Chapter LXXII: Appendix: Annotations (2)

[52]—page 446. The loss of life among the Jews during the siege of Jerusalem was almost incredible. Josephus reckoned it at 1,100,000, a number not difficult to credit if we remember that “nearly the whole male population of Judea had been gathered together for the Passover when the city was beleaguered. The prisoners taken in the whole war were 90,000.” Had it not been for the Jews of the dispersion, the nation would have perished with the city. It was due to the compassion of Titus that a movement that might have destroyed even this remnant was stopped almost at its inception. When persecution of the Jews began at Antioch, where several Jews were put to death for an alleged plot to set fire to the city, from which it would probably have spread over the empire, Titus put an end to it by his famous order and rebuke: “The country of the Jews is destroyed, thither they can not return; it would be hard to allow them no home to retreat to; leave them in peace.”

[53]—page 459. By his Roman prenomen, Titus, is usually known Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus, the eleventh of the twelve Cæsars, Emperor from 79 to 81 A.D. He was in some respects one of the most remarkable of the Cæsars. “Educated in the imperial court, he was thoroughly trained in all elegant accomplishments: he could speak Greek fluently, and could compose verses; he was proficient in music; he could write short-hand, and could imitate handwriting so skilfully that he used to say that he might have been a most successful forger. He was very handsome, with a fine commanding expression and a vigorous frame, well trained in all the exercises of a soldier.” His long and varied military and executive experience, under the guidance of his father Vespasian and especially in the Jewish war, made him a consummate warrior and administrator. For a time, however, after he became formally associated with his father in the government, with the title of Cæsar, and practically controlled the administration during the last nine years of Vespasian’s reign, he developed “the character of being luxurious, self-indulgent, profligate, and cruel,” and seemed to have in himself the promise of being a second Nero. The scandal connecting his name with the shameless beauty Berenice, the sister of the Agrippa of the Acts of the Apostles, outraged public opinion at Rome, but ended in his sending her back to the East.

The death of Vespasian, in 79 A.D., wrought a transformation in Titus, and he became known as the “love and delight of mankind.” “He had the tact to make himself liked by all. He seems to have been thoroughly kindly and good-natured; he delighted in giving splendid presents, and his memorable saying, ‘I have lost a day,’ is said to have been uttered one evening at the dinner-table when he suddenly remembered that he had not bestowed a gift on any one that day.”

[54]—page 467. The fine portrait here drawn of Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the tenth of the Twelve Cæsars, known in history as Vespasian, is in striking contrast with that previously sketched of his son Titus. The father had little of the princely and imposing personality of the son. He was a thoroughly able soldier, while simple and frugal in his habits; in short, Tacitus says that “but for his avarice he was equal to the generals of old days.” A better judgment, however, would probably attribute the avarice, with which both Tacitus and Suetonius stigmatize him, to “an enlightened economy, which, in the disordered state of the Roman finances, was an absolute necessity.” He could be abundantly “liberal to impoverished senators and knights, to cities and towns desolated by natural calamity, and especially to men of letters and of the professor class, several of whom he pensioned with salaries of as much as £800 a year.” He was a blunt, plain soldier, without distinguished bearing, and perhaps for that very reason a greater favorite with the army and the common people. “By his own example of simplicity of life he put to shame the luxury and extravagance of the Roman nobles, and initiated in many respects a marked improvement in the general tone of society,” while devoting much thought to the spread and promotion of those intellectual tastes with which he was not personally in sympathy.

[55]—page 523. The tragic fate of Sabat is a matter of history, tho the story of the dead bride is a legendary attachment. Josephus tells us that he “was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the Temple, and began on a sudden to cry aloud: ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegroom and the bride, and a voice against this whole people.’ This was his cry as he went about by day and by night, in all the lanes of the city.” The efforts of the people and even of the Roman procurator to suppress his cry were unavailing; and when the scourge was applied, at every stroke of the whip his answer was: “Wo, wo to Jerusalem!” “This cry was the loudest at the festivals; and he continued this ditty for seven years and five months, without growing hoarse or being tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased; for as he was going round on the wall, he cried out with his utmost force, ‘Wo, wo to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!’ And just as he added at the last, ‘Wo, wo to myself also!’ there came a stone out of one of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and, as he was uttering the very same presage, he gave up the ghost.”

[56]—page 531. Josephus gives a somewhat detailed account of the final struggle and of the burning of the Temple. After sharp conflict and setting fire to the doors and outer courts of the Temple, Titus retired into the tower of Antonia, and “resolved to storm the Temple the next day, early in the morning, with his whole army, and to encamp round about the holy house.” The Jews, however, after a little, attacked the Romans, who drove back those that were quenching the fire in the inner court of the Temple, and those that guarded the holy house, and pursued them as far as the Holy Place itself. The record is that at this time, on the tenth day of the month Ab, the day on which it was formerly burned by the king of Babylon, “one of the soldiers, without staying for any orders, and without any concern or dread upon him at so great an undertaking, and being hurried on by a certain divine fury, snatched somewhat out of the materials that were on fire, and being lifted up by another soldier, he set fire to a golden window or lattice, through which there was a passage to the rooms that were round about the holy house, on the north side of it. As the flames went upward, the Jews made a great clamor, such as so mighty an affliction required, and ran together to prevent it; and now they spared not their lives any longer, nor suffered anything to restrain their force, since that holy house was perishing, for whose sake it was that kept guard about it.”

The utmost efforts of Titus to save the sacred building were utterly vain. “The legionaries either could not or would not hear; they rushed on, trampling each other down in their furious haste, or, stumbling over the crumbling ruins, perished with the enemy. Each exhorted the other, and each hurled his blazing brand into the inner part of the edifice, and then hurried to the work of carnage. The unarmed and defenseless people were slain in thousands; they lay heaped, like sacrifices, round the altar; the steps of the Temple ran with streams of blood, which washed down the bodies which lay upon it.”

JESUS OF NAZARETH FROM THE PRESENT JEWISH POINT OF VIEW

In this age and land, Jew and Christian seem destined at last to give one another the glad hand. The old spirit of misunderstanding and often of hate (which to our shame—more to the shame of the Christian than of the Jew—has now lasted nearly a score of centuries), in this light of noon, now and here, is intolerable. At the dawn of the twentieth century, antisemitism in America, even the feeblest whisper of it, is an anachorism, and an anachronism of the grossest sort.

That spirit was natural enough with the church of the early ages, for the church, nearly all of it, was simply the pagan tiger baptized, and labels changed, but not the nature of the beast. The Christ that was presented to the Jew the Jew did well to hate, for he was a Christ of barbaric cruelty, a monster who drove millions of Jews through fire and starvation, out of the world, and this entire people for ages from their homes and countries. If the Jews had not hated and spit on the very name of that Christ, they had been more or less than human.

Among this people the ties of kinship are especially strong, so that when a wrong is done to one, no other flame is needed to make the blood of all boil. With the million of fires burning to death their martyred brethren, quite naturally the air grew too thick with smoke, and their eyes too sore with weeping, for them to see any of the beauty of the Cross. Talk of the sweetness of that Christ was hideous mockery to them. I too would join with them and spit on such a Christ. But now the smoke is getting out of the air, and the Jew, like the rest of us, is beginning to see the real Jesus of the Gospels, and he also, like the rest of us when we see Him aright, can not but respect, admire, love Him—claim Him as one of his own people, saying, with Rabbi Henry Berkowitz, of Philadelphia, this Jew, Jesus, “is the greatest, noblest rabbi of them all,” and as the famous Jewish writer, Max Nordau, touchingly says, “He is one of us.”

Yes, we are living in a better land and in a better time. Here both Christian and Jew clasp the folds of the same flag and say, Our Country, and both look up to the one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and say, Our Father; and may not both, by and by, look to this Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, and say, Our Brother?

* * * * *

Within the past two years I have written to a number of representative Jews, residing in different parts of the world, asking the question, _WHAT IS THE JEWISH THOUGHT TO-DAY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH?_ The inquiry was accompanied with a copy of the letter from Dr. Kohler, which is here published as the first of the series. There are utterances in some of these published replies that may strike strangely and discordantly on orthodox Christian hearts. It will be well for all such to ponder the following letter, here given as prefatory to the other replies. It is from the pen of Dr. Singer, a well-known Jewish scholar, the originator and now the managing editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia:

A LETTER FROM ISIDORE SINGER, Ph.D.

“It has been both a privilege and a pleasure to me to examine in the original manuscript the letters which are printed on the following pages. They are all from representative Jewish scholars, theologians, historians, and philosophers, well and most favorably known in the scientific world of Europe and America. Where it has been necessary to abbreviate for lack of space, I find that the work has been done in a way that does no injustice to the writer. No one is made to say, by faulty translation, or abridgment, or otherwise, what he does not intend to say. It is my hope and most ardent desire that these utterances may greatly help to make known to the Christian world the real heart and mind of my brethren. I am glad to be permitted to add a thought or two of my own.

“I regard Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew of the Jews, one whom all Jewish people are learning to love. His teaching has been an immense service to the world in bringing Israel’s God to the knowledge of hundreds of millions of mankind.

“The great change in Jewish thought concerning Jesus of Nazareth, I can not better illustrate than by this fact:

“When I was a boy, had my father, who was a very pious man, heard the name of Jesus uttered from the pulpit of our synagog, he and every other man in the congregation would have left the building, and the rabbi would have been dismissed at once.

“Now, it is not strange, in many synagogs, to hear sermons preached eulogistic of this Jesus, and nobody thinks of protesting,—in fact, we are all glad to claim Jesus as one of our people.

“ISIDORE SINGER.”

_New York, March 25, 1901._

LETTERS FROM REPRESENTATIVE JEWS

[Omissions from letters indicated by ellipses have been made
necessary because of lack of space. In another form, at no
distant date, it is the expectation that these and similar
letters will be published in full. No letter from a Jew who
is known to be a Christian convert is here given; hence those
portions of letters that discuss the divinity of Christ have
generally been omitted.]

From KAUFMANN KOHLER Ph.D., Rabbi of Temple Beth-El, New York:

The true history of Jesus is so wrapped up in myth, the story of his life told in the gospels so replete with contradictions, that it is rather difficult for the unbiased reader to arrive at the true historical facts. Still the beautiful tales about the things that happened around the lake of Galilee show that there was a spiritual daybreak in that dark corner of Judea of which official Judaism had failed to take sufficient cognizance. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” of a new world.

It is assumed by entire Christendom that the Jews in rejecting Jesus Christ brought upon themselves everlasting doom, the inexorable fate of exile, persecution, and hatred. This view is based upon the crucifixion story in the gospel records, which, while shielding the Romans, maligns the Jews, and is incompatible with the simple facts of the Jewish law, the older Christian tradition, with common sense, and with the established character of Pontius Pilate, a very tiger in human shape. Surely the records of the trial demand a revision.

“DID THE JEWS REJECT CHRIST?” Most assuredly the weird and visionary figure of the dead and rerisen Christ, the crucified Messiah lifted up to the clouds there to become a partaker of God’s nature—a metaphysical or mythological principle of the cosmos—the Jews did reject. They would not, let it cost what it may, surrender the doctrine of the unity and spirituality of God. Jesus, the living man, the teacher and practiser of the tenderest love for God and man, the paragon of piety, humility, and self-surrender, whose very failings were born of overflowing goodness and sympathy with the afflicted, the Jews had no cause to reject. He was one of the best and truest sons of the synagog. Did he not say, “I have not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it”? What reason had the Jews for hating and persecuting him who had nothing of the rigidity of the schoolman, none of the pride of the philosopher and recluse, nor even the implacable zeal of the ancient prophet to excite the popular wrath; who came only to weep with the sorrowing, to lift up the downtrodden, to save and to heal? He was a man of the people; why should the people have raised the cry, “Crucify him!” against him whose only object in life was to bring home the message of God’s love to the humblest of his children? Nor, in fact, was he the only one among the popular preachers of the time who in unsparing language and scathing satire exposed and castigated the abuses of the ruling priesthood, the worldly Sadducees, as well as the hypocrisy and false piety of some of the Pharisean doctors of the law. His whole manner of teaching, the so-called Lord’s Prayer, the Golden Rule, the code of ethics expounded for the elect ones in the Sermon on the Mount, no less than his miraculous cures, show him to have been one of the Essenes, a popular saint.

But he was more than an ordinary teacher and healer of men. He went to the very core of religion and laid bare the depths of the human soul. As a veritable prophet, Jesus, in such striking manner, disclaimed allegiance to any of the Pharisean schools and asked for no authority but that of the living voice within, while passing judgment on the law, in order to raise life to a higher standard. He was a bold religious and social reformer, eager to regenerate Judaism. True, a large number of sayings were attributed to the dead master by his disciples which had been current in the schools. Still, the charm of true originality is felt in these utterances of his when the great realities of life, when the idea of Sabbath, the principle of purity, the value of a human soul, of woman, even of the abject sinner, are touched upon. None can read these parables and verdicts of the Nazarene and not be thrilled with the joy of a truth unspelled before. There is wonderful music in the voice which stays an angry crowd, saying, “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone!” that speaks the words, “Be like children, and you are not far from the kingdom of God!”

“DID THE JEWS REJECT CHRIST?” Jesus anticipated a reign of perfect love, but centuries of hatred came. Could the Jews, victims of Christian intolerance, look with calmness and admiration upon Jesus, in whose name all the atrocities were perpetrated? Still, the leading thinkers of Judaism willingly recognized that the founder of the Christian Church, as well as that of Islamism, was sent by divine Providence to prepare the pagan world for the Messianic kingdom of truth and righteousness.

The Jew of to-day beholds in Jesus an inspiring ideal of matchless beauty. While he lacks the element of stern justice expressed so forcibly in the law and in the Old-Testament characters, the firmness of self-assertion so necessary to the full development of manhood, all those social qualities which build up the home and society, industry and worldly progress, he is the unique exponent of the principle of redeeming love. His name as helper of the poor, as sympathizing friend of the fallen, as brother of every fellow sufferer, as lover of man and redeemer of woman, has become the inspiration, the symbol, and the watchword for the world’s greatest achievements in the field of benevolence. While continuing the work of the synagog, the Christian Church with the larger means at her disposal created those institutions of charity and redeeming love that accomplished wondrous things. The very sign of the cross has lent a new meaning, a holier pathos to suffering, sickness, and sin, so as to offer new practical solutions for the great problems of evil which fill the human heart with new joys of self-sacrificing love.

All this modern Judaism gladly acknowledges, reclaiming Jesus as one of its greatest sons. But it denies that one single man, or one church, however broad, holds the key to many-sided truth. It waits for the time when all life’s deepest mysteries will have been spelled, and to the ideals of sage and saint that of the seeker of all that is good, beautiful, and true will have been joined; when Jew and Gentile, synagog and church, will merge into the Church universal, into the great city of humanity whose name is “God is there.”

_August 23, 1899._

From MORITZ FRIEDLÄNDER, Ph.D., author of “Patristische und Talmudische Studien,” “Das Judenthum in der vorchristlichen griechischen Welt,” etc., Vienna, Austria:

… The synagog of primitive Christianity was the direct offspring of the Jewish synagog. Here, too, the center of sublime, divine service which powerfully influenced the simple and pious souls, was Moses and the prophets, hallowed, in addition, by the splendor of the invisibly ruling Messiah.

In this synagog originated a new Israel, which silently and noiselessly prospered beside “the burden of the law,” which killed the spirit of the Mosaic doctrine and prepared the ossification and dwarfing of Judaism.

This synagog was a true house of God, which made all those who entered it enthusiastic for a pure Mosaism, whose principal doctrine was the love of God and the love of man. Here every one, through teaching and learning, invigorated himself, and even the most simple-minded visitor left the house as an enthusiastic apostle. In short, it was a synagog to which, if it existed to-day, all hearts would be drawn and around which the entire enlightened Judaism of to-day would gather. And Jesus himself, who was the starting-point of the synagog of the Messianic community, who fertilized and rejuvenated it by the sublime Messianic idea, was proclaimed as divine Redeemer because of this rejuvenation, as well as because of the redemption undertaken by him, on the Palestinian soil, from the “unsupportable burdens” which the Pharisee teachers imposed on the people (Matt. xxiii. 4).

Always higher, on to unapproachableness grew his personality, including all that is beautiful, lofty, sublime, and divine, and forcing every one to adoration and self-nobilization. This divine “Son of Man” became the world-ideal, and this sublime ideal has been originated in Judaism, which will ever be remembered as having been predestined by Providence to bring forth such a creation.

_November 6, 1899._

From MORRIS JASTROW, Jr., Ph.D., Professor of Semitic Languages, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.:

From the historic point of view, Jesus is to be regarded as a direct successor of the Hebrew prophets. His teachings are synonymous with the highest spiritual aspirations of the human race. Like the prophets, he lays the chief stress upon pure conduct and moral ideas, but he goes beyond the prophets in his absolute indifference to theological speculations and religious rites. It is commonly said that the Jews rejected Jesus. They did so in the sense in which they rejected the teachings of their earlier prophets, but the question may be pertinently asked, Has Christianity accepted Jesus? Neither our social nor our political system rests upon the principles of love and charity, so prominently put forward by Jesus.

The long hoped-for reconciliation between Judaism and Christianity will come when once the teachings of Jesus shall have become the axioms of human conduct.

_November 6, 1899._

From BARON DAVID VON GÜNZBURG, St. Petersburg, Russia:

Jesus of Nazareth sought to regenerate the common people of Galilee by infusing into them the moral teaching of the academies; and to this end he stripped the religious ideal of its scientific garb. Understood perfectly by those who listened to him, his simple language, nevertheless, proved a stumbling-block for those who had not known him, but who desired, after his death, to commune with his apostles. They construed current phrases as predicating actual entities, and having thus created a certain type of Messiah, it therefore devolved upon succeeding ages, under the influence of controversy and in the ardor of religious polemics, to harmonize at once all the genuine traditions, all the ill-understood and ill-reported addresses made by him, all his noble aspirations which later generations failed to comprehend, and to bring them all into accord with the ardent faith of new converts as well as with the Bible texts relative to the Messiah.

_September 29, 1899._

From PROF. DAVID CASTELLI, author of “Storia degli Israeliti,” Florence, Italy:

… Jesus in a certain sense fulfilled in his person the prophecies of the Old Testament; they reached in him a height beyond which it is impossible to go. He was not the magnificent worldly king, since there could be no question of a worldly king in Israel again, for whom the Hebrews waited in vain; but he was the great teacher of mankind, spreading among all nations that principle of love and humanity which, until then, had remained confined within the limits of Judaism. His word, and after him that of the Apostles, who, like himself, were born and reared in Judaism, were a powerful means of carrying into effect the yet unfulfilled prophecy of the Old Testament: “The Lord will be King of all the earth; in that day God will be one and his name one.”

_September 28, 1899._

From MARCUS JASTROW, Ph.D., Rabbi Emeritus of Rodeph-Shalom Congregation, Philadelphia, Pa., Author of the “Dictionary of the Talmud,” etc.:

The thoughtful Jews of all days, and especially of modern tendency of thought, see in Jesus, as depicted in the New Testament, the exponent of a part of the ethics of Judaism, and more especially of its milder side—love and charity. The ethical sayings of Jesus reflect the conception of Judaism in his own period, as it was current among its spiritual leaders, such as Hillel, Rabbi Akiba, Ben Zoma, and others. To a heathen world merged in vice and crime, to a civilization that led the thoughtful among Romans and Greeks toward the abyss of pessimism and despair, Christianity offered the bright prospect of forgiveness and reconciliation with goodness. For the Jews it had no mission, no new gifts to offer. Its ethics appear to the modern Jew one-sided and exaggerated; the sense of justice appears to be pushed into the background in favor of an unrealizable ideal of love.

Judaism prohibits revenge and the bearing of grudge, commands the assistance of an enemy in distress, but “to love one’s enemy” appears to the modern Jew a somewhat morbid philanthropy that could never have been seriously meant. To bear indignities with patience, “to be of the insulted and not of the insulters,” is a Jewish principle, but to offer the right cheek to him who slaps you on the left, to offer the undergarment to him who takes away your cloak—no, we will not and we can not do it. Hence it is that we Jews, of our modern days, speak of Jesus with that respect which all high-minded dreamers of all ages and nations inspire, even though we can not accept all their ideas and ideals, and are mindful of the fact that it is to noble dreamers that humanity is indebted for its most precious possessions.

_September 4, 1899._

From ÉMILE LÉVY, Chief Rabbi, Bayonne, France:

Wide as the difference may be in certain essential points between Christianity and Judaism, yet the former approaches the latter through its origin, and a common basis which is love of God and man. In proclaiming the superiority of spirit over matter, and the principle of immortality of the soul and of a future life; in exhorting mankind in a touching and poetical language, ever trying to come nearer the divine example by a charitable, humble, modest, and pure life, Christ has rendered immense services to humanity and to the cause of progress and civilization, for he thus spread the Jewish doctrine, which aims at a continual improvement of the individual and of society, and contributes to the preparation of the Messianic era and of the brotherhood of the nations.

_October 24, 1899._

From HENRY BERKOWITZ, D.D., Rabbi of Rodeph Shalom Congregation, Founder and Chancellor of the Jewish Chautauqua Society, Philadelphia, Pa.:

… To me one of the saddest and most tragic facts in history is this, that Jesus, the gentlest and noblest rabbi of them all, should have become lost to his own people by reason of the conduct of those who called themselves his followers. In Jesus there is the very flowering of Judaism. What pathos, then, in the fact that his own people have been made to shun his very name; that even to-day they speak it with bated breath, because it has been made to them a symbol and a synonym of all that is unjewish, unchristian—irreligious.…

_November 1, 1899._

From JOSEPH REINACH, Paris, France, formerly Member of the Chamber of Deputies, and editor-in-chief of _La République Française_; Secretary to Gambetta, and editor of Gambetta’s works:

… The characteristic mark of Jesus’s moral is love, the purest and noblest love that ever existed—love for all human creatures, love for the poor, love for the wicked. Love is joy, and love is duty, and love is life. Humanity, since its first day and to its last day, was and will be thirsty for love, and Jesus is and will remain one of the highest, if not the highest, type of humanity, because his words, and his legend, and his poetry are and will be an eternal source of love.

_November 28, 1899._

From CESARE LOMBROSO, Professor of Psychiatry and Criminology, University of Turin, Italy:

In my eyes Jesus is one of the greatest geniuses the world has produced, but he was, like all geniuses, somewhat unbalanced, anticipating by ten centuries the emancipation of the slave, and by twenty centuries socialism and the emancipation of woman. He did not proceed by a precise, systematic demonstration, but through short sentences and by leaps and bounds, so that without the downfall of the Temple, and without the persecutions of the Christians under Nero, his work would have been lost.…

_September 29, 1899._

From MAX NORDAU, M.D., critic and philosopher, Paris, France:

… Jesus is soul of our soul, as he is flesh of our flesh. Who, then, could think of excluding him from the people of Israel? St. Peter will remain the only Jew who said of the son of David, “I know not the man.” If the Jews up to the present time have not publicly rendered homage to the sublime moral beauty of the figure of Jesus, it is because their tormentors have always persecuted, tortured, assassinated them in his name. The Jews have drawn their conclusions from the disciples as to the master, which was a wrong, a wrong pardonable in the eternal victims of the implacable, cruel hatred of those who called themselves Christians. Every time that a Jew mounted to the sources and contemplated Christ alone, without his pretended faithful, he cried, with tenderness and admiration: “Putting aside the Messianic mission, this man is ours. He honors our race and we claim him as we claim the Gospels—flowers of Jewish literature and only Jewish.…”

From ISIDORE HARRIS, M.A., Rabbi of West London Synagog of British Jews, London, England:

It seems to me that the truest view of Jesus is that which regards him as a Jewish reformer of a singularly bold type. In his days, Judaism had come to be overlaid with formalism. The mass of rabbinical laws that in the course of centuries had grown round the Torah of Israel threatened to crush out its spirit. Jesus protested against this tendency with all the energy of an enthusiast. Ceremonial can never be anything more than a means to an end—that end being the realization of the higher life of communion with God. The rabbinical doctors of the law were inclined to treat it as an end in itself, and this Jesus saw was a mistake. In taking up this position, he was simply following in the path that had already been marked out centuries before by the Hebrew prophets.

_October 17, 1899._

From JECHESKIEL CARO, Ph.D., Chief Rabbi, Lemberg, Austria:

Primitive Christianity, as Jesus of Nazareth taught and preached it, is not at all different from the ethical principles of Judaism. He himself proclaimed that he did not come to destroy the law. In morality and the love of God and man (Deut. vi. 5; Matt. xxii. 37; Lev. xvii. 18; Matt. xxii. 39) are contained the real essence and the categorical imperative of religion.…

_October 18, 1899._

From N. PORGES, Ph.D., Rabbi, Leipsic, Germany:

Even the most conscientious Jew may, without hesitation, recognize that in view of the immense effect and success of his life, Jesus has become a figure of the highest order in the history of religion, and that the noble man, the pure character, the mild heart-winning personality, come forth unmistakable even from the mythical cover which surrounds his person. The fact that Jesus was a Jew should, I think, in our eyes, rather help than hinder the acknowledgment of his high significance, and it is completely incomprehensible to me why a Jew should think and speak about Jesus otherwise than with the highest respect, although we, as Jews, repudiate the belief in his Messianic character and his divine humanity with the utmost energy, from innate conviction.

_September 28, 1899._

From the late JAMES H. HOFFMAN, Founder and first President of the Hebrew Technical Institute, New York City:

… I revere him (Jesus) for having brought home by his own life and his teachings, to the innermost hearts and souls of mankind, of all times, in every station, the eternal truths as first embodied in the Mosaic code and proclaimed in undying words by the prophets. I recognize in him the blending of the divine and human, the lofty and lowly, showing the path for the dual nature of man, by divine aspirations to gain the victory over the earthly life, tending to draw him downward—the Son of God triumphing over the child of the earth.…

_October 6, 1899._

From ADOLF BRUELL, Ph.D., Editor “_Populär-Wissenschaftliche Monatsblütter_,” Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany:

… In Christianity, as it is represented in the Gospels, the sublime doctrines of Judaism, if we subtract the dogmas, find their most beautiful expression. If we deduct the purely human additions, as well in Judaism where they take the form of observances, as in Christianity, where they crystallize themselves into dogmas, we find that there is no real antagonism between the two. And how could it be otherwise, for did not Jesus stand upon the ground of biblical and prophetical Judaism?

…

The fact that love, the highest religious principle, has not yet fully penetrated Christianity, as is shown by the awful fanaticism of the Middle Ages and the odious anti-Jewish movement of our own time, does not alter the fact that Jesus promulgated a sublime doctrine which is in full harmony with Judaism, and with which Christianity must be entirely imbued before it can be seriously called the religion of Christ.…

Judaism and Christianity both have still to go through a process of purification as to law and dogma, and only after these separating walls have fallen, will Jews and Christians, and with them all humanity, on the terrain of pure morality and the spirit of the prophets, tender one another forever the hand of brotherhood in the noble spirit of reconciliation.

Meanwhile, it would be appropriate that honest and enthusiastic men might form an alliance in order to reconcile Judaism and Christianity, and for this purpose Jesus and the prophets would be rather genial helpers than detractors.

_October 10, 1899._

From THÉODORE REINACH, Ph.D., former President of the Société des Etudes Juives, Paris, France:

Although we know very little with certainty concerning the life and teachings of Christ, we know enough of him to believe that, in morals as well as in theology, he was the heir and continuator of the old prophets of Israel. There is no necessary gap between Isaiah and Jesus, but it is the misfortune of both Christianity and Judaism that a gap has been effected by the infiltration of heathen ideas in the one, and the stubborn (only too explainable) reluctance of the other, to admit among its prophets one of its greatest sons. I consider it the duty of both enlightened Christians and Jews to endeavor to bridge over this gap.

_December 17, 1899._

From JACOB H. SCHIFF, New York City:

We Jews honor and revere Jesus of Nazareth as we do our own prophets who preceded him. By his martyrdom, his teachings have been emphasized, and these are to this day I believe often better practised by the descendants of the race he sprang from than by those who have become the followers of Christ in name, but not in spirit, else the prejudice practised by the latter against Jews would not exist.…

_September 5, 1899._

From M. LAZARUS, Ph.D., late Professor of Philosophy, University of Berlin, author of “Die Ethik des Judenthums,” Meran, Austria:

… I am of the opinion that we should endeavor with all possible zeal to obtain an exact understanding of the great personality of Jesus and to reclaim him for Judaism.

_January 24, 1901._

The following questions were sent to a number of Jewish scholars, whose answers are tabulated below:

QUESTION 1. Do you agree with Dr. Kohler that there was a spiritual daybreak on the shores of Galilee nineteen centuries ago, which was not sufficiently recognized by the official Sanhedrin at that time?

Q. 2. Do you esteem Jesus to have been one “sent of God” to reveal the Father more clearly to men?

Q. 3. Do you believe that his mission has been of advantage in making known to the Gentile world the God of Abraham?

Q. 4. Do you consider him to have been a Jewish prophet? If so, would you indicate in what order he would stand, in your judgment, respecting the earlier prophets?

Q. 5. Is there a growing interest among Jews in the study of the sayings and life of Jesus?

Q. 6. Is there a growing willingness in Judaism, as says Dr. Kohler, to reclaim Jesus as one of her greatest sons?

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

===========+==========+=========+==========+==========+=========+========= Name. | Question | Question| Question | Question |Question |Question | 1. | 2. | 3. | 4. | 5. | 6. -----------+----------+---------+----------+----------+---------+--------- I. |Not a | | |Yes. |Only |Yes, Zangwill, |daybreak, | | | |among |among English |but a | | | |the |some of novelist |burst of | | | |liberal |those and |sunshine. | | | |thinkers.|thinkers, critic. | | | | | |but not London, | | | | | |in one Eng. | | | | | |or two | | | | | |whose | | | | | |thinking | | | | | |is char- | | | | | |acterist- | | | | | |ically | | | | | |Jewish. | | | | | | I. L. |I do. |I |Christ |I do not |Yes. |Yes. Leucht, | |recognize|intended |consider | | Rabbi of | |in him, |to |Jesus a | | Touro | |one sent |popularize|Jewish | | Synagog, | |by God, |monotheism|prophet | | New | |like |among the |in the | | Orleans, | |every |heathens, |sense | | La. | |man that |and I |your | | | |uttereth |believe |question | | | |a truth, |that |indicates.| | | |is a |Christ- | | | | |messenger|ianity | | | | |of God. |has been | | | | | |a great | | | | | |help. | | | | | | | | | M. |No. |No. |He has |I do not |No. |No. Gaster, | | |been of |consider | | Chief | | |advantage |him to | | Rabbi | | |in making |have been | | of the | | |known |a Jewish | | Spanish | | |to the |prophet. | | and | | |Gentile | | | Portuguese | | |world the | | | Jews of | | |God of | | | England. | | |Abraham. | | | London. | | | | | | | | | | | | G. J. |Yes. |Yes. |Yes. |Yes, |Yes. |Yes. Emanuel, | | | |following | | Rabbi of | | | |Isaiah, | | Birmingham | | | |Jeremiah, | | Synagog, | | | |Ezekiel, | | Birmingham,| | | |Amos, and | | England. | | | |Micah. | | | | | | | | Max |I do not. |I do |I agree |I do not |There is |The Landsberg, | |esteem |with |consider |a growing|Jewish Ph.D., | |him to |Maimon- |him to |interest |prejudice Rabbi, | |have been|ides, who |have been |among all|against Rochester, | |“sent of |holds that|a Jewish |men in |the very N. Y. | |God” in |Christ- |prophet, |the study|name of | |the same |ianity |but a |of com- |Jesus | |sense as |and |Jewish |parative |has been | |hundreds |Mohammed- |teacher |religion,|caused by | |of other |anism have|and |in which |the long | |Jewish |aided in |preacher. |the Jews |perse- | |teachers.|spreading | |partici- |cution | | |the purer | |pate. |of Jews | | |God ideas.| | |carried | | | | | |on for | | | | | |his sake. | | | | | | Moïse |Yes, but |In spite |Yes, with-|Jesus may |The |See Schwab, |Jesus, |of the |out doubt;|well be, |enlight- |answer Librarian |professing|sympathy |his |as Jewish |ened Jews|to at Biblio- |doctrines |of the |religious |prophet, |regard |Question thèque |contrary |Jew for |mission |the equal |Jesus as |5. Nationale, |to the |the |has |even of |an illus-| translator |Sanhedrin,|person- |become the|Isaiah, |trious | into |whose |ality of |greatest |and |co-relig-| French of |authority |Jesus, |blessing |placed |ionist | the Talmud |he |he, |for the |above |and a | Yerushalmi,|recognized|worship- |entire |those |disciple | Paris, |(Matt. |ing God |world. |other |of the | France. |xxiii. 2) |alone, | |Jewish |rabbis; | |was |refuses | |prophets |and take | |subject |to see in| |whose |consequ- | |to the |Jesus a | |spiritual |ently an | |severity |son of | |horizon |interest | |of the |God, or | |is not so |in the | |Mosaic |His envoy| |broad. |study of | |law |in a | | |his life | |(Deut. |super- | | |and his | |xvii. |natural | | |influence| |8-14). |sense. | | |on the | | | | | |world. | -----------+----------+---------+----------+----------+---------+---------

From SIMON WOLF, LL.D., former Consul of the United States to Egypt, Vice-President of Order B’ne B’rith, Washington, D. C.:

I have not had the time nor the desire to investigate the alleged divinity of the Christian Savior. I have, however, recognized the great influence his character and labors have exercised throughout the world. If properly understood and if properly construed, I have no doubt whatsoever that what he aimed at and labored for would prove of great benefit to every human being. I look upon him, in short, as a great teacher and reformer, one who aimed at the uplifting of suffering humanity, whose every motive was kindness, mercy, charity, and justice, and if his wise teaching and example have not always been followed, the blame should not be his, but rather those who have claimed to be his followers. I have the very highest regard for him as a man who reflects in his sayings the divine Spirit, which after all is nothing more or less than a reflex of the Jewish ethics in which he was so well grounded.

_October 9, 1899._

From H. WEINSTOCK, Sacramento, Cal. Extract from a letter to Dr. K. Kohler:

[The letter urges reasons why the life and sayings of Jesus
should be taught in Jewish Sabbath-schools. Dr. Kohler approves
of the suggestion.]

With the growing enlightenment and the broadening atmosphere under which the modern Jew lives, the progressive Jew looks upon the Nazarene as one of Israel’s great teachers, who has a potent influence on civilization, whose words and deeds have left an undying imprint upon the human mind, and have done heroic work toward universalizing the God of Israel and the Bible. This change of sentiment toward Jesus is largely due to the intelligent and progressive preaching of our modern rabbis, who seem to appreciate the glory Jesus has shed upon the Jewish name, and the splendid work he did in broadening the influence of the Jewish teachings. But, despite all this, the fact remains, that, so far as I know, not one Jewish Sabbath-school in the land teaches a single word concerning Jesus of Nazareth.

To maintain a continued silence in the Jewish Sabbath-school on Jesus would seem a grave error.…

The influence of “Jesus the Christ” may be diminishing in the rational world, but the influence of “Jesus the Man” is increasing daily the world over, and no Jewish education can be complete that does not embody within it a comprehensive knowledge of Jesus the Jew, his life, his teachings, and the causes which led to his death.…

It would seem to be in the highest interest of the modern Jew and Judaism that the curriculum of at least every reform Jewish Sabbath-school should, from a purely historical standpoint, embrace a simple yet comprehensible history of the life of Jesus, and its wonderful moral and religious influence, in order that the rising Jews may be able to appreciate better the powerful influence Judaic teachings and the Bible have had upon civilization, and the exalted place given by the world to one of their teachers and brethren, who lived a purely Jewish life and taught only Jewish precepts.…

_September 26, 1899._

From GUSTAV GOTTHEIL, Ph.D., Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanu-El, New York:

The keynote of prophetic religion of the Jewish prophets was holiness of life and purity of heart. Love and mercy shown by men, one to another, make up the acceptable worship of the Holy One of Israel. To place the Master of Nazareth by their side can surely be no dishonor to him, nor can it dim the luster of his name. If he has added to their spiritual bequests new jewels of religious truth, and spoken words which are words of life, because they touch the deepest springs of the human heart, why should we Jews not glory in him? Show us the man, help us to understand his mind, draw from his face the thick veil behind which his personality has been buried for the Jewish life by the heartless zeal of his so-called followers, and you will find the Jewish heart as responsive to truth and light and love as that of all other nations. The question whether Jesus suffered martyrdom solely for his new teachings or for other causes, we will not discuss. The crown of thorns on his head makes him only the more our brother. For to this day it is borne by his people. Were he alive to-day, who, think you, would be nearer his heart—the persecuted or the persecutors?

_October 24, 1899._

From EMANUEL WEILL, Rabbi of the Portuguese Congregation, Paris, France:

I do not know the secret of God, but I believe that Jesus and Christianity were providential means, useful to the Deity in guiding all men gradually, and by an effort, keeping pace with the mental state of the majority of men from paganism up to the pure and true idea of the divinity.

The error—one might almost say a fatal one—of Christianity is to believe that it is an end in itself, whereas it is but a step, and as error often generates evil, Christianity in its evolution toward its end has effected side by side much good as well as much harm.

We Jews await the Christians on God’s appointed day, when, all humanity having become more enlightened, will rally to the spiritualistic principle which is that of Judaism, viz.: that of the unity and the perfect spirituality of God, in opposition to any incarnation and to any trinitarian idea whatever.

Meanwhile, I think that Jews and Christians, divided on the identification of Jesus with God, but both in accord in acknowledging this God the same for all, consider themselves children of the same Father, and thus love one another with brotherly love.

_October 11, 1899._

From M. KAYSERLING, Ph.D., Rabbi, Budapest, Hungary:

The Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah and Redeemer, but they recognized him as “the extraordinary man” who first showed to the heathen world the way to natural religion and moral perfection. “The founder of Christianity,” says the pious and scholarly Jacob Emden of Altona, who lived about the middle of the last century, “was a twofold benefactor to the world, since, on the one hand, he strengthened with all his might the doctrine of Moses and insisted upon its eternal validity; and, on the other hand, drew heathens away from idolatry and obligated them to observe the seven Noachian commandments to which he added moral teachings. The alliance of the nations in our time can be regarded as an alliance to the glory of God, whose aim is to proclaim over all the world that there is only one God who is Master in heaven and on earth; who rewards the good and punishes the evil.”

This is the opinion of the immense majority of the Jews of our epoch about Jesus of Nazareth, “the extraordinary man.” We all look forward to that sublime end when all human beings, prompted by the love of fellow men, shall recognize God and worship Him in full harmony and glory as the one only God.

_November 20, 1899._

From DAVID PHILIPSON, D.D., Professor in Hebrew Union College, Rabbi of Mound Street Temple, Cincinnati, Ohio:

There is no backwardness nor hesitancy on the part of modern Jewish thought in acknowledging the greatness of the teacher of Nazareth, the sweetness of his character, the power of his genius. But, as a matter of course, we accord him no exceptional position as the flower of humanity, the special incarnation of the Divinity. Judaism holds that every man is the son of God. Jesus was a Jew of the Jews. The orthodox Christianity of to-day he would scarcely recognize, as its chief dogmas were unknown to him.

_September 19, 1899._

From EMIL G. HIRSCH, Ph.D., LL.D., L.H.D., Rabbi of Sinai Congregation, Professor of Rabbinical Literature in Chicago University, Chicago, Ill.:

… For me Jesus is an historical reality. To understand his work and correctly to value his mission, one must bear in mind his own time. Galilean as he was, he must have grown up under influences making for an intense Jewish patriotism.

… Under close analysis, his precepts will be found to contain nothing that was new. There is scarce an expression credited to him but has its analogon in the well-known sayings of the rabbis. He did not pretend to found a new religion. The doctrines he developed were the familiar truths of Israel’s prophetic monotheism. Nor did his ethical proclamation sound a note before unknown in the household of the synagogue or in the schools. He was in method a wonderfully gifted Haggadist. His originality lies in the striking form which he understood to give to the old vitalities of his ancestral religion. He moved the heart of the people.

… The Jews of every shade of religious belief do not regard Jesus in the light of Paul’s theology. But the gospel Jesus, the Jesus who teaches so superbly the principles of Jewish ethics, is revered by all the liberal expounders of Judaism. His words are studied; the New Testament forms a part of Jewish literature. Among the great preceptors that have worded the truths of which Judaism is the historical guardian, none, in our estimation and esteem, takes precedence of the rabbi of Nazareth. To impute to us suspicious sentiments concerning him does us gross injustice. We know him to be among our greatest and purest.

_January 26, 1901._

MEMORANDUM JOTTINGS

Here are some of the jottings which I find on my memorandum pad, suggested by the reading of these Jewish letters—letters which it would be difficult to read without feeling that at last Jew and Christian, after a horrible nightmare of misunderstandings centuries long, are coming to see that after all they are first cousins, if not actually brothers.

1. Right nobly is it in some of these Jewish writers to say that Jesus is not to be blamed for those awful persecutions committed for ages in His name, and in reverse of His teachings. As He foretold, many were called by His name whom He knew not, and who knew not Him—false prophets who came in sheep’s clothing, but were, within, ravening wolves. Sometimes these wolves tore the Jews, sometimes they tore one another, and sometimes they tore the real Christians. But we live, all of us, in a better time. The glowing sky is not sunset, but is sunrise—sunrise of a glorious day that is to reveal a far wider brotherhood than the world ever heretofore has known.

2. Jewish friends, “Let the dead past bury its dead.” All the world is bound to realize sooner or later that your history has been of inestimable advantage to the world. Turn your faces to that rapidly advancing future. The divine reason will appear for all the sorrows of the past ages, for all the persecutions, misapprehensions, including the errors into which you and we have fallen—largely _because_ of these, not in spite of them, the Jewish race will arise a purified flame.