Chapter I: HAVE produced everything capable of justifying the expectations with (1)

which many Jews look forward to the future peace congress. But I do not notice that the Jewish people keep in view the lessons taught by the historic example of 1878. Beaconsfield and Waddington did not plead for the Roumanian Jews at the Berlin Congress from impulses of their own or in consequence of a sudden inspiration from on high. The Paris Alliance Israelite Universelle, the London Anglo-Jewish Association, the Berlin Verband der deutschen Juden, had done serious and efficient preparatory work, memorialized their several governments, informed them of the facts, solicited their intervention. It was due to their efforts that the position of the Roumanian Jews came up for consideration at the Berlin Congress. They showed the way the Jewish people must follow if they wish to obtain anything of governments in congress. What are the Jewish people waiting for in order to act now as their fathers acted thirty-seven years ago?

The war is raging, in a hundred battlefields uncounted brave men shed their blood for the future of their nation, Jewish soldiers fight and fall side by side with their non-Jewish countrymen and comrades, but their heroic sacrifices are utterly useless for their own people. In every country, even in Russia, the military excellence, the patriotism, the contempt of danger and death of the Jewish soldiers, will be rewarded more or less lavishly and liberally with distinctions and preferment, but experience teaches us that their glorious conduct is forgotten very soon after the war by everybody but themselves and their brethren, and that it certainly does not change in the least the status of the Jewish people among the nations. At any rate the consideration of the merits and military virtues of the Jewish soldiers will not by itself stimulate to action the diplomatists at the peace congress, unless they are insistently recalled to their memory. All this requires preparation and arrangements, of which as yet there is scarcely any trace to be seen.

_Who Could Accept Palestine for the Jews?_

THERE is another point to which attention must be drawn. Let us admit the most favorable case: the congress will really open up Palestine to the Jewish people for colonization with self-government and autonomous local institutions. To whom will it be in a position to make such a concession? To whom will it deliver Palestine? The Jewish people is a concept, but it is not a political and administrative individuality, it is not a body with a head and vital organs. There is actually not one man who could present himself to the governments assembled in congress, receive Palestine from their hands, and offer them the guarantee that he will lead into the land of their ancestors those Jews that yearn for a new home and national life on an historic soil, and that he will undertake the implanting of modern culture, the maintaining of order, and the economic development of the country. An offer of the congress would fall flat, nobody having the moral right and the material capacity to accept it in the name and in behalf of the Jewish people.

_Let Dreaming Give Way to Organizing! The Task for American Jewry_

ALL this points to the necessity of an adequate preparation for coming events. The Messianic dream does not suffice. Mere wishes and hopes are vain. We must work. We must organize ourselves without further loss of time. We must create a body with men of authority at its head, and the living forces of the Jewish people, or at least a considerable portion of them, at its back. The forces and the men do exist. They have only to be gathered, united and grouped.

Who is to do this organizing work? My reply is unhesitating: American Jewry. I should be happy to say: here is a task for the Zionists' organization which exists, which lives, which is prepared for work of this kind, and which has to consider its carrying out as its natural function; but I shrink back from giving this near-lying answer. Many pre-eminent and influential Jews whose good Jewish sentiments no one has a right to doubt, persist in considering Zionism as a party tendency against which they raise objections. Now the representations of the Jewish people before the governments must not be a party affair, but ought to be the cause of the entire people and must embrace all its parts. The invitation must therefore be issued by personalities who repel nobody at the outset by their pronounced party color. Moreover, these personalities must necessarily belong to a neutral country, so as to leave no room for the argument that according to the political definition of the hour they are enemies and to co-operate with them would mean disloyalty to one's own country. Only in the case, which I hope will not be realized, of the United States also precipitating itself into the whirlpool of the war, would they be bound to transfer their initiative to the Swiss or the Dutch Jewry. The first labor of the initiators should consist in inviting the existing Jewish organizations of all countries to have themselves represented by a delegation on a permanent board or committee. It would be a matter of regret if they refused, but this ought by no means to be a reason for discouragement nor for discontinuing further endeavors. In this case the initiators would simply have to do fundamental work and try to fall back on elements that at present stand outside, or intentionally keep aloof from, existing organizations. It would be the business of the permanent board to secure financial co-operation that could be called upon under given circumstances, and to cause Jews of standing in every great country to approach their government, to submit to it in time the aspirations of the Jewish people, and to procure its approval and sympathy for them.

"_Not an Instant to Lose if We Wish to Prepare_"

OUT of the peace which must follow the present horrible war, a new Europe, a new world will be born. It depends on us whether in this new world there is to be a place, "a place in the sun," for the Jewish people. We have not an instant to lose if we wish to prepare for the grand opportunity. Should we miss this occasion we should have to resign all our national hopes, I am afraid, for a very long time, if not for ever. We may, of course, continue to dream our Messianic dream, but this will then ever remain a dream till the dreamer disappears and his dream with him.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] Original and translation read at a dinner of the Harvard Menorah Society.

What Judaism Is Not

BY MORDECAI M. KAPLAN

_"Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing
is so useless as a general maxim."_

_Macaulay, in Essay on "Machiavelli."_

MOST of the pain, which according to Koheleth comes with the increase of knowledge, is in the unlearning of the old rather than in the learning of the new. Once an idea has become imbedded in the mind, it cannot be removed without causing a mental upheaval. Blessed are the young to whom unlearning is easy, or who have not much to unlearn. Whether our Jewish young men know much or little about Judaism, they are certain, as a rule, to have formed notions about it of which they must be disabused, if Judaism is to constitute an important factor in their lives. Strange to say, they have obtained these notions not from sources hostile to Judaism, but on the contrary from sources distinctly intended to inculcate both a love and an understanding of the Jewish religion,--such as catechisms and text-books used in our religious schools, and articles in encyclopedias meant for the enlightenment of the general public. The view of Judaism that one gets in this manner is not only a distorted one, but it has the effect of bringing all further reflection to a standstill. It lands one in a blind alley. The conclusion which a person generally arrives at when he consults these sources for information about the Jewish religion is that, whatever else Judaism might be, it certainly offers no field for the exercise of deep insight or broad vision. This largely accounts for the manifest sterility and uncreativeness of present-day Judaism. To give new impetus to fruitful and creative thinking in Jewish life, it is necessary, in the first place, to counteract the paralyzing spell of these routine and conventional interpretations of Judaism.

To be concrete, let us take a typical instance of the kind of instruction that has been in vogue for more than a century. Here are a few sentences from the article on Judaism in Hastings' _Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics_: "Judaism may be defined as the strictest form of monotheistic belief; but it is something more than a bare mental belief. It is the effect which such a belief, with all its logical consequences, exerts on life, that is to say, on thought and conduct. . . . A formal and precise definition of Judaism is a matter of some difficulty, because it raises the question, What is the absolute and irreducible minimum of conformity? . . . Judaism denounces idolatry and polytheism. It believes in a universal God, but it is not exclusive. It believes that this world is good, and that man is capable of perfection. He possesses free will, and is responsible for his actions. Judaism rejects any mediator and any cosmic force for evil. Man is free. He is not subject to Satan; nor are his material gifts of life inherently bad. Wealth might be a blessing as well as a curse," etc., etc.

In an encyclopedia we do not expect to find original or striking views. It is not the particular article from which this excerpt is taken that fault is found with. That article is selected simply as representative of the kind of information that is expected to help one grasp the meaning of Judaism. It is typical of the baffling glibness with which Jewish teachers and preachers usually talk about the Jewish religion. One who reads or listens to such statements finds that somehow or other little has been added to his stock of knowledge about Judaism. He experiences how irritating words can be when they either hide thought or betray its absence.

_Mistaking the Shadow for the Thing Itself_

IN the instance quoted, it is both amusing and painful to follow the author's vacillating description of Judaism. At first Judaism is a form of belief. Then it becomes the effect of that belief upon thought and conduct. From that it evolves into some irreducible minimum of conformity, if we can only get hold of it. This being difficult, it gets to be a series of colorless platitudes. Such a definition calls up the image of a streamlet, now leaping over rocks and boulders, now meandering upon level ground, and finally losing itself in the marshes. The fitfulness and inconsistency of the formulation, the picking up of the different threads of thought without following out any one of them to its conclusion, are characteristic of this type of definitions. They are as devoid of vitality as a long drawn-out yawn, and their want of logic is exasperating. The merest tyro can see that one can profess the principles they embody without being a Jew. There are many sects that would heartily subscribe to all of them. Universalists, Deists, Theists, Unitarians, and even Ethical Culturists hold these doctrines. As matters stand at present, these sects engage more actively in spreading them than we do.

What is fundamentally wrong with the above definition and with the entire class of formulations of which it is an instance? The tendency to mistake the shadow of a thing for the thing itself. The main cause for misapprehending the true character of Judaism is the proneness to regard it merely as a form of truth, or, at best, as the effect of a truth upon thought and conduct, and to overlook entirely the fact that it is a living reality, a very strand of the primal moving forces of the world. "Judaism is the truest form of truth," says one writer. "Judaism gives, to truth the most truthful shape," says another. Now and then they speak of it as a "form" of life, but it turns out to be only a lip service, or a homiletical phrase. They fail to follow up the clue which is more than once suggested to them by the difficulty of expounding Judaism as a form of truth. That being a Jew has always involved conforming to certain principles and modes of life is a truism. But these principles or observances by themselves constitute only the outward expression of Judaism. The mathematical formula which states the law of gravitation is not the same as the force of gravitation itself. It is conceivable that further experimentation might make it necessary to qualify the mathematical formula. But the force of gravitation will ever be the same as it has been. The change from looking upon Judaism as a form of truth to that of regarding it as of the very substance of reality calls for a complete transformation in our mode of thinking, or what has been termed "a psychological change of front." We must break completely with the habit of identifying the whole of the Jewish religion with merely certain beliefs and duties, while ignoring completely the living energy which has operated to produce them. They are only the static residue of something that is essentially dynamic.

_The Jewish Aversion to Creeds and Formulas_

THE change in attitude which is here advocated is not a departure from all that has gone before in Jewish life. If it were that, Judaism could not possibly survive under it. The fact is that we are only bringing to the fore and translating into modern phraseology an attitude that in one form or another has always asserted itself in Judaism. Simultaneously with the tendency to compress Judaism within certain formulas, there has always shown itself a strong aversion to gathering Judaism within creeds and minima of conformity. To-day that aversion, which has hitherto remained a matter of feeling and intuition, can make itself articulate by availing itself of the results of recent research in the fields of religion. It need no longer entertain the fear of being charged with spiritual anarchy. Discountenancing dogmas in Judaism is not synonymous with intellectual libertinism. It is rather a protest against shallowness and superficiality, much like the chagrin of the artist at having his knowledge of drawing praised and the soul of the picture missed.

We can give in this connection a few cursory examples of the anti-summarizing tendency. The Torah itself, in one instance, seems to set out with a view of reducing Judaism to a minimum, but scarcely finds itself able to do so. "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, and to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of thy Lord and the statutes, which I command thee this day, for thine own good?" "Is this a small matter?" asks the Talmud, in evident surprise at the hugeness of the program. When the would-be proselyte came to Shammai and requested him to sum up the entire Torah in one principle, he received no better treatment than he deserved, when he was made to take to his heels. That Hillel did not rebuff him and gave him the principle, "What is hateful to thee do not do unto thy neighbor," proves that Hillel knew how to be patient and tactful, but not that the Talmud looks upon that summary, or any other, as expressive of the essence of Judaism. The same applies to religious practices, concerning which the Mishnah announces the maxim that it is not for us to estimate which are more important than others. We are told that the custom obtained at one time of having the Ten Commandments read as part of the daily service; but that as soon as it gave rise to the impression that the Ten Commandments were more essential than the rest of the Torah, it was discontinued. It is true that Philo reduces the teachings of Judaism to five essential doctrines, but that was because Judaism to Philo was Platonism divinely revealed.

_As Shown by Judah Ha-Levi_

THE movement to formulate the fundamental teachings of Judaism first gained headway at the beginning of the eleventh century with the Karaites, whose entire conception of Judaism was such as to render their sect hopelessly stagnant and doomed to dwindle. Still, even they would never have thought of emphasizing certain dogmas as indispensable, had they not discerned in the teachings of Mohammedanism a dangerous challenge to Judaism. Thus the dogma-making tendency in Judaism arose during the Middle Ages not as an indigenous product but as a retort to the dominant religions of the time. What might be called the application of the synoptic method to the Jewish religion remained confined mostly to the part of Jewry which came, directly or indirectly, under the influence of Aristotelian intellectualism.

To this trend Judah Ha-Levi (1085-1140) stands out as a notable exception. In him the disapproval of having Judaism subsumed under formulas of a philosophic stamp comes again to the surface. His being a poet even more than a philosopher enabled him to get a better insight into the inwardness of Judaism than that obtained by the intellectualists with their analytic scalpels. This is apparent in his well-known "Al-Khazari." The story goes that the Khazar king, after consulting a philosopher, a Mohammedan, and a Christian as to what he should believe and do, finally turned to a Jewish rabbi. When the king asked him about the Jewish religion, the rabbi replied, "I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who led the Children of Israel out of Egypt, who fed them in the desert, and gave them the land. . . . Our belief is comprised in the Torah, a very large domain." Upon hearing this, the king grew indignant, and said to the rabbi, "Shouldst thou, O Jew, not have said that thou believest in the Creator of the world, its Governor and Guide, and in Him who created and keeps thee, and such attributes which serve as evidence for every believer?" But the rabbi persists in his mode of stating Judaism. He parries successfully the king's efforts to draw out of him some definition of Judaism in terms of speculative theology. The king in time becomes a convert to Judaism, and it is only then, according to Judah Ha-Levi, that he succeeds in getting the rabbi to teach him concerning the attributes of God, as if to imply that one has first to be a Jew before indulging in any abstract or philosophic study of Judaism. The keynote of Ha-Levi's thought is that the essence of Judaism is not merely to give assent to any general belief, but to belong to Israel and share in its experiences.

_By Maimonides and by Abravanel_

EVEN Maimonides (1135-1204), who is usually represented as the chief sponsor of the systematizing and speculative tendency in Judaism, is far from having attached as much significance to the Creed he formulated as the fact of its presence in the prayer book might indicate. He himself strongly deprecates attaching more importance to one part of the Torah than to another. "The Ten Commandments and the Shema in the Torah," he says in the very same chapter of his commentary on the Mishnah which contains the Creed, "are no holier than any of the genealogies that are found in it." Albo (1380-1444) reduces the essence of Judaism to three, yet inconsistently declares that he who denies other articles of faith which are of minor importance is no less a heretic than he who denies any of the essential ones. In fact, he admits that there are as many articles of faith as commandments in the Torah.

Abravanel (1437-1508), though an admirer of scholasticism, and practically the last of the line of Jewish Aristotelians, considers the thirteen Articles of Maimonides' Creed gratuitous, and as not representative of the maturer views of Maimonides. His opinion is that they properly belonged to the commentary on the Mishnah, which was the work of his youth; and that as he ripened intellectually, he changed his mind about their value. We miss them in the Code and in the "Guide to the Perplexed," where we should most of all have expected to find them. In the same connection, Abravanel adds that the fashion of laying down creeds as fundamental in Judaism owes its origin to the method employed in the secular studies which always started with certain indisputable axioms.

The same resistance to the effort to extract Judaism from a few source principles is encountered in Jewish mysticism. Whatever we may think of the particular form which mysticism took on in the Jewish religion, we cannot but regard it as the outbreak of a longing that forms a part of all vital religion. We have good reason, therefore, to treat with respect its opinion of the intellectualizing process of Jewish philosophy. Although it was also addicted to speculative categories and developed a theosophy instead of a theology, it approached Judaism from an entirely different angle. Being impressionistic in its trend, it was bound to look elsewhere than to abstract concepts for the core of Judaism. To put Judaism into the form of a creed appeared to the mystics like combining pure gold with a baser metal, in order to mint it for circulation.

_And More Recently by Mendelssohn_

IN modern times the anti-dogmatizing tendency found a vigorous exponent in Mendelssohn. Yet, somehow or other, he has been singled out for attack, as though he had advocated a dry formalism, unredeemed by any inner principle or inspiration. He is charged with having been under the influence of the shallow deism of the English philosophers. The truth is that Mendelssohn only repeats in his way what Judah Ha-Levi had taught before him. He distinctly emphasizes the belief in the existence of God, in providence and in retribution as the sine qua non of Judaism, but he is clear-minded enough to realize that they constitute what he calls "the universal religion of mankind," and not Judaism.

Mendelssohn did not succeed in developing a constructive view of Judaism, whereby it might be enabled to withstand the shock of modernism; nevertheless, he does not deserve the treatment accorded him because of his alleged attitude towards creeds. His position as to the relation of creeds to Judaism is the only tenable one. He maintains that creeds can only be of two kinds; either they oppose reason, and should therefore find no place in Judaism, or are so self-evident that they are not confined to Judaism. This does not mean that to be a Jew one can believe whatever he likes, or not believe at all. It does not mean that Judaism only demands outward conformity. Mendelssohn was aware that certain "Hobot ha-Lebabot," Duties of the Heart, are indispensable to Judaism. But he refused to make of Judaism a mutilated philosophy.

_Judaism Needs Working Principles--Not Abstract Dogmas_

NO sphere of life can be maintained intelligently without some basic principles, particularly so exalted a sphere as religion. Who counts upon any art attaining a high degree of development by mere rule of thumb? Is anything so characteristic of modern life as emphasis upon the mutual interrelation of theory and practice? All our strivings to rehabilitate Judaism are bound to prove futile unless they are made to center about some definite conception of its aims and methods. We need principles, yea dogmas, in Judaism as we need working hypotheses in any great undertaking. But dogmas, in the sense of abstract principles, regarded as immutable, are both superfluous and dangerous. If such dogmas are nothing more than the common denominator of all that has been identified with Judaism in the course of its history, they are sure to be banal and colorless. If they are to be fixed and unalterable, they are bound in time to clash with reason and experience, and to sap the religion of its vitality. Judaism needs principles that can help it to withstand danger, that can give it a lease upon life. This is the criterion to be applied to any articulate conception of Judaism. Can the principles which the text-books on Judaism declare to be fundamental render this service? The reply is an unequivocal No. Hence they are worse than useless.

But we cannot afford to stop at this point. Knowing what Judaism is not, is only half-knowledge, and therefore quite dangerous. We must apply ourselves anew to the task of pondering over the problem of Judaism. We may indulge to our heart's content in lauding the past when one could be a Jew without troubling his head about the question, "What is Judaism?" We may sigh in regret for those days when a Jew upon being asked about his religion was able to reply, "I have no religion; I am a Jew." The danger of the entire economy of the Jewish soul going to pieces is too imminent to permit us to lull ourselves into that blissful unconsciousness, the praises of which Carlyle sang quite consciously. We are treading the narrow ledge of a precipice. Men like Zollschan, Ruppin, and Theilhaber have pointed out the awful chasm that threatens to engulf us. It requires not a little courage to maintain our nerve and avoid being seized with the vertigo. But courage alone is not enough. We must take into account the narrowness of the path and tread over it warily.

_We Must Face the Real Problem of Judaism_

WE Jews must do some very hard thinking, of a kind, perhaps, that we have not been called upon to do before. That task dare not be shirked. We must not give in to that tendency which breaks out whenever we have something very difficult to do, of turning to anything except that which we know demands peremptory attention. A task that is thus neglected revenges itself by haunting us and upsetting whatever we undertake. Instead of giving to the problem of Judaism the careful deliberation that it requires, we get busy with a thousand and one things, whereby we hope to escape the need of concentrated attention. We have become fussy and fidgety. We are divided into committees and sub-committees. In place of clearness of thought we have a confusion of tongues. Our case illustrates the truth which Pascal enunciated, that most of the evils in the world can be traced to the inability of a person to sit in his room and think.

Without deprecating any of the undertakings to bring order out of the social chaos in Jewish life, we must place at the present time chief emphasis upon the serious consideration of our inner problem, the problem of the Jewish soul and of the Jewish spirit, the problem of Judaism. We may well envy the thousands of soldiers on the battlefields of Europe to whom it is a joy to meet death for the sake of their respective flags. Each of them has a cause to die for. Most of us, by reason of our Jewish descent, find life, particularly in the higher sense of the word, to be a keener struggle for existence than our neighbors do. Yet it would not be half so wearing if our difficulties were consecrated by an inspiring cause or by a thrilling loyalty. Why need we be poverty-stricken in spirit, bereft of everything that makes struggle sweet and suffering endurable? We must put the very question, What is Judaism? in a new way and in a different spirit. We must have the definite purpose in mind, of so understanding it as to know what to do next, and to strive for that vigorously, so as not to drift like helpless flotsam and jetsam. We need strong beliefs which, as Bagehot puts it, win strong men, and then make them stronger.

_Judaism Must Speak to Us in the Language of Today_

IN the Talmud we find the principle enunciated that the Torah adopted the style of language that men were wont to use. A condition indispensable to a religion being an active force in human life is that it speak to men in terms of their own experience. Judaism, to be significant to modern man or woman, can no longer afford to speak in the language of theology. Psychology and social science, history and human experience, have revealed new worlds in the domain of the spirit. The language of theology might have a certain quaintness and charm to the ears of those to whom religion is a kind of dreamy romanticism. But to those who want to find in Judaism a way of life and a higher ambition, it must address itself in the language of concrete and verifiable experience.

The ideas in which Judaism was wont to spell itself out in the past are no longer at home in the Weltanschauung of the modern man. What prevented the Reform movement from becoming a real reformation and a vitalization of Judaism was that it sought to adjust Judaism to a Weltanschauung which had already begun to grow obsolete. We have to reckon with all that has been learned in the meantime concerning human society and the place of religion in it. When one comes to a strange land, and has with him only the coin of his native country, he must calculate in terms of the currency of the land he is in, if he wants to know whether or not he has enough to live on. Can we Jews afford to live spiritually upon our heritage? That can only be answered if we learn what that heritage is equivalent to in the current mental coin of the modern man. If we do not wish to be cut off from the stream of living thought, if we do not want to be spiritually starved, we Jews must know not so much what Judaism meant twenty centuries ago, nor even a century ago, but what it is to mean to us of today.

EDITORS' NOTE.--_In articles to follow, Professor
Kaplan will give his conception of "What Judaism Is."_

The Jewish Student in Our Universities

_A Menorah Prize Essay_

BY MORRIS J. ESCOLL

THE remarkable adaptability of the Jew to his environment has been at once his strength and his weakness. His strength, in that it provided a variable cloak to shelter him in storm on the one hand,--on the other, to deck him seasonably, as it were, for the onward journey, when days were fair; his weakness, in that it has often led him to forget that the cloak was but raiment;--"and is not the body more than raiment?" Of strength in storm we have had example enough for twenty centuries--such example as is unique in history; of what is more rare, strength in days of fair weather, we are to expect a supreme example today, and in America, in the American Universities let us say, where the cloak of adaptability is most free and seasonable--a supreme example of strength, or of weakness.

_The Cloak of Adaptability_

ONE is at first reluctant to single out the Jew from his fellows at college. He seems in no manner different from them. He studies with them, eats with them, plays ball with them. He writes editorials for the college paper; he competes in the oratorical contests. One, for example, is a member of the school orchestra; another, perhaps the son or the grandson of an immigrant from Germany, leads the cheers at the track meet; another, himself an immigrant from Russia, plays on the chess team and is one of the brilliant scholars in his class. This last does, at present, have something of the stranger about him, but before long, no doubt, his speech will have become more smooth, his trousers will have begun to show a crease; he will have become quite an interesting and regular figure at the various reform and ethical club meetings at the university, and he will begin to be seen quite frequently in the company of his gentile classmates--even in the company of his German-Jewish cousin. Wonderful, indeed, the country that can so readily attire its adopted children, and, as the saying goes, make them feel at home; wonderful, perhaps, the race that, through centuries of degradation, has kept alive, though often latent indeed, the potentialities of equal partnership with the most enlightened peoples of a twentieth century civilization.

What though it has no long past, America is the great land of the future. Here let the Jew lay aside his burden of the time that has gone and build anew into the time to come. Shall we regret, then, that the Jewish student has taken on the polite address, the proud carriage, the heartiness and the chuckle of his Yankee comrade? Should he now keep the gabardine of his forefathers, yes, and the credulities and ceremonies of a circumscribed and persecuted people? Why not absorb that wholesome ruddiness, denied him so long, that breathes of open American prairies, fair play, and the Declaration of Independence?

_"The Goal of Twenty Centuries of Wandering"_

"FOXES have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head." Of whom did the great prophet speak more fittingly than of the children of his own race? Homeless for two thousand years, persecuted, ostracized, their backs have become bent and in the eyes of many they have become a nation of religious fanatics and usurers, wily, unkempt. The Jewish youth of to-day cannot look back upon his history of exile and say, as did Æneas of old after seven long years of wandering: "It will be pleasant to remember"--"forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit"; his trials have been but too real and he has not recovered sufficiently to have any desire to recall them. Blame him not then, if, when others from obscure and semi-civilized quarters of the globe hail with pride their ancestry, he alone, with the proudest traditions in history, will sometimes seek to hide his descent. He still feels, moreover, some of the old "wiliness" and "unkemptness" within himself; he thinks they are of the Jews and of none others--and he wants to get rid of them. He still feels some of the old usury in his bones, the clannishness, the distrust of the world, which the squalid ghetto walls the Middle Ages had built around his fathers have bequeathed to him, and he wants to get rid of those. Shall we look askance at him then, if when the American University welcomes him to her hearth--Ithaca, for example, with her kindly professors and laughing girl students, her ball games, her neat cottages and rolling hills that drink Cayuga's stream beside--in the excess of eagerness he should sometimes break with, yes, even forget his past, and dream new things? (Hills, cottages, home and country; superfluous concepts were these to other men, elementary satisfactions which they are born into and take for granted as their inevitable heritage.) Eagerly, therefore, greedily, perhaps, he sees new things; the goal of twenty centuries of wandering stands revealed before him. The Irish have found a home in America, the Germans, the Italians, the Poles, and why not the neediest of all, the Jews? The American University typifies the ideals of the great democracy where "race, creed and previous conditions" are forgotten. Here all men forget their prejudices. All men become brothers.

_But Not Yet Are All Men Brothers_

BUT hold, have we not been expressing a wish rather than a fact? We look into our own hearts, and strife and jealousy and racial antagonism are still there. Can we expect that man who has but lately begun to think of brotherhood can already feel it in his blood; that the age-long superstition against the Jew can be obliterated with a new geographical boundary--though that boundary be indeed serene as the all-washing, all-embracing Atlantic? Oh, that "reality does not correspond to our conceptions," exclaims Wilhelm Meister.

For centuries the Jews had a respected and comfortable home in Spain, but then came the fearful Inquisition, and the ninth day of Ab 1492 saw 300,000 of them exiled out of the country they had helped grow to culture and wealth. There was the Declaration of the Rights of Man during the French Revolution, but then came the Dreyfus affair a century later. There was science and enlightenment in United Germany, but never was anti-Semitism more pronounced, more scientific than there between 1875 and '80. In 1881 the May Laws were passed in Russia. In 1882 there was a ritual murder trial in Hungary. Our statutes and sciences, after all, are but ways and means, improved ways and means, to what?--often to unimproved ends, it seems. Our learning and knowledge are what?--but channels to educate, to lead out (e-duco) the noble qualities in man? yes; perhaps also his jealousies and hatreds. And thus there comes a time of doubt. The courtesies and learning of this university life, reflects the Jewish student, perhaps but cover up these jealousies and hatreds, make them more polite, and all the more painful therefore. However much he will not, he sees cliques and denominational clubs all about him: Catholic clubs, Lutheran clubs, Jewish clubs; in the lecture room the gentiles form their groups and the Jews form theirs; in the election of class officers the Jews have been slighted; at the class dinner a Jew was insulted; one fellow was refused accommodations at a student rooming-house because he was a Jew; and the sensitive young man begins to feel as though there were but two divisions of people at the University after all: Jews and everybody else.

_The Perennial Burden of the Jew_

BUT it is unfair and ungrateful to speak thus of the American University. All superstition and prejudice may not have disappeared here; enough it is that they tend to disappear so rapidly. But what of the large country outside the university? What of the growing Jewries in our cities? What of the Jew in the little hamlet carrying his pack of tinware from door to door; he is so eager to earn an honest dollar for a wife, a daughter, perhaps for a son at college; so eager to find him a home like that of the earlier non-Jewish immigrants who buy his wares; yet why must he overstrain his virtues before them, break through the ice, as the saying goes, and clear himself--why? for being a Jew. Evidently, others are taken as good until they prove themselves bad; the Jew is bad until he proves himself good. Should some other Jewish trader come to the same locality and commit some wrong, overcharge a shilling on the price of a kettle, for example, the first Jew must be made to feel ashamed of it, for it was not the other man who did the wrong, but the "Jew in him." Evidently, again, the Jewish problem is not of the individual, but of the race. Must the Wandering Jew bear a perennial burden?

But even if this problem were solved (it is possible for all the Jews in America to be in time regarded on equal terms with their neighbors or even to be assimilated altogether with them), what of the Jews in Russia, in Roumania, in Galicia? How long must we wait for them to assimilate or to become free and equal sons of a fatherland? Surely we shall not suggest that it is well for them to continue forever an alien people in those lands. And even if this problem too were solved, if the Jews of Russia, Roumania, and Galicia were to become free and equal sons of a fatherland, if the Jews all over the world were to be taken in as brothers by their neighbors, is it enough? Are we to be satisfied with this alone? "Hills, cottages, home and country"--is not all this but raiment? What of the body, what of the Jewish soul?

_The Three Types of Jewish Students: (1) The "No-Jew"_

WITH his problems thus put, how shall the Jewish youth face them? Shall he consider body and raiment equally, shall he put body above raiment, or shall he put raiment above body and forget the body? To put it crudely into other words, shall his ready adaptation to American University life tend to make him less of a Jew, more of a Jew, or no Jew at all, and thus tending, to repeat our original thought, wherein will it be for weakness, wherein for strength? Each Jewish student, no doubt, in varying measure, responds to all three of these tendencies; yet, insofar as the response towards one or another of these is more marked in certain individuals than in others, let us group the individuals together accordingly, and for the convenience of our discussion divide them into three separate types.

The no-Jew type is common on the campus. His presence pleases us, perhaps even flatters us. He is carefree, boyish. He makes heroes of the gridiron athletes; he delights in the comedy shows that come to town; he joins his non-Jewish friends in outdoor play in that easy laughter of theirs that bubbles over at a trifle;--and we were beginning to think the Jew had forgotten to play and laugh. We saw him after sundown once, single in a canoe, paddling across the wide unruffled lake and far where purple sky and purple water seem to commingle, and we thought we saw the primitive Indian again, the wholesome child of nature plying those waters as of old. Sail on, brave youth, we are glad to see thee still a lover of the wild, the simple, the calm; we are glad there is still in the Jew something of the wholesome child, the adventurer, the savage, shall we call it? We are almost tempted to say we are glad to have him forget his past, to sail thus away, as it were, from his troubled brethren, away across the unruffled lake where purple wave and purple cloud in peace commingle,--so long have we waited for the mind of the Jewish youth to be youthful, for the moist gleam in the eye of a sorrowful children to disappear.

_"Neither Fish, Nor Flesh, Nor Fowl"_

BUT not always is this drifting out of Jewish life so comely. There is another individual in this type in whom it appears very much strained. The first merges within the American tradition, the second obtrudes into it; the first unconsciously, the second painfully aware of his effort; the first because he has so much of the tradition within him, the second, we are afraid, because he has so little. The second individual is generally of more recent arrival to this country than the first; he considers his Jewishness a misfortune which must be gotten rid of. Both are, indeed, self-centred, unmindful of their people, but the first is more boyish--and a boy should be self-centred. Both put the raiment above the body, and in this there is weakness; but in the first there is not much of body, the roots of Jewish growth have found no depth or proper sap in him, and if in him there is not strength of body, there is at least grace of raiment; in the second there is neither grace nor strength,--he may acquire the superstructure of American character, but where the foundation to build it on? Where is there strength when it is ever a getting and never a giving?

Judaism weighs most heavily upon this latter individual. He will often deny his race, we regret to say, and play for the affection of members of other races. But they somehow will discover his "misfortune" and despise him all the more for hiding it. All this prejudice, he explains, is due to "those other Jews." If they would only learn modesty from the gentile,--not talk so, not walk so, and not keep hanging around the professor's desk after the lecture with all sorts of fool questions,--why then, there would be no more of "this prejudice thing" and he could devote his time to more important problems. (We half suspect those problems would be superficial ones. We would also perhaps give more heed to his urging us to modesty, if only the urging were more modest.) He may even become eloquent and tell us that the Jews do not appreciate the generosities and liberties of American life, that they ought to forget their old religious superstitions and realize that in free America we don't need any religions, for all men are brothers. (Here again we would perhaps give more heed to his sentiment for its boundless idealism, were we not afraid it was but a cover for boundless egotism.)

And which brotherly organization, which fraternity do you belong to up here? We ask, not to criticize those boyish aristocracies but rather to embarrass him, we confess, for we know he must name a Jewish fraternity or none at all. The other fraternities are indeed fraternal--but not to Jews, not even to those who would get away from Judaism. We speak without malice of this individual; we regret only that he gets so little out of the great American tradition. The raiment becomes him badly. Speaking in slang and following the baseball scores does not make an American. If he sells his birthright let it be for something more than a mess of pottage. Even if he should succeed in assimilating himself with the other races, whether it be by the accumulation of wealth or baptism or successful denial of his origin, yet we doubt whether he can become really happy--for he is neither fish nor flesh nor fowl. Again, what can he receive when he has nothing to give? And thus we must leave him, perhaps even now laughing in the company of his non-Jewish acquaintances at some caricature of the Jew presented for their entertainment--that is of one of "those other Jews"--a type for which we are sorry, a coin that is spurious and does not ring true.

_The Second Type: "An American of Jewish Ancestry"_

OUR second type considers body and raiment as of equal weight; he will make them as one. He will become less of a Jew and more of an American, a better American for being a Jew. Unlike the first type, he sees a little beyond himself. Americanism is good enough for him, but there are other Jews not in America, he realizes, and there are Jews within America who have not reached, perhaps never can reach, his position of comfortable participation in American life, and what of them? There may be more pressing, more important problems in the world, but who else will solve that particular one of the Jew if he doesn't? He therefore will not run away from Judaism; he will try to modify it, of course, to fit in with American progress, but, for the sake of his people, he will stay a Jew, or better an American of Jewish ancestry. This type is the son of the big-hearted givers among Israel. His father subscribes generously to charitable organizations, is a member of a Reform Temple, and owes much indeed to the opportunities of the American republic. The son, therefore, is an American patriot, and what though it seem at times overtaxed, his patriotism, unlike that of the individual under our first type, is genuine, for it is not primarily self-seeking. When he speaks of ideals, it is not to say we have no need of religions at all, but rather that we all in America have more or less the same belief only that we choose to express it differently, each according to his ancestral traditions. The three rings, says Nathan der Weise, may all be true or all be false according to the conduct of those that wear them. "But are there no peculiar values of conduct," we ask him, "bequeathed by the peculiar traditions of the Jew?" "Yes," he answers, "but those values may now be found in the cosmopolitan civilization of America." "We are getting away from peculiar things," he further adds; "we must learn to break down barriers and distinctions and work all together, not as Jews or Americans or anything else, but simply as men. Our only problem is to get the Jews treated everywhere as men." "But aside from that," we go on to ask, "isn't there a something that binds together certain groups of people that have had a common history, a common religion or any such thing in common?" "Yes," he replies, "but that something is the common intellect. The accident of birth does not make us friends; though I must help the Jew in far-off Russia, yet I am more closely identified with my Anglo-Saxon classmate. For me to co-operate with the Jew simply because he is a Jew is as logical as for me to co-operate with a man simply because he has the same shade of brown hair that I have." Words that command our thought--but yet it seems to us the speaker feels better than he knows. Why then did his heart quicken when one Friday night we passed the window of that Galician Jew, the erstwhile butt of many a jest between us, our college second-hand clothes man, and saw the flicker of his Sabbath candles? No flicker within the home of a brown-haired man would move him so. And even while he is speaking to us, though the length of our acquaintanceship is short, we detect an unwonted relaxation in his manner, a confidence that has found understanding and seeks to lay itself bare. Is it not because both of us are Jews?

Be that as it may, the words of this type are sincere. If he forgets his ancestry it is because he thinks of posterity. By blending his thoughts and aspirations with those of free and generous America, he will bequeath to his children a happier heritage than was left him by his forefathers. As for ideals, why call them Jewish rather than American; what though they originated in Judea, cannot they be distributed from America? His Zion therefore will be in Washington. The Jewish soul and the American soul will become as one. He does not deny the soul, then--the raiment has not been put above the body, the flesh above the spirit; and the adaptation of this type to the American environment can therefore make for strength, for a better humanity.

_The Third Type: "More, Not Less, of a Jew"_

WHAT room have we now for a third type? But there does appear one among his brethren, an extremist, who is not to be satisfied with the promised strength of his fellows of this last type. There may be strength among them, he thinks, but strength not enough. Greater strength is there in becoming not a non-Jew, nor less of a Jew, but simply more of a Jew. Judaism to him is not a mere peculiar thing, but a peculiar great thing, and only by keeping it peculiar can he enhance its greatness. The Jewish genius cannot blend with that of America without loss to its individuality; however much it may borrow from America in outer accoutrement, in "wholesome ruddiness," "fair play," "polite address," and so forth--(and it should borrow what it can to improve its appearance), yet the accoutrement must remain but raiment,--and the body is more than raiment. Apparently he is a very narrow-minded person--and he is; yet he believes with Ahad Ha-'Am that "greatness is not a matter of breadth only, but of depth."

We have found this extremist in the dark-eyed dreamer who came to us but recently from a Russian university, but also in the glad-eyed youth who wears his Americanism most gracefully, it being handed down to him for several generations. Judaism in this case, at any rate, to use a homely expression, does not vary with the length of the nose. This type is small in numbers, but the Jews have never made much of numbers, and even as we observe him we are minded of the words of Joel, "--and in the remnant shall be deliverance." Does he shun the American garment then? No, on the contrary, he evermore seeks it and strives to make it attire him more gracefully. He loves the American tradition; he has much to gather from its sunniness--his fathers had been kept in the dark so long. But, at the breaking of day, when the angel who wrestled with him through the night would let him go, he will say, as did Jacob of old, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me"; America must bless him so that in the light of modern day his people may once again be called "no more Jacob but Israel."