichronot”, they have been taught to remember; to remember many a thing the modern Jew wanted to forget for ever. It was the characteristic sign of the modern Jew that he was a person without memories, a man with a suppressed past. He did not know what was behind him, nor did he want to know it. He wanted to forget. He was running away from his own yesterday. He wanted to begin a “new life”, he wiped out his memories. Thus it happened that the “modern” Jew, the descendant of the oldest nobility in Europe, the offspring of the prophets, became the typical upstart of society because he no longer wanted to continue the tradition of the generations of his people.
  But this belongs already to the past. To-day, the course of events is bringing us our memories back. Jews who think are beginning to remember; and will have to go on remembering, for History will not allow them to forget.
  We wanted to forget our own past, we wanted to begin anew, because we wanted to escape Jewish destiny. We were tired of homelessness, of eternal wandering; we wanted so much to get home somewhere. Like little children who shutting their eyes imagine that no one can see them, we thought that if we forgot the past the world too would be prepared to forget, or at least to forgive, that we were Jews. It was a tragic mistake. In the last few years, History has taught us that the world never forgets. And whenever Jews or Jewries think they have, at last, safely escaped Jewish destiny, the world ferrets them out from their artificial anonymity, pointing with the finger at them, at the Jew. Think of French Jewry. If there ever was a Jewry without Jewish memories, if ever Jews succeeded in wiping out their past, it was they. To-day, they are on their tragic way back into the Ghetto again. The whole world is aware of the Jew as never before, because the Jew wanted to forget and make others forget him.
  2
  Then there is another, perhaps even more important, reason why History is reviving in Jews long-forgotten memories.
  The “modern” Jew was giving up Judaism, he was gradually drifting away from it, because he thought it old-fashioned, he imagined he had found something better. There was in front of him the new and young civilisation of Western Europe. It was promising, it was alluring. Old Judaism could not compete with it. But what did this great Western Civilisation for which Jews abandoned Judaism keep of its promises? What did it bring us and the world?
  Every thinking man understands it to-day: it was new but inexperienced, it was young but unreliable; it was shining and beautiful to look at but foul in its very foundations. It has caused confusion, destruction and incredible suffering. It has brought bankruptcy—economic and moral bankruptcy—over the world.
  And for this empty bubble, this glittering shell, we have thrown overboard good old weather-beaten,reliable, eternal Judaism. For a civilisation which, while professing that it is based on a religion of love, never argues without the sword in the hand, we have jettisoned even the memories of the Jewish Way of faithfulness through the word.
  What a folly, what a tragic folly. *<i class="footnote">*Jeremiah II, 11.</i>“Hath a nation changed its gods, which yet are no gods? But My people hath changed its glory for that which does not profit”. If ever these words were true, they are true to-day.
  Thinking Jews should have learned by now that Judaism was never so topical, so “live”, so much needed by all of us, as it is in the confusion of our times when all the foundations of the world are shaking, and a vortex of darkness is sucking everything into its abyss. Thinking Jews are beginning to remember neglected, forgotten Judaism; they feel that there is in it something that may dispel the darkness, guide the confusion of hearts and minds, and give new direction and meaning to the now meaningless life of men.
  Thus, History through the “Trumpets” of God is leading us back to Zichronot, recalling in us memories of the past, reminding us of Judaism.
  3
  But the “Shofarot” of our times, the voice of History, lead those of us who use their minds much further than to “Memories”, they lead us to the very terminus of the Way back to Judaism, to “Malchiyot”, to the acceptance of God’s Kingship in our everyday life.
  It is not enough to realise that the expectations of humanity have been confounded, that its hopes have ended in disappointment, that this new and promising epoch in the history of mankind has taken us to the very verge of the abyss, that man is bankrupt. One must try to understand how all this has come about. The noble endeavours of man, human progress and enlightenment, science and philosophy, great new inventions and bold research, could have brought us deliverance from poverty and misery, an age of plenty and contentment. How could all these potential blessings turn into a curse at our hands, into an all-embracing world tragedy?
  The answer to this question was given many centuries ago in the following words of the Bible:*<i class="footnote">*Psalms CXXVII, 1.</i>“If the Lord buildeth not the house, in vain toil those who build it”. Yes, we were progressing, but so quickly that we left God behind. We were building, but without God. Our civilisation is bankrupt because it is idolatrous. It has served the idols of selfishness, of greed, of “success”; the idols of power and might, the idols of the class or the nation. It was in this latest proud period of human progress that the conscience of the world became so enfeebled as to permit a whole nation to speak of “Sacro Egoismo”, the Holy Egoism. Well, here they are, the fruits of holy egoism.
  But where was God all the time? The answer is: In the synagogues, in the churches, in the places of worship; there men kept God a prisoner, a prisoner of the synagogue, of the Church, of the Prayer Book. O yes, a most distinguished prisoner, to whom people in their “Sunday best” paid a visit now and then to show their appreciation for His famous past; but yet a prisoner, whom men had exiled from their lives.
  If there is to be a New World, God must be freed from His prison; He must be led out of the synagogues, out of the churches, out of the Prayer Book. He must be allowed to live with us. We must make Him feel at home in our houses, in our shops and offices, in our factories and workshops; everywhere, in every little corner of human life, there must be a place for Him. The preamble to all the blueprints of a better world is: *<i class="footnote">*Psalms CXI, 10.</i>“the beginning of all wisdom is the fear of God.”
  Will the nations understand this? Will they realise that there is no other hope for mankind, that there is no other way out of the chaos?
  God, the faith, followed up in all its consequences and applied to the whole of life—God, the Way of Living, is the only remedy.
  There will be lasting peace when faith in God rules and guides all the affairs of men and nations; and “He will be King over all the earth”.
  
  Section 19
  
  ORIGINS AND PROSPECTS
  <i>A Sermon before Yizcor. Yom Kippur, 5703—September, 1942</i>
  †<i class="footnote">†Mishnah Abot III, 1.</i>“Know whence thou comest, and whither thou are going, and before whom thou wilt in future have to give account and reckoning.”
  It is natural that the hour of “Yizcor” should recall to us this old saying from the “Ethics of the Fathers”. Remembering those who once were so near us, who belonged to us and were part of our own lives, in whom we lived just as they lived in us, and who are no more, one is reminded of this fundamental precept about human life: know whence it all springs and where it all ends; and know also that there is a day of reckoning. But apart from reminding us of the essential frailty of human life, the hour of “Yizcor” on a Yom Kippur invests the saying of Akabyah with a new significance.
  1
  We remember. We remember fathers and mothers; the ancestors of our people. We remember past generations. Surely, if we remember well, if we remember sincerely, we cannot but trace our own steps back into the past; the old Jewish house comes to new life again in our memories. Once more we are transplanted into its atmosphere, we feel its very breath around us and are reminded of the spirit that ruled it. And many a forgotten thing comes back into our minds.
  If we remember well, this hour of remembrance must bring home to us the full significance of the word “whence”. Realise it, think of it, Jew, whence you have come; who your father was, who your mother. Trace your own steps back into the past, remember your own yesterday, know your origin.
  We have been very forgetful of this. It often happens that, entering one or the other house in our community, I notice a picture hanging on a wall. I look at the picture and behold a face that bears the signs of character, that reveals a distinct personality, and proclaims a disciplined life of responsibility. I look at the picture and know: this man was a Jew. Then usually comes the surprise, when my host proudly pointing at the picture says: “This was my father”.—Your father? … Unbelievable. Knowing you, I could never have guessed it. Your father? But there is no trace of him, neither in you nor in your children. Your father? … Why, if the picture came to life at this moment, your father would not recognise you. He would be a complete stranger in your house, and he would feel very uncomfortable.
  Of course, should I disclose my thoughts to him, my host might reply: Well, you cannot expect me to be exactly what my father was. After all, we are living in a different world, in different circumstances. Life does not stand still. Naturally we are all changing with the change of the times.
  Yes, we have changed. We are living in a different world. Nobody can expect us just to imitate our ancestors and to live in the past. No! Imitation is never the right thing. But it is rightly expected of us that when a man enters our house and looks at the picture on the wall, he should well be able to guess: “This must be your father. Knowing you, that is how I would imagine your father must have looked”. It is rightly expected of us that our life should reveal its origin, that it should bear the mark of its own yesterday. In spite of all the difference in circumstances, people should be able to recognise us as the children of our parents; in spite of all change, our life should be the organic continuation of the Jewish past. We should know whence we have come and allow our past to have a determining influence on the manner of our accommodation with the present. What must be expected of every Jew is that his should not be a “brand-new” life, that he should not look as if he were his own father. We must not live as if our life has started to-day, as if there had never been a yesterday.
  Only parvenus have “brand-new” lives, only upstarts have no yesterday. Other people have fathers and mothers. Other people have history. Other people live so that watching them one is able to guess whence they have come.
  2
  It is essential to belong to somewhere and to be aware of the fact. It is vital to have a yesterday, for only those with a yesterday have a to-morrow. Only those who come from somewhere go somewhere. Only those who are rooted in a past last into a future. Only those who know whence they have come, only they can know where they go to.
  Think of the many Jews of our day who have forgotten their origins, who are all the time fleeing from their yesterday, who want to forget; who have effaced their Jewish memories because they wished to have a new chance, because they wanted to start a grand new life, new from the very start, without the burden of history and tradition. Think of them. Where do they go, they who come from nowhere?—They drift along aimlessly, carried and pushed along and tossed about by every passing wave, changing their principles with their newspapers, their morals with the catchwords of the hour; delivered up to every folly that is in vogue and captivated by the one-day truths of the fashion; like fallen leaves they are driven about by the slightest breeze, poor little nobodies, coming from nowhere, going to nowhere. They have thrown their past overboard, the burden of history, and with it has gone their compass, the vision of a future.
  Know whence you have come, for only if we are conscious of the experiences of past generations can we know of the way; only then do we possess the strength of character, the disciplined faithfulness that we need in order to find our way through confusion and chaos, through sorrow and suffering and many relapses, to a more dignified, a more sensible and humane, a nobler and better human life.
  3
  Surely, Jews should understand this. It has been hammered into us often enough that for us there is no running away from yesterday. We cannot escape our past. There is no escape from the historic destiny of our people. Whenever Jews run away, they are soon driven back by force. Whenever they want to forget, others remind them. Whenever Jews are oblivious of the “Whence”, there are others to inquire into it and to ask: “Jew, what are you doing here, whence did you come to us and with what right?” And once they have started to inquire into our yesterday, soon the question arises in a new and ominous sense: Where to, now? Where to from here?
  We cannot escape yesterday for we cannot escape ourselves.
  Our life did not begin with us. It was lived by generations of Jews who were before us. If we look at our children, watch their faces and features, their reactions and the way they express themselves, and recognise in them, as we often do, a father or a grandfather, an uncle or a granduncle, what does this mean? Or if science teaches us that an ancestor who lived centuries ago may suddenly re-emerge in our child, in whom features and gestures, moods and even minute idiosyncrasies, which were dormant for hundreds of years, come to life, what else can it mean if not that our life has been lived and moulded and shaped by innumerable generations in the past? Our life is not only ours, it is theirs too. To a very large extent we are but the vessels in which the life of past generations has been stored. This life which we erroneously call ours is only flowing through us; it possesses us and we do not possess it.
  There is no escape from Yesterday. Yesterday is in us. There is no escape from the historic destiny of our people; we are what this destiny has made us. Wherever we go, it is with us.
  We are the channels through which the life of our people flows as one great stream to future generations. We are what the shores are to a river, the keeper of the river. And because of this we cannot do with our life whatever we like. We must try hard to understand it, its laws, its nature, its purpose in history, in the world. We are accountable for it to the past, as well as to the future.
  The day of reckoning comes, when we all are called upon to answer for our trusteeship.
  * * *
  On the words of the Bible: *<i class="footnote">*Deuteronomy XXI, 8.</i>“Forgive, O Lord, Thy people Israel, whom Thou hast redeemed”, the Midrash remarks: †<i class="footnote">†Tanchuma, Deuteronomy, Ha’azi-nu.</i>“Forgive Thy people Israel”, these are the living: “Whom Thou hast redeemed” these are the dead. From here we learn: that the living can redeem the dead. That is why we have the custom of remembering the dead on the Day of Atonement.
  The true meaning of “Yizcor” is then the redemption of the dead. How can we do this, how can we redeem them? Only by realising that our life is their life, that they lived it before us and entrusted it to us. They placed it in our keeping that it may continue through us, enriched by our own efforts and passed on to future generations.
  Let us remember well; that past generations may be redeemed in us that through us they may continue in our children—in the eternal living stream of Israel.
  
  Section 20
  
  CLOSED FOR THE ANNUAL EVENT
  <i>A N’ilah Sermon. Yom Kippur, 5703—September, 1942</i>
  ‡<i class="footnote">‡Jonah III, 5.</i>“THE people of Nineveh believed in God”, thus we read in the Book of Jonah. And when they learned of the impending judgment, they proclaimed a fast and put on sack-clothing; all of them, men, women, and children. The King himself set the example.
  And God saw…. What? Not their fast, not the sackcloth, not the king sitting in ashes. §<i class="footnote">§Ibid., 10.</i>“God saw their deeds, that they had turned from their evil way”, says the prophet. God saw this, and only then did He repent of the evil that He said He would do unto them, and He did not do it.
  That this was the essential thing—their new deeds, their new ways—we can also conclude from the behaviour of the prophet Jonah. The book betrays some of the feelings of this strange man when it recounts that Jonah went out of the city, outside it he made a tent, under which he sat in the shade, watching from there the city; until he might see … What? *<i class="footnote">*Ibid. IV. 5.</i>“<i>Mah yihyeh ba’ir</i>” is the phrase in Hebrew, which is usually translated: “till he might see what would become of the city”. But, as so often, the translation is misleading; not because it is false, but because it is unable to give us the side-meanings contained in the Hebrew text. “<i>Mah yihyeh ba’ir</i>” mean literally not, “what will become of the city”, but “what will happen in the city”. Jonah did not want to know whether God would carry out His word and destroy Nineveh, as he had spoken. Jonah knew that God would not destroy. As he said: †<i class="footnote">†Ibid., 2.</i>“For I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil”. Jonah watched the inhabitants of the city. He wanted to know whether they would be true to their word. These people of Nineveh … they had their fast, they had cried to God, they walked about in their sackcloth, let me see what will happen in the city now, what will follow now? How will they live, how will they act—now, after their fast, and after their prayers and the sackcloth? What kind of a city will Nineveh be from now on?
  1
  This great and holy day is nearing its conclusion. We have fasted, we have prayed, we have confessed our sins, but at this hour the question arises: What will follow now? What will happen in our city now? What kind of people shall we be after the fast and the prayer and the confession of sins?
  Let us be frank. Let us not try to fool ourselves, let us not try to fool God—to-day, at this hour. What will follow now? What will happen in this community now? We all know it only too well. Nothing will follow, nothing will happen. Everything will remain as it was yesterday and the day before yesterday. There will be no change of ways, no change of heart or mind. We know very well that already to-morrow we shall all continue in our old ruts as if nothing had happened. There will be no new deeds, there will be nothing new.
  The tragedy is not that there will be no change. The real tragedy is that already now, even at this “N’ilah” hour, we know that there will be no change.
  There can be no change, for our entire relationship to Judaism is fundamentally wrong.
  Judaism is a pattern of life; it is a way of real, everyday life. And even such holy days as Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Hakkippurim are but part of the pattern. In olden days, when the Jew entered the synagogue on the Day of Atonement he did not—as it were—mechanically interrupt the normal routine of his life, turning to something that belonged to an entirely different level, to something that did not truly belong to him and was above him. Yom Kippur was the climax of <i>his</i> year. The Holy Days themselves were but part of the Jewish “routine.” They were the greatest intensification of the “routine” of Judaism. They were Jewish life, everyday Jewish life, lived in its deepest and most intensified manner. They were an organic part of the Jewish Year, and, consequently, they could not fail to exercise the greatest influence upon it. Not so to-day. Yom Kippur is no longer the climax towards which the normal Jewish routine is moving, but a lonely isle in the stream of time. For Judaism is no longer the great pattern of our lives. It is no longer the rhythm determining our way of living, but an observance at the fringe of life, at its periphery. We do not live it any longer, but in the midst of our life we look at the calendar and remember that there is something to be “observed”, a Kaddish, some other Synagogue ceremony, a Rosh Ha-Shanah or Yom Kippur. Then, we interrupt ourselves; life is suspended for a while; we take leave of it; and on the door we hang up the poster: This life is closed for the duration of the Kaddish, the annual event. This life will be opened again after the ceremony.
  This is how Jews understand their Judaism to-day, as something that must remain outside the normal routine of their life. We have followed the example of Europe and made God and Life, or Religion and Life, two spheres apart. Here life—there the synagogue. Here life with its own laws, there the synagogue with its own ritual.
  Modern Jews often complain about the “ritual”. They are often prepared to accept “Religion,” they even call themselves “religious”, they only object to the “ritual”, which has no meaning for them. But the modern Jew has no right to complain or to criticise, for it is he who has converted Judaism into a lifeless ritual; the wedding-ritual, the Kaddish-reciting-ritual, the tombstone-consecration-ritual, or the ritual of the Holy Days. All that has remained of Judaism is the ritual. But it is our own fault. We have exiled Judaism from our life, we have exiled it into the ritual. This is the tragedy of Judaism to-day.
  Thus not even a Yom Kippur can bring about any change. Nothing new will happen, there will be no new and better deeds on our side as a consequence of this day, for even this great day is not intrinsically related to our real life. Our real life … we closed it down before we entered the synagogue, and we shall continue it to-morrow from exactly the same spot where we left off yesterday.
  2
  Even this great day of Atonement is for the bulk of modern Jews but a ritual. Its real purpose, its life purpose “T’shuvah”, conveys but very little to most of us to-day. “T’shuvah” or “Return” is only possible when the heart of a man is filled with longing to relate his own individual life to the real and hidden meaning of all life on earth. “T’shuvah” is only possible when such longing has rendered our heart restless, urging it to seek a task and a place in this world so as to enable us to synchronise our individual life-pulsation with the heart-beats of the Universe. “T’shuvah” is only possible when our soul—rendered homeless by longing—is searching for the last cause, the ultimate sustaining power, God, suspecting Him everywhere, ready to meet Him at every corner, at the next turning, and to cast into Him its homeless root and find anchor in Him.
  Only where such longing exists can there be a realisation of our failure to reach out towards the goal of our longing; only there can men realise that they have lived away from God instead of living towards Him; that instead of coordinating their own individual life-rhythm with the rhythm of the whole of life which is anchored in God, they have disturbed the harmony of the whole, they have lived against the purpose of the whole, they have sinned.
  Only where this longing for God exists can there be a realisation of sin, a realisation that deepens the sense of failure and frustration, intensifies the longing and guides a man back Godwards once more.
  But we, the great majority of modern Jews, have no realisation of sin. We do not “believe” in sins any longer. We have no use for the word sin. Who of us thinks of himself as a sinner at the opening of the Day of Atonement?
  We are no sinners any longer. Only they know of sin who know of the longing for God, for identification with the Divine purpose of life as a whole, for relating oneself to the last cause and aim of the whole. But we know almost nothing of this longing. We are not sinners, this is our greatest sin. This is why Return has no meaning for us. Return … where to?—The longing is the sign-post, pointing the way. Where it is lacking all the ways are the same and all the directions lead to nowhere.
  Only owing to the lack of the great longing were we able to ban God from our lives, to exile Judaism into the ritual, the ceremony, the synagogue.
  3
  What is the true character of a distorted Judaism which exiles God into the ceremony?
  In the Book of Jonah we read of the flight of the prophet from before God. *<i class="footnote">*Jonah I, 3.</i>“And Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” People often ask: how could the prophet think that a man was able to run away from God?
  I do not know what the thoughts of Jonah were at the time of his flight. But I do know that one can very well run away from God. There are most ingenious ways of doing it, and we ourselves are continually practising it.
  This secularised life of ours is not always a comfortable one, for all the time God is silently watching us. And now and then, there are moments in our life when we do feel His patient eyes resting on us. Now and then, events occur which make us wonder whether after all there might not indeed be more things between heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of Horatio. Now and then the veil is lifted for a short moment, a very short one, yet long enough to make us waver in our silly cocksureness and wonder whether after all we are not all the time wasting our lives, shutting our eyes to the essential issues, living in the fool’s paradise of our narrow minds and small hearts. If in such moments of our life we would pause for a while and then start to think again on new lines and not just following the old groove, if we had “curiosity” enough for the great adventure of searching the new vistas which are opened for us in such moments of grace, if in such moments we had the courage to face the gaze of the Infinite, the Unknown, the Gaze of God, the great longing would take hold of us, and it would carry us towards a fuller, greater, and better life. But unfortunately, most of us do not pause, we have not enough curiosity nor enough courage, and instead we run, run from the gaze of God.
  We are doing it very ingeniously. For it is not so easy to run away from God. This is what we do. We build beautiful palatial synagogues and run there into the synagogue, thinking, surely one is safe from God in a synagogue. People feel the eyes of God rest on them, they become uncomfortable, and try to hide themselves behind the recital of a Kaddish. Where can a man be safer from God than behind a Kaddish, or a prayer book, or some other religious ceremony? We are running from God, hiding ourselves in the “ritual,” in the ceremony, behind that lifeless hocus-pocus to which we, modern Jews, have degraded Judaism, our Judaism, which once was life, life before God, life consciously lived under the watching eyes of God.
  * * *
  God will be watching us with His patiently-waiting eyes. Let us not run away from Him; let us go and meet Him. Let us pray that He in His great mercy may grant wisdom to our foolish hearts, that we may follow the New Way towards which this holiest hour of the Jewish Year is pointing.
  
  Section 21
  
  IN THE WILDERNESS OF THE NATIONS
  <i>Shavuot, 5702—May, 1942</i>
  WORDS which seem to apply very closely to the present situation of the Jewish people were once proclaimed by the prophet Ezekiel: *<i class="footnote">*Ezekiel XX, 34-35.</i>“And I will bring you out from the people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand, with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the nations, and there will I plead with you face to face”. The future of Judaism may depend on our willingness to grasp fully the implication of these words.
  1
  God will bring His people out of the countries in which they have been scattered, and He will lead them not to salvation, not back to their Home-land—this will follow later—first He will lead them from all the countries of Jewish settlement into the Wilderness of the Nations. In other words, Jewish settlements as they have emerged in the various countries of the world, Jewries as they have taken shape in the course of the long centuries of our history in exile in all corners of the world, will be broken up and dissolved; Jews and Jewries will be driven out into the Wilderness of the Nations.
  To-day, we have reached this stage in our history. The exiles have been exiled anew. Jewries all over the world have been uprooted. Those compact enclosures of Jewish life, each with a history of its own, each with a religious culture of its own suited to its environment, each almost a separate Jewish nation of its own, with distinct traditions and institutions, have been forced open and their contents poured out, spread out all over the world.
  Think of Russian Jewry, of Polish Jewry, of German Jewry—they are no more. There are only former Russian, Polish, German Jews uprooted and wandering about in the Wilderness of the Nation.
  Our whole people is in this situation. All of us. We like to think that American Jewry and English Jewry have been spared the tragedy of living in the wilderness. This is a misinterpretation of Jewish history. This would be true if the breaking up of the great historic Jewries were only a matter of migration, a matter of geography, of “whither”, where to go, where to find a new home. Thank God, these questions and problems do not exist for the English and American Jewries. Materially at least and for the time being they are settled. And yet they too live in the wilderness. In fact, this tragic process of the breaking up of historic Jewries, of the disintegration of Jewish settlements, of banishment from the homes which Jews have found in the countries of the world and which in some cases they have inhabited longer than the present occupiers, into the homelessness of a new Exile, into the Wilderness of the Nations, started with the ancestors of those Jews who to-day constitute the bulk of the American and English Jewries. The tragedy began sixty, eighty, a hundred years ago, with the great migrations of Jews from Russia, Poland, Rumania towards the West; it has culminated in our days in the breakdown of all the continental Jewries.
  2
  It is true that the material position of the Jewries in the Anglo-Saxon world is, thank God, much sounder than that of their brethren elsewhere. But this process of disintegration of the historic Jewries presents not only a problem of migration, of Jewish politics and economics; it involves a spiritual crisis of the first magnitude.
  The disintegration of individual Jewries means in fact that Judaism is disintegrating. The shifting of the “Jewish Geography” brings in its wake the disorganisation of the spiritual structure of Judaism. It is a mistake to think that Judaism can be transported—as it were—from one country to another. Judaism is not a book or a library which you may carry with you from one place to another. Judaism is not a mere theoretical system, a compilation of ideals and beliefs. Judaism is life lived by Jews, it is a system of purposes and intentions, carried into realisation by living Jewries. The great Russian Jewry, with its own history, its own traditions, its Russo-Jewish propensities and idiosyncrasies, it was Judaism. In its dissolution Judaism also dissolves. Polish Jewry, German Jewry, in all their activities, their communal organisations and religious-cultural institutions, their particular style of thinking and living, represented various historic shapes of living Judaism. In their disintegration Judaism goes under, in their disappearance Judaism disappears.
  One cannot replant the Judaism of one country in the soil of another. Every Jewry is unique. The shape that Judaism takes in the various Jewries is always “locally” determined. The Jewish emigrant always carries with him only the ruins of his former spiritual existence, the ruins of Judaism as lived in his own native Jewry, just as he carries in his little bundle the miserable remnants of his former material existence.
  As soon as the Polish or Lithuanian Jew leaves his country he ceases to be the Polish or Lithuanian Jew. He becomes the former Polish or Lithuanian Jew. He becomes the shadow of the Polish or Lithuanian Jew, the shadow of a historic Jewish type.
  This is the real tragedy of the Jews who are forced out of the countries of their historic sojournings into the Wilderness of the Nations.
  Let it be understood that we do not treat here only of the recent refugees from the Continent. We deal with the Jewish situation in this country and in America. For what else are the Jewish communities in the United Kingdom or in the U.S.A., or South Africa, but the ghostly shadows of great Jewries, what else but the debris of the former Russian, Polish and Lithuanian Jewries. Stop talking of English or American Jewry. There is no such thing as yet. There are Jews in these countries, but these countries have not yet become homes to new Jewries; they are still part of the Wilderness of the Nations into which Jews have been driven. There is no positive manifestation of Jewish life which could be called Anglo-Jewish. What is still Jewish with us is Russo-Jewish, Polish-Jewish or Lithuanian-Jewish; and what English, is not Jewish, is often anti-Jewish, often the jettisoning of Judaism. Jews in the Anglo-Saxon world either vegetate on the remnants of former Judaisms imported by the emigrants, or else throw even such remnants overboard. “Anglo-Jewish” is an accident in Jewish history, not yet an achievement, as Russo-Jewish, Polish-Jewish, or German-Jewish was.
  This, of course, is a hopeless situation which must lead to ultimate dissolution and extinction.
  3
  What can we do to avert the catastrophe that menaces us?. This is not the place for developing a detailed plan of action. But we may try to indicate the goal towards which we must direct our endeavours.
  The first epoch in the modern history of Jews in Anglo-Saxon countries has reached its conclusion. It was the epoch of economic settlement in the new countries of Jewish emigration. While the struggle for proper economic conditions and social security lasted, the emigrants had to subsist on those remains of spiritual capital which they were able to save from the breakdown of the Jewries to which they originally belonged.
  No longer are they emigrants to-day. Economically and politically they are settled in quite normal conditions. Materially they are already the children of a new age; spiritually, however, they live in a void. All they have are the fading memories of Vilna and Warsaw, of Kovno and Lodz. This is an impossible situation. The material re-settlement of the remnants of former Jewries has been completed, as far as the Jews in the Anglo-Saxon world themselves are concerned. Now must follow the spiritual re-settlement of Judaism in the cultural sphere of the English-speaking nations.
  Now has the time come to create Anglo-Jewry as a new manifestation of a living Judaism; a Jewry that is Anglo-Jewish not because of the mere accident of geography or owing to its language, but in the sense that in it Judaism has found its own adequate expression in the midst of the Anglo-Saxon civilisation.
  At the present crisis in Jewish history it will not do merely to follow the traditions of the past. It is our duty to create traditions for the future. Jews cannot forever continue to live in London, New York, Sydney, according to the “Minhag Polin”; the time has come when the “Minhag Britanya” or the “Minhag America” must be moulded, or else we are lost. I do not wish to be misunderstood. I emphatically reject Reform or Liberalism. What I preach is historic Judaism.
  The style of living of the new Jewries which are to be formed must be based on the foundations of the Jewish past; it must retain the intentions of our great religious culture, but it must relate Judaism to the rest of the world in the midst of which we have to live.
  In other words: Our task is not to imitate former Jewries, but to make Judaism real to-day; that is, with the help of the knowledge and the experience of the past to hammer out the religious-cultural shape of a new Jewry which shall emerge from the contact of Judaism with Anglo-Saxon civilisation.
  Only when this task is performed shall we be redeemed from the Wilderness of the Nations.
  
  Section 22
  
  IGNORAMUS TRIUMPHANT
  <i>Pesach, April, 1943</i>
  *<i class="footnote">*Exodus XII, 26-27.</i>“AND it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you: what mean ye by this service? that ye shall say: ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover, for that he passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses’. And the people bowed the head and worshipped”.
  1
  After Moses had taught the people what answer to give to the questions of their children, they bowed down and worshipped. But why should this have been an occasion for devotion and worship? Two answers are given by our Rabbis in the Midrash. Rabbi Levi said that by speaking to the people about the questions their children would ask them in the future, Moses wished to convey to them “the bad tidings that a time would come when the Torah would be forgotten in Israel”. The Rabbanan however said: On the contrary. The words of Moses brought the good news that they would have sons and daughters. “And they bowed down and worshipped in gratitude for the good tidings that they would have children.”
  The explanation of Rabbi Levi is clear and easily understood. The children of Israel heard bad news from Moses. A time would come in the history of Israel when the Torah would be forgotten. But what did his colleagues mean by saying that it was good for them to know that they would have children? Was it such a great surprise to them that they would have children? Did they need any reassurance on this point? They were a whole nation of men, women and children. Surely, it was the most natural thing on earth for them to continue to have children. How could they have been so deeply impressed by such tidings that, as the Bible tells us, as they heard the news, they bowed down and worshipped?
  I surmise that in the opinion of the Rabbanan the prophecy amounted to this: The Torah will be forgotten, yet you will have children; the children will not know Judaism and yet they will be your children. This was a great and surprising prophecy; so surprising that had they not heard it from Moses himself, they could not have believed it. Torah forgotten and yet for Jews to have children … whenever this happens in Jewish history it is a miracle.
  Take for instance our times. Surely, of these days we may well say that the “bad tidings” have come true. Torah is forgotten in Israel, Torah is forgotten in Anglo-Jewry. Of course people may say that at least we have children. It is correct to say that we do bring children into the world. We love them and work for them; it is our great happiness to see them grow up and settle down. But once they have grown up, are they still ours? Do they still belong to us? Do we really <i>have</i> our children? They fight on all the fronts, except on the Jewish front. They give their hearts to many a cause but not to the Jewish cause. They are good youths. They are intelligent, idealistic and capable of enthusiasm—but they are not ours. We do not have our children. Anglo-Jewry is gradually losing the battle for Jewish survival because it is losing its young. This, however, is the most natural thing on earth. A generation of Jews that is empty of Torah, of Jewish knowledge and culture, cannot and will not hold its youth. Children that ask and fathers who reply are not only a feature of the Seder evening but—and this is of far greater importance—also the foundation of Jewish life. On the continued discussion between the generations depends the future of Judaism. But a child will not ask unless there is a father who can reply, unless he can hope for guidance from his parents. We are losing our youth because an ignorant Jewry has nothing to offer that youth deems worth while having.
  It was great news indeed for the children of Israel to learn that though Torah would be forgotten their children would remain theirs. They had good reason to be grateful, to bow down and to worship.
  2
  In our days only the first part of the prophecy has come true; Torah is forgotten. The good tidings however that they would have children have remained unfulfilled. The miracle has not happened. We do not have our children. They are drifting away from us. Soon there will be only old Jews in Anglo-Jewry, soon there will be no children and no To-morrow.
  We often speak in these days of the critical situation in which Judaism finds itself, of the dangers that beset the path of our people. There is anti-Semitism and Nazidom, there is assimilationism with its dishonouring policy of consciously willed Jewish disintegration; the most dangerous enemy of the future of Israel, however, is ignorance, the lack of Jewish knowledge and Jewish culture.
  More than any other nation on earth Jews must realise the importance of knowledge. Our strength is not in huge armies, in heroic air forces or invincible tank regiments. Judaism is a spiritual power and can survive only as such. The only weapon of a spiritual power is knowledge. One can of course not expect every Jew to be a scholar, but one can hardly imagine a more tragic situation than that which prevails in Anglo-Jewry to-day, in which the Am-ha’arets rules and “manages” the affairs of one of those very few remaining free Jewries on whose efforts and achievements so much depends for the future of Israel.
  Look at this Jewry, ruled by the Am-ha’arets. Look at our communities, our ministry, our Jewish education, at the kind of Jewish life that has managed to survive in our midst. Everywhere the same signs of degeneration.
  Our communities? Do we have communities, democratically organised communities of the Jewish people, democratically administered Jewish communities, functioning under normal democratic control? Do we have truly democratic representation in Anglo-Jewry?
  We have little cliques of rich Jews, who use this Jewry as a stage for the exhibition of their own “perfections” and compete for its applause in order to satisfy their childish ambitions.
  Instead of communities we have conglomerates of members, so indifferent towards Judaism that they allow petty communal dictators to run the affairs of Jewish congregations and institutions on totalitarian lines. It is a tragic farce that in the midst of a war in which the Jewish nation has suffered more than imagination can conceive and in which all the free nations are in arms for freedom and democracy, the structure of Anglo-Jewry should be closely related to that of totalitarian communities and a clear defiance of the elementary principles of democracy.
  This too is one of the consequences of ignorance. In every society, knowledge is the foundation of democracy, and no democracy is conceivable in a Jewish society that is devoid of Jewish culture and learning.
  Authority within Judaism is of a spiritual nature. Naturally enough the ignoramus cares little for spiritual authority, he is unable to appreciate spiritual values. The only authority he is able to recognise is power and success, and in Anglo-Jewry this has come to mean the authority of Mammon. “The best money-maker is the best law-giver” seems to be the motto of Jewish leadership in this country.
  People may of course ask: What is to be done within an ignorant Jewry? If the Am-ha’arets would not do the job, there would be nobody to do it. I have high respect even for an ignorant lay leadership if it works sincerely. If such lay leaders and communal workers are sincere, they deserve our deepest gratitude. But for God’s sake, let them be more modest and cautious, let them be advised by those few still in our midst who do have substantial knowledge of Judaism; let them not “run” Judaism as one runs a business concern; let them not tramp about within its delicate framework like an elephant in a china shop.
  Another grave result of the rule of the Am-ha’arets is the degeneration in the status of the Ministry.
  I do not know what a Minister of Religion is, when looked at from a Jewish point of view. There is no trace of him either in Jewish history or in the Jewish communal system. There is no Hebrew word for this calling. One thing however is certain: A Jewish Minister of Religion is not the spiritual leader of his congregation. He and his office have been produced by the vision of the Am-ha’arets, and the Am-ha’arets does not ask for spiritual leadership. All he wants is an official, whom he pays and who has to give him service. This administrative official has to entertain him at his wedding or Bar-Mitzvah celebrations and to lend soothing decorum to his mourning in his hour of sorrow. He has got to; that is his job, it is what he is being paid for. In his sermons his task is not to teach what Jews should learn but to preach what they like listening to. In general there is one golden rule laid down for him: in everything and always and at all costs the minister has got to please. And woe unto him should he not come up to the expectations of the moneybags that rule his congregation.
  In such circumstances ignorance must become rampant within the Ministry itself. One cannot expect an intelligent young Jew, gifted with the faculty of spiritual leadership, to aspire to an office or career that demands of him to sell his conscience and his very soul in the service of the ignoramus.
  There is little need of discussing the plight of Jewish education in this connection. One point may here be adduced which well illustrates the disastrous consequences of the rule of the Am-ha’arets.
  In our days Judaism has been mainly reduced to the synagogue ceremonial and the sentimentalism that clings around the Jewish cemetery. The Kaddish is the cornerstone of this kind of “Judaism”. Yet it is no exaggeration to say that eighty per cent. of Jewish children when they stand at the graveside of their father or mother for the first time cannot even read the Kaddish properly.
  * * *
  Such are the results of the triumph of the Am-ha’arets in our midst. Judaism is disintegrating from within thanks to the ambitious rule of the Am-ha’arets. Assimilation is bad, Nazidom is worse; but worst of all is the Am-ha’arets ruling and guiding Jewry. It is the end.
  The time has come to declare a relentless war on Jewish ignorance. Let the voice of Jacob be heard again within Jewry. Let children learn to ask and parents to give answer, so that the great discussion between the generations may continue. Let us have our children again that we may rely on them to stand firm until a new day will dawn upon Israel.
  
  Section 23
  
  NOW!
  <i>August, 1942</i>
  *<i class="footnote">*Deuteronomy XXVI, 1-2.</i>“AND it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possesseth it, and dwellest therein, that thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the ground … and thou shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there.”
  Naturally, this commandment, which was the expression of the gratitude of the people for the good land which God gave them, could only be fulfilled in the land, after Israel had taken possession of the land. As the Talmud remarks: “The commandment of the First Fruits was not binding before the land had been conquered and divided among the tribes of Israel”. In view of this, the comment in the Midrash is rather surprising: “Do this commandment, for in the merit of its fulfilment you will enter the land”. The question is rightly asked: How could the observance of this commandment help the Israelites to enter the land if the prior condition of the “First-Fruits” was the possession of the land? How could the Israelites fulfil the commandment of the “First-Fruits” outside the land and before its conquest?
  This is not merely an academic question, concerning a practice which has been in abeyance for thousands of years. The answer to it contains a deep significance for ourselves at the present moment.
  1
  Nations have laws and statutes, they have their moral codes and customs, religious and social traditions, which are often based on a more or less sound sense of fair-play and equity. But in critical periods, like wars or other great upheavals, they are prepared temporarily to suppress their sense of justice and fairness, to suspend their own moral codes; they allow themselves to act and to behave as the needs of the moment dictate without considering right or wrong, good or evil. A certain aim must be achieved at all costs, and to this one aim everything must be subordinated. And thus, it often happens that people or nations who sincerely strive to establish the rule of justice and humanity on earth adopt the methods of that evil against which they are struggling. The dictates of conscience and the moral sense are overridden or ignored until the return of more normal circumstances may afford us leisure to attend to them. As one so often hears people say in these days: Let us first win the war, afterwards we shall deal with such luxuries as social justice and a better chance for all, etc., etc.
  This brings us back to the old controversy: do ends justify means or not? Are we allowed to put on one side justice and truth and humanity for a while, until we have created the circumstances—never mind by what means—in which these ideals may be established as the governing force in national as well as international life, or are we not allowed to do so?
  It is a problem with which every nation is confronted in times of peril, the problem which Israel had to face for the first time when it was girding on its strength for the conquest of the promised land. It was a critical moment. It was war. The land had to be conquered, the future of the people was in the balance, for everything depended on the success of this martial undertaking. At the same time, there were heavy handicaps under which Israel was labouring. There was the Torah, there were commandments, the heavy burden of laws and statutes, there was a definite way of life prescribed by God. Should they not postpone all this—Judaism, the Law, the commandments of God—until after victory and conquest? Just as the commandment of the First-Fruits depended on the peaceful possession of the Land, was not the whole of the Torah obligatory only in normal times, in times of peace, but not in times of a great national emergency?
  The answer of Judaism, however, is: “… fulfil this commandment … ”, yes even this commandment of the First-Fruits, of which you think that it can only be fulfilled after the conquest of the land, fulfil it now, even now whilst you are preparing for the conquest. It is true there is no land, no temple, no first-fruits as yet. But this commandment is not a mere formality, some superstitious ritual which is to be performed with a basket, some fruits, and a priest in a temple. There is sense in it, there is a purpose behind it. Offer the first-fruits of your land as a symbol of your acknowledgment of God as the supreme Lord over the land on which we live as tenants only. As He said: *<i class="footnote">* Leviticus XXV, 23.</i>“… for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me”. The idea, the intention of the commandment is eternal. There may be no land, no temple, no fruits, the symbols may wither away; the principle remains. And because of this: fulfil it now! Now is always the right moment. Show it now, without fruits, without the land, before the conquest, yes at this critical hour prove that you are prepared to accept the sovereignty of God. Now is always the right time. For ends do not justify means. Truth must not be shelved, morality not deferred, and God cannot be postponed until the danger has passed and the emergency is over. Laws and statutes, moral codes and ideals, are no mere luxuries with which one may dispense in times of danger. On the contrary, they are the life-blood that sustains us during the battle and gives us strength and perseverance until the very end.
  Now is the right moment; in the merit of Now will you inherit the land. Evil cannot be fought with its own methods; evil is contaminating. And the Promised Land cannot be conquered without keeping alive those very ideals to which we intend to dedicate it after we have taken possession.
  2
  It would be possible to apply this thought in general to the present world-struggle, but we will confine ourselves here to an important aspect of Jewish life on which the Midrash we have quoted may throw some light.
  The Jewish nation and our communities are confronted with innumerable tasks to-day. All the old foundations of Jewish life have disappeared. We have to rebuild Judaism, both materially and spiritually, all over the world. All over the world, I say, and not only in Poland or Germany or Rumania; here too, in this country and in America and in Australia—everywhere. There is chaos everywhere, and not only in the occupied countries of Europe. There is chaos here and in America. There is chaos in our communal organisations, chaos in our religious life, in Jewish education, in our national aspirations, chaos in the heart and the mind of the modern Jew, chaos or emptiness. Wherever you turn, there is always the same lack of principle, the same lack of knowledge and humility. But when you point in detail to the sore spots in Jewish life, when you suggest certain remedies, when you ask for something that should be done, the usual answer is: there is a war on, we must wait, first we must conquer the promised land, then we shall offer “First-Fruits”. Jews think that Judaism can hibernate for the duration. We postpone Judaism, and do not realise that from Judaism alone can we derive the strength that we need to survive and to enter the promised land.
  Most of these “there-is-a-war-on” replies, when urgent and vital tasks of Jewish life demand our attention, are but the excuses of laziness and self-indulgence, of irresponsibility and indifference. Now, if ever, is the time for deepening Jewish consciousness, for spreading Jewish knowledge, for safeguarding traditional Jewish life, and for planning and preparing the Jewish future with all our remaining spiritual and material resources. Now and not to-morrow!
  In these days of Elul let us remember the old Jewish word <i>T’shuvah</i>. What is needed is repentance and return; return to God and His word all over the world. And the very essence of repentance and return is “Now”. Return cannot be shelved. He who returns to-morrow has not returned. Repentance to be carried out in the future is no repentance. The man who returns cannot postpone the change of his ways until to-morrow. He is urged to act now. “Now” is the secret of life, it is the safeguard of to-morrow.
  
  Conclusion; Common Responsibility
  
  
  
  Section 1
  
  
  
  Section 2
  
  
  
  Section 3
  
  
  
  Section 4
  
  
  
  Section 5
  
  
  
  Section 6
  
  
  
  Section 7
  
  
  
  Section 8
  
  
  
  Section 9
  
  
  
  Section 10
  
  
  
  Section 11
  
  
  
  Section 12
  
  
  
  Section 13
  
  
  
  Section 14
  
  
  
  Section 15
  
  
  
  Section 16
  
  
  
  Section 17
  
  
  
  Section 18
  
  
  
  Section 19
  
  
  
  Section 20
  
  
  
  Section 21
  
  
  
  Section 22
  
  
  
  Section 23
  
  
  
  Section 24
  
  THING AND PERSON
  <i>At the Annual Service of Jewish ex-Service Men, January, 1943</i>
  THE story of David and Jonathan offers us one of the most noble examples of comradeship in world literature. Many circumstances in the lives of these two men seemed to conspire to keep them apart. There was first the difference of social status—Jonathan, a prince, loved by the King and the people; David, only the youngest son of a humble family in Israel, the keeper of his father’s sheep. Then later there were the opposing ambitions of the two men, which normally should have made them enemies for life. Jonathan was the crown prince, entitled to the succession to the throne; and David an unknown adventurer, emerging from the common herd and grasping at kingship in Israel. And lastly, there was the bitter hatred of Saul, his warnings to his son against David, the menace to the dynasty.
  Yet all this could not separate the two men. The spirit of comradeship in which they were united triumphed over differences of social status and personal ambitions, as well as over dynastic interest and <i>raison d’état</i>.
  I use the word “comradeship” intentionally. David and Jonathan were united in comradeship and not only in friendship. It is important to remember that David and Jonathan met on the battle-field. At the critical moment in the history of Israel, when Goliath challenged the armed might of Saul, in the battle with the Philistines the prince and the shepherd became friends for life. Comradeship, born in the hour of danger and uniting men in despite of all divisions and boundaries that would ordinarily separate them, is one of the redeeming and encouraging by-products of that evil thing war. This fine spirit which has the moral power to overcome differences of social status, of religion and race, is a surprising phenomenon in our world, which is torn with hatred and prejudice and in which people and nations find it so very difficult to understand each other.
  The comradeship of the trenches and the battle-field requires an explanation. *<i class="footnote">*Mishnah Abot V, 16.</i>Jewish tradition offers us one. The comradeship of David and Jonathan was lasting because it was “Love that did not depend on Thing”. And the same dictum continues: “Whenever Love depends on Thing, with the passing of that Thing Love too passes away; but when Love is not dependent on Thing, it will not pass away for ever.”
  What is this “Thing” on which so much stress is laid in this saying of our Masters, upon which so often Love does depend and upon which Love should not be dependent?
  The Thing is social status, business and profession, money and material success. The Thing is not the person, it is not the man. And this is not self-evident. Unfortunately, there is great need for stressing this point, for the Thing is very often mistakenly thought of as the person. In times of peace a man is judged not so much by what he is as by what he has. The Thing, be it money or social influence, position or possession—the Thing, which one holds in his grasp, determines the status of a man on earth. In our civilisation too much depends on the Thing, too little on the person. A man is clever if he has success; he is respected if he holds office; he is trusted if he possesses securities. We have too much faith in the Thing, too little in character and personality.
  It is the Thing that determines human relationships too. People associate in families, societies, and organisations—so we believe. In reality, however, it is one social status that associates with another of the same level, one group of interests with another, one bank account with another bank account of a similar weight and importance; in short—one Thing with another, but not one man with his fellow men. We have built up the power of the Thing. We believed that the more of it we held in our grip the more powerful we would be. And now the Thing dominates us. It counts more than man himself. Friendship, love, honour, and influence are to-day all dependent on the Thing, on what a man has and not on what he is. The Thing has enslaved man.
  The Thing stands between man and man, it separates nation from nation. Thanks to ingenious inventions distances are continually shrinking in our days; the distance between one man and another does not diminish. It happens very seldom that man meets man, that one heart turns to another, that one mind reveals itself to another, that person associates with person. The Thing stands between us and renders understanding between human beings almost impossible. Our associations of friendship and love are seldom lasting; they depend too much on the respect in which we hold the Thing and too little on the appreciation of the human personality.
  Comradeship, however, is different. It emerges in circumstances in which nothing else counts but the man, and in which everything depends on character and courage, reliability and faithfulness. Out there in the trenches a man is judged by what he is and not by what he has. There the power of the Thing, the false magic of material possession and material success is broken. There, especially in the hour of danger, man meets man. Out of this meeting a lasting understanding arises that may well be called: Love independent of the Thing. In comradeship the dignity of man triumphs over the enslaving power of the Thing.
  But comradeship should not be limited to service-men only. It is a message of the front line to the world. It is a programme for mankind. To-day I feel that the world is better prepared to accept the message and the programme than at any other moment in the history of man. After the last war, service-men on returning home were often disappointed. In the trenches they had learned that the standards of society are often false and meaningless. They came back with a vague conception of new values, with a deeper insight into what should really count in the world, but the world at large had little understanding for the new ideas which were born in the hours of danger at the border line between life and death. Thus comradeship had to be confined to such comparatively small organisations as the Legion. There was comradeship between ex-servicemen, there was none, or only very little of it, in the world at large. To-day, the situation is different. It is one of the things giving hope for the future that comradeship is no longer limited to ex-servicemen. This total war has pushed the front-line as far back as the bomber can reach. Wherever a bomb can drop there is the front. Men, women, and children have learned to share the dangers of the battle-field and in the hour of trial they have re-established the moral dignity of man in a great new comradeship, the comradeship of the Blitz. The comradeship of the people of London in the long, dark months of the Blitz and the same noble spirit of mutual aid in which the other communities have met the trial of fire and blast in this country are among the most encouraging portents of a better day to come for all men. The comradeship of the Blitz has restored our faith in man. It has proved that man can be good, reliable, and faithful, that he can be a comrade.
  Servicemen returning from this war will find a community that understands them, that understands the message of comradeship because having experienced the dangers of a total war it will have experienced the need for comradeship in its own body. Comradeship must become a programme for all mankind; it must become the great creative and progressive force on earth. Comradeship is a necessity of peace just as it is a necessity of war. Without it wars are lost; without it the peace will be lost too. Without it we are bound to fail. With it we shall overcome all the obstacles that stand in the way of world-wide understanding and harmony.
  Comradeship alone can turn the brotherhood of worldwide suffering of our days into the great creative brotherhood of all men and all nations, working hard but not without success for a new dawn on earth.
  
  Section 25
  
  HEAD AND HEART
  <i>Succot, 5704—October, 1943</i>
  1
  SUCCOT is called “the season of our joy”. It used to be a happy time of rejoicing. The hard work of a whole year done, the harvest brought in, the rich blessings of nature well garnered, man could relax. He could thank God with a contented and satisfied mind. But what is the season of our joy to-day? Where are the great harvests that used to make people happy? There is little “Simchah” left in a world in which Death has become the richest harvester. We have forgotten the meaning of joy. It is, however, important to realise that it is not only this war, with its small and great tragedies or the overpowering martyrdom of Israel in its wake, that has caused us to forget the meaning of joy. Long before its outbreak, true joy had left our hearts. Joy, happiness, harmony, contentment and peace left this world long before the present catastrophe. The generation of those born not many years before 1914 has never really known of these blessings of life. During the two decades between the two wars the world was in a fever. Many people worked, others were workless. Many fought for things which they could never achieve; for many there was success—in a sense. But the place of “Simchah” was vacant in the world. Where joy should be in the life of men there was emptiness, disillusionment and boredom. When people were not working and not busy chasing the mirages of their ambitions, they were not at peace, not happy, but bored. Mere entertainment took the place of joy, entertainment that one buys for money and that is an efficient means of killing time and making a man forget the void within him. A whole entertainment industry had to be produced in a world that, not knowing genuine joy, was bored.
  2
  How was it that joy vanished from the earth long before the present war?
  *<i class="footnote">*Yalkut Shimoni, Proverbs, I.</i>A passage in the Midrash may give us the clue to this problem. Commenting on the words in the Book of Job “Where is wisdom to be found?” Rabbi Elizer answered: The head is the seat of wisdom; Rabbi Joshua answered, the heart. The Midrash supports Rabbi Joshua’s view by quoting the verse: “Thou gavest my heart joy”, adding the gloss that joy is wisdom, as it is said: “Be wise, my son, and my heart will also rejoice.”
  If this is so, then the lack of joy in our world points to a lack of wisdom. How strange this is. We have been accustomed to thinking that we have been the most enlightened generation in the whole history of the human species. From the height of modern achievements we used to look down superciliously upon past generations. Be this as it may, about “Simchah” they knew much more than we do. In spite of all our “cleverness” we have banned joy from the earth.
  This is very strange indeed. When this modern period of great scientific advances opened, people were looking forward to the Golden Age of mankind, which seemed to be approaching. When the steam-engine, electricity, the Diesel motor were first discovered, they held out enchanting promises. The commodities of life would be easily, cheaply and plentifully produced. Man would no longer have to toil and to drudge from early morn till late in the evening for his piece of bread. The Machine would become his great help-mate. With its assistance the needs of all would easily be satisfied. A world of plenty was at hand. Bread for all, leisure for all, peace and contentment for all were within the grasp of man.
  Such was the promise, and quite a reasonable one too. But what has become of it?
  Those very creations of the human mind that could have become the sources of man’s happiness produced the curse under which humanity has been groaning in modern times. The Machine, instead of becoming a help-mate, turned into an enemy. Instead of securing leisure for millions, it made them workless and miserable; instead of creating a world of plenty, it has produced slums in a world of artificially manufactured scarcity. To crown all, in the present war the ingenuity of the human mind, the great achievements of science and progress, have had to be devoted to producing weapons of destruction. We are living in a world of the most stupid and the most tragic contradictions: man’s ingenuity has destroyed man’s happiness.
  Looking at an aeroplane, for instance, and examining its construction, one cannot but admire the faculties of the human mind; but taking account of the uses to which this ingenious machine is put, one is dumbfounded by human idiocy and stupidity. And this is the strangest thing of all: that at one and the same time man seems to be both very clever and very stupid.
  3
  The Midrash quoted above seems to provide the explanation of these contradictions. According to Rabbi Eliezer the source of wisdom is the head, according to Rabbi Joshua it is the heart. Both are right in a sense. There are two kinds of wisdom: that of the head and that of the heart. And this is the difference between the two: with our head or intellect we create the practical means of living, with the heart we conceive the values of life.
  Goodness, Beauty, Love, Ethics and Morals and Religion cannot be proved by mathematics or any other activity of the intellect, they must be experienced by the wisdom of the heart. Of the values of life we know with our heart, and if the heart does not know of them, our intellect is never able to create them for us. On the other hand, the practical means of living are devised by the wisdom that has its source in the head. When man first produced a piece of bread, he did it with his brains and not with his heart. When the first machine was invented, man consulted his intellect and not the wisdom of his heart. But if man wants to know what to do with the bread, so intelligently produced, whether he should eat it himself or offer a piece of it to a fellow-man who is hungry, he must ask his heart. Once one has the machine, devised by human ingenuity, and wishes to know the purpose for which to use it, one has always to turn to the heart. We use the machine for a purpose that we desire, that we wish to see achieved in life, and we desire and wish and aspire with our hearts.
  Thus, a man may be very clever and very stupid at the same time. He may possess wisdom of the head but no wisdom of the heart, or vice-versa, he may be a “fool” but with a heart filled with wisdom to overflowing.
  Modern man has been such a clever-stupid type. He has brains but hardly any wisdom of the heart. He is rich in means but miserably poor in values. He possesses enough brain to run a factory but has no heart to “run” life. The wisdom of his head has supplanted the wisdom of the heart. He has been most ingenious in creating the means that could have secured mankind a blessed life, but he has not known how to use them well. He has been stupid at heart. This has turned the promise of the “Golden Age” into a curse.
  A powerful human intellect combined with the stupidity of the heart has become the deadliest weapon of devastation the world has ever seen; it has created the most tragically idiotic caricature of man: the mechanised super-beast.
  The grin of that beast has banished joy from the life. of men.
  A new and better world must mean new and better hearts. Mankind must learn to live by the rehabilitated wisdom of the human heart. Then alone will “Simchah” re-enter the life of men.
  Joy comes of the heart that is wise.
  
  Section 26
  
  COMMON RESPONSIBILITY
  <i>Rosh Ha-Shanah, 5703—September, 1942</i>
  THREE years of a terrible war have passed over us; for three dark years we have witnessed the collapse of human civilisation. The whole framework of a world which we have already come to call the old has gone to pieces before our eyes.
  It is natural that in the midst of such confusion and chaos, under the stress and strain of terrifying events, we should pray on the Holy Days for nothing else but a speedy deliverance from the nightmare of this senseless destruction of values, of life and human happiness.
  But this is not enough. The nervous cry for help of a tortured heart is not yet a prayer. The soul of prayer is a new preparedness of the heart. And because of this, before we pray, we must think; we must try to understand.
  This Rosh Ha-Shanah, which opens a year in which will most probably fall the decisive phase of the war, let us try to find our own place as Jews in this tremendous upheaval; let us try to define the Jewish attitude to the many problems of our times—and afterwards let us pray intelligently.
  1
  For this purpose let us translate the basic conception of Rosh Ha-Shanah into the terms of our days. Rosh Ha-Shanah is the Day of Judgment, not only for us Jews, but for every living creature, for the whole of the Universe.
  The detailed description which our Rabbis have given of the procedure before the Heavenly Court contains some strange and seemingly most illogical ideas. We are told, for instance, that first all the individuals are judged, next all the nations, and lastly the whole world. This sounds curious. Once every individual being has been judged, what is the point of judging all the nations and all the world too?
  The account of the procedure given by Jewish tradition makes the reason clear.
  First human beings are judged as individuals. Their good deeds are counted, their bad deeds are counted, and judgment is passed. Then follows the turn of the nations as nations. The deeds of all the members of the nation are weighed, and if their good deeds weigh down the scale of their sins, the whole nation shall prosper; in the reverse case, however, the whole nation shall suffer. Next comes the turn of all mankind in the same way. All the deeds of all the individual beings of all nations are added together, and judgment is passed on all of them as one unit; for better or worse all share in the same sentence.
  And because of this the advice is given to all men: *<i class="footnote">*Cf. Maimonides, Yad he-Cha-zakah, Hilchot Teshuvah, iii, 4; Talmud, Kiddushin, 40 B.</i>“Every human being should always look upon himself as if his personal merit and guilt would just balance each other. And so should he look upon the world, as if it were half guilty and half free. Consequently, by committing only one sin, he may turn the scale against himself as well as the world, bringing destruction upon himself and the rest of the world: but if he performs but one good deed, he might save himself and the world, as has been said, “The whole world rests on the righteous.”
  But again you may ask: if the world is judged as a whole, what sense can there be in judging nations separately? Or if you judge nations, determining for each of them a collective destiny, what meaning can there be in judging individuals as such? And then, is such procedure just at all? Why should the group, the nation, the whole of mankind suffer because of the sins of individuals? Why should the righteous be punished as members of the nation together with the guilty? Or, on the other hand, why should the guilty benefit from the merits of the just and the righteous?
  2
  The reply to these questions usually is, not to take the detailed description of the procedure on the Day of Judgment too seriously; to regard it as for the most part a fanciful production of Jewish folklore. This is a mistake. For the first thing which we notice on looking round in the world with open eyes is that the conception fits the facts. Whether it is just or not, we are witnessing day by day how the sins of individuals do affect whole groups, how the crimes of small groups are visited on nations, or even on the whole world. The innocent, the righteous, are punished together with the guilty. And the guilty, though on much rarer occasions, often benefit from the good deeds of the righteous. The reason is that every human being has a threefold destiny—as an individual, as a member of the smaller organic or functional group to which he belongs—the family, the nation etc.—and as a member of humanity.
  A man may be a perfect “Tsadik” with nothing but good deeds to his credit, yet he cannot but share in the fate of the nation to which he belongs. And if the nation as such lives foolishly and is unable to manage its affairs competently and well, all will suffer within the nation, even the innocent; as all will benefit—even those of whom you may think that they do not deserve it—from a just and honourable administration of the group or the State.
  In the same way, people may be relatively guiltless as a nation, as the Czechs were in the critical days of 1938 and 1939, as the peoples of Norway and Denmark were in 1940, as we Jews have been guiltless <i>as a nation</i> for the last 2,000 years, and yet they cannot but be involved in the guilt of the world around them.
  We all live our own life in this threefold capacity—as individuals, as members of nations, and as members of mankind.
  Individuals may be innocent, but theirs is also the destiny of their nation. Nations may be innocent, but theirs is also the destiny of humanity.
  Our old traditions are right. We are judged as individuals, we are judged as nations, we are judged as mankind; and happiness or suffering, good or bad fortune, are the balance in hand that remains after the various destinies which are ours have found their equilibrium.
  3
  Judaism sees mankind as one organic unit, constituted by the smaller units of the individual personality, the nation, etc., whose own life purposes must be in harmony with the purpose of the whole. And if this is so, the basic principle of all human relationships, of social, national, international, universal relationships, must be common responsibility. Being a constituent part of the whole makes me responsible for the whole; it makes whatever I do affect my fellow-men, the nation, the whole of mankind. The good that I do is to the benefit of all, the evil that I perpetrate is to the disadvantage of all.
  And because of this, owing to the common responsibility in which we are bound to each other, ultimately we are all responsible for all the guilt, for all the sin in the world; just as we have a right to claim a share in all the merits of the world. In other words: National-Socialism and Fascism became possible owing to the common guilt of mankind, owing to the evil that is in man—in all of us. But, on the other hand, Roosevelt, Lease and Lend, the awe-inspiring heroism of the common people all over the world, are due to the goodness that is in man, in us, in every one of us.
  Whether I shall have a good year or not does not depend on me alone, whatever my merits may be; it depends on you too. Whether we all together in this Synagogue shall have a happy New Year does not depend on us alone, whatever our merits may be; it depends on the next congregation, the next and the next. And whether we in all our congregations shall have peace and happiness in the coming year does not depend on our congregations alone, but also on what is being preached at this very moment in that church there across the road, and the next one, and the next. And so on, until the circle has been closed and all share in the destiny of all. In a deep and secret sense, all our neighbours, all our fellow-men, all mankind, are in us, and we are in them. As every cell of the human body in a mysterious way carries the mark of the whole personality and is in its own turn represented in the personality of the whole, so is the whole of mankind mirrored in every one of us and every one of us is depicted in the canvas of the whole.
  4
  What are the practical consequences of the principle of common responsibility?
  In the life of the individual or the community or the nation it means that every one of us is the keeper of his brother. The sorrow of the brother, his pain, his hunger, his agony, his lack of happiness, his lack of freedom, his lack of friendship, his loneliness, accuse us and make us guilty.
  In the life of the nations, in international relationships common responsibility means that neutrality is immoral, that non-interference is guilt and isolation a crime; for they all represent various forms of the refusal to shoulder common responsibility, they all are artificial attempts at splitting the organic unity of mankind.
  The terrible tragedy of this war has come upon us because people and nations refused to acknowledge in their actions the principle of common responsibility; because artificial barriers were erected between man and man, between one nation and the other; because individuals, groups and nations thought of themselves as independent, sovereign, self-contained units. There is no happiness, no peace, no comfort in this world because everyone thought only of himself, of his own happiness, of his own peaceful and comfortable life; because people and nations lived in the Cain-attitude of “Am I my brother’s keeper.”
  “Yes, you are the keeper of your brother!” This is the message of Rosh Ha-shanah to-day to this tortured world, the message of the Day of Judgment on which we stand before our Heavenly Father as individuals, as nations, and as one humanity.
  “You are the keeper of your brother” is the great message of God that reaches us through the catastrophes of our days. In all the awe-inspiring events around us one truth is illustrated again and again: the interdependence of all life on earth. This war is one terrible object-lesson in the theory and practice of common responsibility. And it can have but one end: a deepened sense of unity, of brotherhood, and at least the beginnings of a New World based on the realisation of common responsibility.
  The ephemeral new lords of unhappy Europe who deny all this will be overthrown. And terrible will be the plight of those who stand in the way of the intentions and purposes of God.
  Fear not. Have faith. Have courage. God cannot be defeated. *<i class="footnote">*Cf. Maimonides, Yad he-Cha-zakah, Hilchot Teshuvah, iii, 4; Talmud, Kiddushin, 40 B.</i>“For evil-doers shall be cut off; but those that wait for God, they shall inherit the land. And yet a little while, and the wicked is no more; yea, thou shall look well at his place, and he is not. But the humble shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in the abundance of peace” (Psalms xxxvii, 9-11).