Chapter I: HAVE used my text in good old fashion as a pretext for a little (4)

"It seems as though she ran after him with
outstretched arms and blowing hair, always faster and
faster, always grasping more heavily. It seemed to him
as though he heard her terrible voice, hoarse with
weariness, calling 'Joselle,' 'Joselle' . . ."

The father has taken a new wife and the "crazy Trajna" is no longer a member of the household but is driven about the streets. And as he leaves the schoolroom this evening, Josek is consumed with indignation and sorrow and resolves not to flee from his mother the next time he meets her. On his way home he meets her. The tears flow from her eyes; when she embraces him he again runs away. But that evening he steals a plate of meat from his home and brings it to her. That night he does not sleep. The next noon, coming home from school he sees Trajna standing near the well surrounded by street urchins:

"One pulls her bonnet from her head. Another jerks at
her apron. A third tears the prayer book from her
hand. Some boys cry loudly,

"'Hurrah! The crazy one, the crazy one!'

"She looks at her son in surprise. Josek can stand it
no longer; he goes to his mother and with his fists
drives away the urchins that torment her.

"They have run away. Without saying a word Josek
reaches out both his hands. His face is deathly pale.
His eyes gleam with fever. The boys laugh. . . . Their
loud calls press themselves to his ears. . . . Another
moment and the hands of his mother reach around him as
in a cramp.

"The 'crazy one' hugs him, kisses him, now laughing,
now crying. Suddenly she clutches him and begins to
dance with him. 'Hurrah! Hurrah! The crazy one is
dancing with her son!'

"Josek casts a confused glance at the urchins. He
draws himself together, tears himself from the embrace
of his mother with a quick movement and runs away. He
does not even think of the cap which remains in her
hand.

"Even from a distance he hears the calls, 'Hurrah!
Hurrah! The crazy one dances with her son!'"

* * * * *

"DER Wunderrabbi." He is a very stupid shepherd boy. He will not learn his Hebrew lessons nor prayers. When in the fields he often feels near to God--and whistles. He is taken to the synagogue on a holiday. His parents are ashamed of him. He cannot repeat the prayers from the prayerbook, yet he feels a great desire to praise God. To the consternation of his parents he walks to the altar, and placing two fingers in his mouth he voices his praise in a loud, shrill whistle.

"All stand as though struck by lightning. Who dared to
whistle in this holy place? The father is about to
grasp the boy and lead him out, the people clench
their fists threateningly. But the rabbi turns from
his place at the east of the synagogue and asks in a
loud voice, 'Where is the saint? Where is the
miracle-worker who destroyed the evil forces hanging
above us, who bored through heaven that our prayers
might easily penetrate the black clouds to the throne
of God?'

"There is no sign of the miracle-worker. He has
slipped out of the house of prayer and with his shoes
and stockings over his shoulder is running as fast as
he can toward the village."

* * * * *

"EIN Jüdisch Kind." She is about to be married but will not comply with the Talmudic law requiring married women to cut off their hair and wear wigs. She loves her hair and will not part with it. She is married. Weeks go by and her husband is ostracised. He and his wife have become more and more estranged and they speak to each other hardly at all. One day he comes home and with loving words induces her to let him cut off her black braids.

"When Chanele awoke the next morning, she looked at
herself in the mirror that hung opposite her bed.
Terror seized her and she thought that she had become
mad and that she lay in the hospital. On the table
near her bed lay the dead braids. The soul that had
lived in these braids when they were on her head was
dead, and they reminded her of death . . . She hid her
face in both her hands and heart-breaking sobs filled
the quiet room."

And there are other "Wortbilder" which I shall not treat. This book of sketches shows Asch at his very best. For the form--one without plot dealing with character and nature description--is decidedly fitted to the elemental, passion-laden flow of his style. It is a great wonder to me that these gems of artistic word portraiture have not yet been translated into English. In my opinion they rank equal in worth with the similar work of Daudet, Maupassant, Tchekoff and Turgenieff.

* * * * *

_DAS Städtchen_ is also a book of sketches. In this, however, the different high points--the Sabbath eve, the holidays, the marriage ceremony and others in Russian Jewish village life, are treated. Character is not emphasized, although one man appears through all the sketches. The book does not come up to _Die Bilder aus dem Ghetto_.

Asch is essentially a dramatist. In his sketches, in his novels and in his stories, the dramatic point of view is not lost. His plays consequently always move, are always full of action and tense situation. The same elemental strength and purity of emotion that is found in his prose is always present in his dramas. In the concluding part of this essay, I shall touch upon five of his plays in the order of their importance.

EDITORS' NOTE--_The third and concluding part of Mr.
Shostac's prize essay, dealing with Shalom Asch as a
Dramatist, will appear in the next issue._

_THOSE of us in England who know how much harshness
and injustice the Jews have had to suffer will join in
your hopes that after the war some means may be found
of permanently ameliorating their lot. You may feel
the more sure of our sympathy in this because, as you
know, England is the European country in which, since
Oliver Cromwell sanctioned their return nearly three
centuries ago, the Jews have been best treated, being
freely admitted to all posts of power and honor, and
not exposed to any sort of social disparagement. They
have held places in our Cabinets and been among the
most eminent lawyers and judges. Such a one was Sir
George Jessel, the famous Master of the Rolls. We have
no more patriotic citizens, nor more generous
benefactors to works of charity and to public purposes
supported by private liberality. With those members of
the race who have suffered injustice or violence in
other countries, there has always been a warm sympathy
in Great Britain._--_Viscount Bryce, in a Letter to The
Menorah Journal._

=Liberalism and the Jews=

BY JOSEPH JACOBS

THE eighteenth century was the era of the "benevolent despots," like Frederick II, Joseph II, Catherine II, who adopted the ruling principle of the Welfare-State--that the object of government should be the good of the people--but considered that it could only be carried out for the people, not by them. The weakness of the principle consisted in the difficulty of securing a heritable succession of capable benevolence, and the collapse of Prussia at Jena and of Joseph II's well-meant but unreflective reforms led, in the nineteenth century, to the triumph of the principle first enunciated in America and carried out in France--of government for the people by the people. The transition to the next stage, from religious toleration to religious liberty, is marked, as regards the Jews, by the tolerance edict of Joseph II, in 1781, which for the first time threw open service in the army to the Jews and placed them to some extent on the same level with other dissenters from the State-Church of Austria.

But this was still toleration and not liberty, and it was soon cast into the background by the full religious liberty granted by the French Revolution in 1791, in imitation of the American constitution of 1787, which entirely separated State and Church. The granting of full religious liberty to the Jews had previously been advocated by Mirabeau, and though Rousseau's influence, which was all-important in the Revolution, still retained a touch of Genevan intolerance, Jews came within his religious requirements for citizenship by their belief in Providence and in future rewards and punishment. It has to be remembered that in spirit, if not in will-power or influence, Louis XVI was of the school of the benevolent despots, and it was he who signed the edict of November 13, 1791, which for the first time in European history placed Jews on the same level as the adherents of all other creeds as regards civil and political qualifications. Holland was appropriately the first country to grant the same religious equality to its Jews.[B]

The French Revolution, from our present standpoint, is the more remarkable inasmuch as it is the only great European movement on which Jews had absolutely no influence, direct or indirect, owing to their inappreciable numbers and insecure position in the chief centers, Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles. The Revolution principles spread into the neighboring countries with the advance of the French arms. In Venice, the walls of the original Ghetto, from which all the rest received their name, fell at once on the entry of Napoleon's troops. No wonder they welcomed with fervor the victories of the French troops; we can catch, in Heine, echoes of the enthusiasm with which Napoleon was acclaimed the Liberator.

_Napoleon's Recognition of the Jews_

NAPOLEON'S own attitude was not so uniformly friendly to Jews. On his way back from Austerlitz in 1805 he learnt at Strassburg of the wide distress caused in Alsace by the exactions of certain Jewish usurers in that province, and on his return to Paris issued edicts directed against the Alsatian Jews, restricting their usurious activity. It is fair to add that these enactments were obviously directed against the usury of the Alsatian Jews, and not against the Jews in general, since they were specifically declared not to apply to the Jews of Bordeaux in the South or Northern Italy, then under Napoleon's control. It would indeed have been against the whole tendency of his career to have made the Jews an exception to that principle of the "carrière ouverte aux talents," which was the key-note of his whole policy, as it is logically to all war-lords. It was by no accident that similar indifference toward the creed of their soldiers, or civil servants, was shown by William the Silent, Wallenstein, Cromwell, William III, and Frederick the Great.

Napoleon's attention having thus been drawn to the Jewish Question, he proceeded with characteristic energy to solve it by summoning to Paris a representative assembly of the Jews of France, Germany and Italy, who should determine on what terms Jews could be admitted into a modern Country-State, which had been freed from the shackles of the medieval Church-State and only recognized a certain prerogative in the Church to which the majority of Frenchmen belonged (the Concordat of 1802). After summoning an assembly of Jewish Notables for a preliminary inquiry, in 1806, a more formal Sanhedrin was summoned in the following year, to which twelve test questions were submitted,--among them, whether the French Jews could regard France as their Fatherland and Frenchmen as their brothers, and the laws of the State as binding upon them. Further points were raised as to polygamy, divorce, and mixed marriages; other questions related to the position of Rabbis and the Jewish laws about usury.

All these problems were decided to the satisfaction of Napoleon, though some of them aroused much searching of heart among the more strictly orthodox. The outcome legally recognized that there was nothing in Jewish law or faith which prevented its adherents from being legitimate and full members of a modern State which, at that time, practically recognized Catholicism as the State-Church. The significance of the decision was far-reaching not alone for the Jews but for the whole European State system; it was a practical recognition that the Country, not the Faith, was the foundation of a nation and thus gave the final blow to the conception of a Church-Empire, which had upheld the contrary principle. It was not without significance that simultaneously the Emperor of Austria agreed to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.

_Liberalism Draws the Jews to Its Ranks_

BUT though the Jews had had no influence on the French Revolution and no share in Napoleon's revolutionary reorganization of West Europe, the benefit they reaped from both movements was second only to that of the serfs. For the Jews and the serfs were the two most oppressed classes under the feudal system still surviving. And so the Jews imbibed with enthusiasm the libertarian principles of the Revolution and the "open career" administration of Napoleon. They threw off with avidity most of the shackles which prevented their joining in general European culture, and Jewish parents of means immediately began giving their sons and, what is more, their daughters, the secular education which would adapt them to the careers now seemingly open to them, as publicists, lawyers, and civil servants. When the reaction came, under the Holy Alliance, with its attempt to revive the Church-State and the closed career of prerogative, Jews everywhere in Western Europe joined the Liberal forces, from whose triumph alone they could hope for a dispersal of the clouds which once more obscured the sun of liberty in which they had basked for a few short years. Jews soon ranked among the intellectual leaders of continental Liberalism, and from 1815 to 1848 exercised an appreciable influence on the course of public opinion. In particular a brilliant band of Jewish litterateurs in Germany helped to mediate between French Liberalism and German public opinion, and practically led the movement known as Young Germany, which opposed the cosmopolitan tendencies of the eighteenth century to the narrow nationalism of the Reaction and advocated the Revolution principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as against the revival of the claims of Authority and Privilege by the Holy Alliance. Boerne and Heine, Hartmann and Saphir, Jacoby and Karl Marx, are recognized by friends and foes alike as among the leading influences which led ultimately to the downfall of Metternich and his school.

_The Salons of Jewish Women and Their Liberalizing Influence_

THEY were aided in their Liberal tendencies by a remarkable group of emancipated Jewesses, who introduced into Germany the vogue of the political Salon after the manner of Madame Roland and Madame de Staël. They were mostly from the Berlin Circle, which had arisen around Moses Mendelssohn, and carried his tendencies towards rationalism and culture to extreme limits. His two daughters Dorothea and Henriette, and their friends Henriette Herz and Rahel Lewin, created salons to which were attracted some of the more liberal spirits of the cultured world of Berlin. Dorothea Mendelssohn ultimately married Friedrich von Schlegel and became one of the Muses of the German Romantic School. Publicists of distinction like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich von Gentz formed, with Dorothea and others of her circle, a "Bond of Virtue" (Tugendbund) which according to all appearance was named on the principle of _locus a non lucendo_. Rahel, "the little woman with a great soul," as Goethe called her, was even a more striking personality. She numbered, among her friends, men of such different types as Schelling and Schleiermacher, the Prince de Ligne, and Fichte, Schlegel and Gutzkow, Prince Louis Ferdinand, Frederick the Great's nephew, and Fouqué, Gentz, and the Humboldts, and she finally married Varnhagen van Ense. She was the first to appreciate, in its full extent, the multiform genius of Goethe, and helped the rise to fame of Boerne, Heine, and Victor Hugo. She was undoubtedly the most striking personality among the women of her age in Germany, and she is nowadays regarded as one of the chief forerunners of the Feminist movement.[C]

These salons had an air of cultured Bohemianism, which attracted many men of rank in Mid-Europe who were beginning to be repelled by the exactions of social gathering in which all associations were determined by armorial bearings. A similar salon was held in Vienna by Baroness von Arnstein, in whose mansion all the diplomats of the Congress of Vienna met as on neutral ground. Such gatherings, while helping to liberalize good society in Mid-Europe, also brought the position of Jews to the notice of the ruling classes and, in many cases, aroused a determination to repair their wrongs. You cannot accept a man socially yet refuse him the most elementary rights politically.[D]

_The Liberal Leadership of Heine and Boerne_

THE Revolution of 1830 brought into European prominence the two most brilliant members of Rahel's coterie, Ludwig Boerne and Heinrich Heine. Both had made their mark as litterateurs in the preceding decade, but Boerne's "Letters from Paris" and Heine's "French Conditions" (contributed to the _Augsburger Zeitung_) drew the attention of all liberal Germany to the new hopes aroused by the downfall of the absolutist monarchy in France. Henceforth they were the dominating voices in arousing among the German Liberals the hope of similar liberty, while in France itself they helped to make known to French culture the deeper currents of German thought and literature. In particular their brilliant wit and incisive sarcasm set the tone for the feuilleton literature of all Mid-Europe. By their very isolation they were enabled to regard men and affairs with a certain detachment, and both wrote with an iridescent insolence which can only be described by the Jewish technical word _Chutzpah_. Treitschke complained of their frequent irreverences and flippancies but in both respects Heine, "the wittiest Frenchman since Voltaire," was merely following in the footsteps of his predecessor, and Boerne, like Diderot, knew that the most effective weapon against authority is sarcasm.

Under the leadership of Heine and Boerne a whole school of liberal journalists arose in Germany and Austria, many of them Jews like Saphir and Hartmann, and they gave a tone to Mid-European journalism which has lasted to the present day. They thus helped to internationalize Liberalism of the French form, with its rather vague and indefinite strivings after liberty, equality, and fraternity, as contrasted with the Liberalism of the English type dominated by Jeremy Bentham, which aimed at constitutional, economic, and social reforms of a definite character. Young Germany, as represented by Heine and Boerne, left the latter type of Liberalism severely alone.

Yet in the struggle for constitutional liberty, which led to the revolutions of 1848, Jews took a considerable part on the more practical side. Everywhere during that critical year Jews had a hand in the upheaval against absolutism.[E]

_Among the Conservatives: Stahl and Disraeli_

BUT Jews were not altogether unrepresented among the Conservative forces, counting indeed two of the chief leaders, F. J. Stahl in Prussia and Benjamin Disraeli in England. Disraeli's is the better known name, but it is probable Stahl was equally influential. Stahl is described by Sir A. W. Ward in the Cambridge Modern History, xi. 395, as "the intellectual leader of the conservative aristocratic party and the most remarkable brain in the Upper Chamber. . . . He largely supplied the ruling party with the learning and wealth of ideas on which to found their claims. Their organ was the _Kreuzzeitung_, and the party was called by its name." Bluntschli calls him, "after Hegel the most important representative of the philosophical theory of the State. He, in many ways, advanced political science by his dialectical and critical ability in founding new points of view." (_The Theory of the State_, p. 73). But Stahl's historic influence will probably rest on his connection with Bismarck at the formative period of his career, when the future chancellor was also a member of the _Kreuzzeitung_ party.

Disraeli's career and influence is far better known and need not be further adverted to in this place. The fact that both were converts has little significance from our present point of view, since many of the Jewish leaders on the Liberal side had also adopted Christianity. It is more pertinent to remark that one cannot trace their conservatism to their Judaism since there was everything in the Jewish position of their time to range Jews on the Liberal side. Stahl and Disraeli are, therefore, to be regarded merely as examples of Jewish ability. There is nothing specifically Jewish in their influence unless we regard the socialistic strain in Disraeli's conception of "Young England" as a part of the Jewish sympathy with the "under dog," which can be attributed to their own experiences and to the traditions of the Prophets.

_The Contribution of the Jews to Socialism_

CERTAINLY we find a strong Jewish participation throughout the socialistic movement which, from its inception up to the present day, has been largely dominated by Jewish influences. Although modern socialism can be traced back to St. Simon, the whole movement would have collapsed at the death of the master but for the organizing ability of Olinde Rodrigues and the religious enthusiasm of his brother Eugene. A practical turn was also given by their cousins, Isaac and Jacob Pereire, who, as bankers, had thought out the best means of carrying out the principles of the school into practical life. An extension of the facilities for banking would lower the rate of interest and therefore leave more to be distributed to the workers, while the development of railways would reduce the cost of transportation and thus lower the cost of living and raise real wages. Accordingly the Pereires devoted themselves, with religious enthusiasm, to creating the Credit Foncier, and later the Credit Mobilier, and were the chief agents in developing the railway system of Northern France, incidentally making themselves multi-millionaires in the process, though they never lost their enthusiasm for the socialistic ideals.[F]

Most of these left the St. Simonian Church when it diverged into the sexual vagaries of Enfantin, though one of his creeds was, "I believe that God has raised up Saint Simon to teach the Father (Enfantin) through Rodrigues." Felicien David the musician, however, accompanied Enfantin on his epoch-making journey to Egypt, during which he implanted the idea of the Suez Canal in the minds of Mehemet Ali and Ferdinand de Lesseps, and Gustave d'Eichthal devoted his enthusiasm and energies to creating, out of the ideas of St. Simon and Enfantin, a new religion which should revert to the socialism of the Prophets, while denying or ignoring, like them, any other life than this. It is said that he consulted Heine as to the best means of founding such a religion. "Get crucified and rise again on the third day," was Heine's caustic reply. The socialistic tone of J. S. Mill's _Principles of Political Economy_, which differentiates it from its Ricardian predecessors, is undoubtedly due in large measure to his intercourse with d'Eichthal. Enfantin's vagaries, while they destroyed any direct practical outcome for St. Simonism, drew wide attention to its views, and Jews helped to spread them throughout Europe, Moritz Veit performing that function in Germany, and M. Parma in Italy. The cosmopolitan position of Jews is seen at its best in such propagandism, and it is not surprising that they should have been attracted by views of which the kernel is in the Prophets of Israel, whom indeed Renan, in his _Histoire d'Israel_, brilliantly characterized as socialistic preachers.

The later stages of socialism in Europe were, as is well known, dominated by Karl Marx, who based upon Ricardo's "iron law" of wages the imposing edifice of _Das Kapital_, for long the gospel of advanced socialism. The brilliant Ferdinand Lassalle introduced its principles into German politics, and the most recent stages of German socialism have been controlled by the opportunism of E. Bernstein, while among its most prominent leaders have been V. Adler and Paul Singer.

_The Struggle for Political Emancipation_

THIS participation of Jewish intellect and sympathies with the Liberal current in European politics made Jewish emancipation a part of the Liberal creed throughout Europe. Jews were fighting for themselves in fighting for the general liberties, and their position in the forefront of the struggle was thus justified by the representative principle at the root of modern Liberalism. Jewish disabilities were the last stronghold of the old Church-State conception, and the struggle on the side of the Reaction to retain this fundamental principle was the more intense. If Jews were granted full civil and political rights it could no longer be contended that Christianity was a fundamental principle of the State (or, as the English _obiter dictum_ put it, "Christianity is a parcel of the common law"). Hence the extreme violence of the defense which seems, at first sight, out of all proportion to the interests or numbers involved. Thus the struggle was as embittered in Switzerland as anywhere, though the Jews there only constituted a handful, and the traditions of the country were in favor of toleration.

From this aspect the fight in England is typical. As soon as the Catholics had obtained emancipation in 1828 (the Jews had stood aside in order not to complicate the question), Jewish emancipation became part of the Liberal creed, and the struggle was waged in Parliament, or rather in the House of Lords, for the ensuing thirty years. England was the home of toleration, and her Toleration Act, passed as early as 1689, formed the third stage in the European progress towards religious liberty. Yet the more conservative elements in English life fought against the removal of Jewish disabilities because it meant the visible proof of the secularization of English politics. It is perhaps characteristic that the Tory resistance was mainly broken down by Disraeli, of Jewish, and by Lord George Bentinck, of Dutch, descent.

_The High Tide of Liberalism_

WITH Jewish emancipation in England Liberalism reached its acme about 1860. Complete civil and religious liberty was gained for Jews throughout Western Europe during the next decade,--in the German confederation and in Switzerland, 1866, in Austria and Hungary, 1867, and in the German Empire, 1871, while even in Spain the expulsion order was practically repealed and toleration, if not liberty, was given to Jews there in 1869. By that time Liberalism, both in the French sense of liberty and equality before the law and in the English sense of constitutional government and free-trade, had gained its fullest triumph and had spent its force. Its negative work had been most valuable; it had freed the human spirit from intolerable shackles and thrown into the lumber-room the clogging survivals of medieval feudalism. But to the human spirit thus freed it had little instruction to give of a constructive kind; its slogan seemed to be, "Go as you please," or, to use its own formula, "laissez faire, laissez aller." It was rather superficial in its treatment of national and social forces and made no appeal to the more generous imaginative emotions. It was inevitable that a reaction should set in if only to fill the void. Nationalism which had given vitality to France under Napoleon, and in Spain, Russia and Prussia had brought down his downfall, was opposed to Liberal cosmopolitanism. Protection to native industry, which had, only for a moment and in England, lost its hold, replaced free trade, and the strong individualism of "Manchestertum" was drowned in the rising flood of Collectivism, whether in the more formal guise of socialism or in the vaguer tendencies of philanthropy. In none of these currents of opinion had Jews a prominent voice except, as we have seen, in the latter, though there they were mainly effective in opposition and criticism.

_Bismarck and the Forces of Reaction_

ALL these tendencies, which may roughly be summed up as the Counter-Revolution, found a home in victorious Prussia and a voice in Otto von Bismarck, its representative statesman. As we have seen, his views on the nature of the State had been influenced in his formative period by F. J. Stahl, and his socialistic sympathies may possibly have been aroused by Ferdinand Lassalle, but he was of too independent a character to submit much to external influences, and the tendencies he represented, Junkertum and Militarism, were entirely opposed to Jewish Liberalism. For some fifteen years he found it convenient to work with the National Liberal party, to which all German Jews belonged, and among whose leaders the most prominent were two Jews, Eduard Lasker and Ludwig Bamberger. But in 1878 he broke with the party and let loose the forces of "Anti-Semitism" as a means of discrediting them. The movement, thus encouraged by Bismarck, soon spread to Austria and was transformed in Russia into the pogroms of 1881. In France the Royalists and Jesuits conceived hopes of reviving the Church-State and adopted anti-Semitism as a means of discrediting not alone Jews but also Protestants and other opponents of Catholicism. Their adherents, the French nobility, were especially embittered against the Jews by the bankruptcy of the Union Générale, a banking establishment in which all their money had been placed in the hope of wresting the control of French finance from the hands of the Rothschilds. Their chief hope lay in getting control of the General Staff, by filling its posts with young men of noble birth, trained by Jesuits. In order to attain this they schemed to remove all Jews and Protestants from the Staff and thought they had found a rare chance in their perverse persecution of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Their scheme recoiled on their own heads, and the final result of the Dreyfus Affaire was to break the alliance of clericalism and militarism, at least in France.

The Dreyfus Affaire was specially significant as bringing into play, at one time, all the forces that have given vitality to anti-Semitism. The New Nationalism, based not on Country but on Race and fostered by chauvinistic anthropologists as well as historians; the revived Church spirit, which sees in the National Church not so much the guardian of Christian truth as a spiritual bond of national unity; the New Collectivism which sees in capitalism the chief anti-social force, and the revived militaristic spirit which glorifies war as the regenerator of the nation; all these movements combine to regard the Jew--considered as alien, infidel, capitalist, and pacificist--as the representative enemy. All the reactionary forces regard a revival of the medieval Church-State as both the means and the end of their strivings, and naturally find the position of the Jew, both theoretically and practically, one of the chief stumbling-blocks in their way.

_Church-State versus Welfare-State_

IT remains to be seen whether the ideals of religious and political liberty, which have been gained through so much blood and tears, will be preserved intact against the rising forces of the Reaction and Counter-Revolution which are, at bottom, an attempt at a revival of the Church-Empire. The slogan "One God, one king, one people," has again been raised, and armies that are nations in arms are in movement to the cry. Anti-Semitism is largely the result of this reaction, and while it is dominant in the councils of certain nations Jews must once more take up their rôle of martyrs to the wider truth. Nowadays however they do not fight alone, and it is scarcely possible that in Western Europe and in lands dominated by Western European ideals they can be reinterned into their ghetti. But the Colossus of the North still retains the medieval ideal of the Church-Empire, and while that controls Russian State policy Jews will have to suffer, in All the Russias, indignities and disabilities from which they have been freed in the lands of true civilization and religious liberty.

The ideal of the unified Church-State has been shattered by the assaults of modern criticism and the growth of true religious liberty. But the conception of all the citizens of a compact territory animated by the same ideals still retains its attraction; only the unification nowadays is with regard to the goal rather than to the roads that lead to it. In other words, the Welfare-State (interpreting Welfare as spiritual as well as material) is taking the place of the Church-State of the Middle Ages and of Reformation times. What then is to become of the separate churches or religious bodies which are found in profusion in modern States? That is the sole ecclesiastical problem which the modern statesman has to face. Except among the extreme parties, such as the Ultramontagnes, the obvious solution would seem to be that given by the modern Federal constitution in which each State (in this case Church) has a corporate life of its own over which it has autonomous control, except in any case where this conflicts with the general Federal ideals. The Jewish Synagogue may rightly claim its place among these churches within the State as having its part in promoting the general welfare.

_The Rôle of the Jews in European Progress_

OWING to their medieval disabilities Jews, though sharing as we have seen in the higher life and in the commerce of Europe, were yet kept in a kind of enclave in each of the European nations, and thus acted, both intellectually and economically, as a separate body with distinctive tendencies caused by their isolation and disabilities. Accordingly we are able to estimate roughly the part taken by the Jews as a body in the various movements which have made European civilization what it is to-day. In all these movements (except possibly one, the French Revolution) the Jews have contributed towards European culture while sharing in it themselves. Their monotheistic views and liturgic practices were the foundation of the medieval Church, both in creed and deed. By their connection with their brethren in the East and their tolerated existence, both in Islam and in Christendom, they helped towards that transmission of Oriental thought, science and commerce, which had so large an influence on the Middle Ages and led on to the Renaissance and the Reform, in both of which movements Jews had their direct part to play. So, too, in the struggle for religious liberty and in the different stages of toleration which lay at the root of political liberty, Jews had their part to play, and when freed from their shackles by the French Revolution took a leading rôle both in Nineteenth Century Liberalism and in the Collectivism which has now replaced it.

But when fully emancipated, Jews no longer acted in the European world of ideas collectively but as individuals, often choosing opposite ideals and in most cases applying the talents thus let free to objects apart from the general political or religious movements of the time. Great as has been the influence of Jews in their collective capacity on the development of European thought and culture up to the present day, it is possible that their influence as individuals, during the past fifty years, has been even more extensive though less discernible, owing to the absence of any general direction to Jewish intellectuality.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote B: It is perhaps worth while remarking that one of the most prominent leaders on the Jewish side in Holland, Herz Bromet, had lived as a free Burgher in Surinam for a long time, and that the example of America, especially New York State, was adduced in favor of the movement. (Graetz xi, 230-1).]

[Footnote C: See Ellen Key, "Rahel Lewin."]

[Footnote D: Similar salons were held later by distinguished Jewesses like Countess Waldegrave, in London, and Madame Raffalovitch in Paris; and the Rothschilds have, throughout, made their houses centers of the most cultured influence.]

[Footnote E: No adequate or connected account has yet been given of the part taken by the Jews in the revolution of 1848. Incidentally a good deal of information is contained in the last volume of Georg Brandes, _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature_, vi, "Young Germany."]

[Footnote F: They got their altruistic tendencies from their family connections. Their uncle Jacob Rodrigues Pereire (1750-80) was the first teacher of deaf mutes.]

[_The second in a series of articles on The Meaning of Judaism_]

What Is Judaism?

BY MORDECAI M. KAPLAN

WHAT is Judaism if not an ethical monotheism? The answer is that it is not an "ism" at all, despite the last syllable in its name. It is a living soul or consciousness; it is the soul or consciousness of the Jewish people. We are not interested in names, and we should not quibble about terms; it is reality that we are after. We want to know what is involved in being a Jew and living a Jewish life. The main reason for our finding fault with the usual presentation of Judaism is that it does not enlighten or inspire us. If the term Judaism does not direct our minds at once to the living energy that operates in the Jewish people, if it has not the power to launch us upon the stream of Israel's active thought and spiritual striving, then it is a word without content, and had better be deleted from our vocabulary. We did well enough without it until very recently, and should it prove an insuperable obstacle to the solution of our spiritual problems, we shall have to throw it into the scrap-heap of obsolete terminology. We shall begin to call our religion "Jewishness" instead of Judaism. The former designation has at least the advantage of connoting consciousness, and nothing is so important for understanding the essence of any religion as the identification of it with a form or state of consciousness. If Jewishness will mean to us Jewish consciousness and not merely "gefillte fisch" or some other Jewish dish, it will serve our purpose.

Let us not lose sight of the main issue in these discussions. We Jews refuse to have our life quest confined to the satisfaction of our material needs. Our souls are hungry; and whether we call it Jewishness or Judaism, what we want is religion that will help us get our bearings in the world, that will keep down the beast in us and spur us on to worthy endeavor in the field of thought and action. Under normal conditions we should find all this in the faith of our fathers. But, unfortunately, all that most of us know about that faith is what we acquired from some old-fashioned "rabbi" who taught us when we were small children and who made us recite Hebrew by the page. At home our parents would insist upon our conforming to routine observances and ceremonies which meant nothing to us. When we grew older and occasionally asked questions about the Bible, we met with cold and evasive replies. No wonder that later on, when we entered the academic world, we grew accustomed to look upon Judaism as out of touch with the realities of life, and far removed from the elemental needs that agitate the masses of active, enterprising humanity. We could see no connection between the few humble ceremonies in our homes or in our synagogues with the social, political and industrial problems upon which was riveted the attention of the men of light and leading. To most of us the faith of our fathers seemed little more than a medley of needless restraints, other-worldliness, and hostility to all progress.

_Religion Indispensable to the Human Race_

BUT a change has come over us. We have begun to realize that Judaism could not have transformed the spiritual history of mankind, as it did, if it were the negligible and insignificant thing we thought it was. We have been unable to discern its true character, because we did not know how to probe beneath the outward and often unattractive surface which it presented to us in the limited circle in which we moved. We have begun to surmise that the Jewish life we are familiar with is nothing more than a devitalized fragment of what, under auspicious circumstances, becomes a life that is spiritually healthful, joyous and invigorating. We have at last learned to take into consideration the inevitable difference in mental scope and outlook that must mark two generations, one of which had its life formed amidst the oppressive atmosphere of Eastern Europe, and the other in the bracing atmosphere of America. This being the case, nothing could be more unreasonable than to expect that the spiritual heritage be transmitted from father to child with ease and naturalness. But who is in a better position to smooth out the roughness and overcome the angularities--father or child? Should we demand of our elders, who are burdened by numerous cares, and whose lives are for the most part hurried and difficult, that they adapt themselves to our attitude of mind? Is it not meet that we, who still retain the plasticity of youth, make advances? Without surrendering an iota of our own individuality we might cultivate that sympathetic insight that would reveal the inestimable worth of our spiritual heritage. Not merely reverence for the past, but a regard for our own future prompts us to achieve a proper understanding of Judaism.

It is well to realize at the outset that the problem of religion is not confined to the Jews alone. Every great world-faith experiences nowadays the throes of transformation and readjustment. Mistaking them for the final struggle, the believer wrings his hands in despair over the impending doom, and the doubter contemplates a religionless future with a great deal of glee. But both will be disappointed in their reckoning. Religion, as we shall see, is entirely too inherent in human life to be dispensable. The belief that it has served its purpose in the evolution of the race, and that it can only survive as a troublesome vestige in the organism of human society, is based upon a misunderstanding of its function. In view of the deeper insight into human nature that has been acquired of late, as a result of the progress made in psychological and social research, there is good reason to believe that a better understanding is not far distant. These investigations have not merely led to new theories about religion, but have essentially changed the method of approach. They have rendered superfluous the subtleties and refinements of metaphysical arguments. A new reservoir in human nature has been tapped, and discovered to be the inexhaustible fount of religion.

_The Adaptation of Judaism to Changing Conditions_

THIS new way of looking at the problem of religion gives promise of helping us also to get a better comprehension of Judaism. We shall find by means of it that there is much more substantial nourishment to the faith of our fathers than can be obtained from the tabloid form in which the textbooks mete it out to us. The previous article on "What Judaism Is Not"[G] did not argue that Judaism could forego such doctrines as the unity of God, the brotherhood of man and similar principles, or that it should glory in remaining vague and inarticulate. The main objection to the ordinary way of conceiving Judaism was that it lacked the means of preventing its teachings from degenerating into dull platitudes. But if Judaism is essentially the self-consciousness of the Jewish people, these doctrines will be viewed as some of its characteristic expressions. As such they forthwith become instinct with life. To be a religious Jew, accordingly, means not merely to profess the unity of God in cold philosophical fashion, but to live over again by means of thought and symbol the divine intuition, the backslidings, the temptations, the defiance, the threats, the tortures and the final victory implied in the "Shema Yisroel." The Jew who does not thrill with exaltation when he sings the world's most stirring paean, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One!" is either ignorant or has the blood of a fish.

Whether Judaism is an ethical monotheism or the consciousness of Israel is not merely an academic question. These two conceptions represent widely divergent ways of dealing with the practical problems of self-adjustment to the novel situation with which Judaism is confronted. Whether the one or the other view shall prevail will make a difference in the fight for existence. We protest that if Judaism will be armed with nothing stronger than the conventional platitudes, it must succumb. By knowing itself for what it really is, Judaism will muster new heart and strength. The need for self-adjustment is not of today; Judaism has been going through that process ever since it saw the light. But during the past hundred and fifty years, Judaism has been wrestling with the problem of self-adaptation which both the redistribution of Jewry and the incursions of materialistic secularism have called into being. In this comparatively short period of a century and a half, Judaism has lived through all that the other religions have experienced within the last three or four centuries. If we were to compare the different stages in the process of Jewish self-adjustment we should find them analogous to those through which European religion in general has passed. These different steps in the process seem to have been unavoidable because they are the concomitant of the natural development of the human spirit. A review of the salient phases in the self-adaptation of religion to the changing conditions of life and thought will throw light upon the significance of that vital method of viewing Judaism which has of late worked its way into Jewish life--for the most part unawares.

_The Storm and Stress Period in Religion_

WHEN we refer to the self-adjustment of religion to modern conditions, our concern is not with the vast hinterland of ignorance and superstition that is still inhabited by large numbers of the unthinking of all creeds, Jewish as well as Christian. The destiny of religion is, primarily, in the hands of those who are in the vanguard of intellectual progress, and as long as its place in their lives is a problematic one its future is uncertain. Since the days of the Renaissance, religion has practically been busy adjusting itself to the ever enlarging human experience. It was otherwise during the middle ages, when the men of intellect threw the weight of their influence on the side of tradition and authority. They devoted their mental powers to the support of truths that were accepted at their face value without further scrutiny and analysis. All the resources of intellect were spent in interpreting the few facts they had in their possession. Many centuries elapsed before the cry was raised for more facts; but when, at last, the cry was answered, and new knowledge concerning the world in which men lived began to pour in, the foundations of tradition were shaken. Since then the religion of the intellectuals has no longer been marked by the naiveté and self-assurance of its earlier years. Its existence has been one of storm and stress. It has resisted all attempts to crowd it out from the new world that man has conquered for himself, and in order to be accorded a place in that world it has submitted to considerable change and self-adjustment. We may note three distinct stages in these efforts of religion to accommodate itself to life, corresponding in a large measure with the great thought movements of the eighteenth, the nineteenth, and the twentieth centuries respectively.

The first stage in the process was the rationalistic. With Copernicus and Galileo defeated by the Vatican, with Descartes having to defend his orthodoxy, it seemed to the English and French philosophers of the eighteenth century that the only way man could save his spiritual nature from falling a prey to animalism or materialism was by consigning to destruction the special forms in which religion existed in the established faiths. The dreamers and the visionaries of that day, who were moved by a sincere desire to further man's higher life, entertained the hope that natural religion would revive with the downfall of revealed religion. But human events have taken a different turn. Life does not adapt itself to preconceived logical systems. The rationalistic method of adjusting religion to life failed because it was based upon a false reconstruction of the rise and growth of religion. However logical and plausible such a reconstruction might have appeared, the fact that it could not be verified by study and observation of religious phenomena invalidated the practical inferences drawn from it.

_The Failure of the Rationalistic School_

ALTHOUGH by that time science had made sufficient strides to know how futile it was to reconstruct fact by means of reason, the territory of religion was still considered exempt from the need of resorting to experience. The thinkers of the rationalistic age were to a certain extent still under the dominance of the medieval regard for abstract reasoning, and applied it to man's spiritual existence. They reasoned thus: The human being is naturally gifted with an intuition that enables him to discover for himself the truth about God and his relation to the world. If man had only been left alone and had not had the stream of his ideas muddied by outside interference, he would have continued professing a religion that would have been both pure and simple. But human depravity did not permit the natural religion of primitive life to continue. The fanatics with their delusions and the priests with their love of power distorted man's primitive faith in God. They invented dogmas and practices by means of which they could hold the masses in subjection. In course of time these extraneous elements came to be looked upon as the main content of revealed religion. The various established faiths and revealed religions were little more than wilful fabrications that were bound to crumble before the onslaughts of reason. Thus, by bringing the established cults into disrepute, men like Voltaire and Hume hoped to restore religion to its original state of purity and simplicity, bare of all artificialities of forms and institutions.

However superficial the rationalistic method may appear to us, nothing but supercilious ingratitude could prompt us to disparage the service it has rendered. The rationalists are the men to whom the world is indebted for being the pioneers in the work of breaking down the impassable barrier of hatred and disdain which divided the followers of one faith from those of another. Rationalism began to lift the curse of intolerance and persecution which lay heavily upon the human race. No one who values the freedom to live his own life in his own way should cast aspersions upon the influence of that school of thought. Though they argued erroneously about the nature and essence of religion, we must not forget that they emancipated the human soul from the shackles of spiritual bondage.

On the other hand, our gratitude to them cannot blind us to their superficiality and inexperience in the matter of religion. Nineteenth century thought, with its emphasis upon historic development, exposed the fallacies and weaknesses of the method they employed to interpret religious phenomena. The distinction between natural and revealed religion was an arbitrary one, and the conception of priestly fabrications a mere figment of the imagination. Historical research has established that all the great world faiths or revealed religions have followed laws of development that have been in accord with the circumstances and mentality of those who professed them, and in that sense have been perfectly natural. Instead of being the product of fraud and wilful deceit, the established religions were seen to be the outcome of a healthy enthusiasm and deep sincerity. The limitations of knowledge and experience, which marked the earlier expressions of religious life, were, from the historical point of view, more than atoned for by the inner worth and sincerity that had prevailed in former days. In fact, so far did the historical conception change men's attitude that, upon finding themselves sophisticated and torn by doubt, they looked back longingly to former ages, when religion had brought inward calm and serenity. As a consequence of this reaction to the disintegrating tendencies of eighteenth century rationalism, a renewed appreciation for the religion of the past made itself felt among the circles of the cultured, particularly those of Germany and England, and the institutions in which the spirit of the past clothed itself were given a new lease of life.

_The Historic Method Is Found Wanting_

THE adoption by religion of the historic method thus represents the second stage in its process of self-adjustment. It now appealed to man's natural desire not to allow his past to sink into oblivion. Nothing is so humanizing as memory. He that is engrossed only in the future and would make it the only standard of value, he who has no patience with anything that interferes with practical utility--and memory is certainly a source of such interference--lacks the main ingredient of humanity and has something beaverish about him. Thus taught the historical school during the nineteenth century, and the rationalistic ideal that would have destroyed the established faiths no longer held sway.