The opening years of the nineteenth century found the Jew blinded by the light of a new sun, the rays of which were beating upon the Ghetto and were forcing him to take off, one by one, the many garments with which he had clothed himself during the hostile Middle Ages. For the Jew these Middle Ages did not end with the Reformation and the Renaissance; but only disappeared in the transformation brought about gradually by the French Revolution. The beginning of the twentieth century sees him putting on some of these garments again, and trying to save his own warmth from being lost in the coldness of the outside world. During this period the Jew has passed through more upheavals than many nations have during three or four times the number of years. What outward struggles has he not been called upon to experience; through what alternating seasons of joy and sorrow has he not passed! What changes even within his own body has he not sustained! The modern European and American world has had a hard fight to find its way into its present changed condition; but much harder by far was the task laid upon the Jew; and, whether he has succeeded or not, he has made an honest fight. Evidences of the struggle abound on every hand, and the road is strewn with many a dead hope and many a lost opportunity. The Jew was bound more firmly to ancient traditions; and so interwoven were these ancient traditions with his whole being that the new life into which he came had of necessity to be blended with the old. The tale of the Jew of the nineteenth century is a record of his endeavor to do justice to the two demands which were made upon him: the one from the outside world—to fit himself to take his place worthily and do his work side by side with the other citizens of the state in which he lived; the other from within his own ranks—to harmonize his religious belief with his new point of view and to adapt his religious exercises to modern social conditions.
EMANCIPATION OF THE JEWS
The struggle of the Jews in the various European countries for civil rights and for equality before the law was long drawn out, and was marked by varying fortunes dependent upon the political conditions of these countries. More than seventy years of the century had passed before this struggle had been fought out. Though it is true that a beginning was made in Germany and Austria (1750 and 1781), to France belongs the honor of having been the first to really do away with the mass of anti-Jewish legislation which the centuries preceding had piled up. On the 27th of September, 1791, the National Assembly at one stroke removed all the disabilities under which the Jews had been living—distinctive dress, special Jew’s oath, Jew’s tax, forced residence in certain localities, etc. From France, and under the influence which that country then exercised, the emancipation of the Jews spread to Belgium and Holland, and to some of the states of Germany; but the rest of Europe was not yet ready for this emancipation. The reaction which marks the period between 1814 and 1848 made itself felt upon the Jews, restoring, in many places, the disabilities under which they had formerly lived. The “Judengassen” became once more inhabited, and the principles of freedom and liberty for all members of the state seemed to have been wellnigh forgotten. The Revolution of 1830 stayed the downward course in some of the German states; but it was not until 1848 that the second great period in Jewish emancipation came about. In the breaking down of old institutions it was natural that the exceptional laws against the Jews should go also. The German Parliament of 1848, at Frankfort, forcefully proclaimed the doctrine of religious liberty; and of this parliament a Jew, Gabriel Riesser, was vice-president. But it was not until the formation of the German Empire, in 1871, that the emancipation of the Jews, which had gradually made its way in the various states, was carried through for the whole of that empire. In 1867, a decree was issued in Austria by virtue of which all citizens were declared equal before the law, and in 1870 the walls of the Ghetto fell in Rome. In 1874, Jews were admitted to the rank of citizens in Switzerland. In 1878, the Congress of Berlin, the leading spirit of which (Disraeli) was of the Jewish race, demanded equal rights for the Jews living in the Balkan Peninsula. These rights were accorded by the various states there, with the exception of Roumania; which, in spite of the treaty and in spite of the promises made at the time, still continues to refuse to allow the Jews living within its borders to become citizens or to treat them as an integral part of the population. In Turkey the laws which put certain restrictions upon non-Mohammedan citizens were sensibly changed in 1839; so that the Jews living in the dominions of the Sultan suffer from no exceptional legislation.
The cause of Jewish emancipation in England suffered no such sudden changes as it did on the continent. It proceeded by regular stages through the abrogation of the Act of Test in 1828, the admission of Jews as citizens of London in 1830, as sheriffs in 1835, as magistrates in 1845, and in 1858 as members of Parliament by the removal of the words “upon the faith of a Christian” in the oath taken by the members. There can be no doubt that the emancipation in England, though long drawn out and fiercely contested, was more effective than anywhere else, owing to the fact that it was progressive in character and based upon the idea of rights demanded and not upon that of favors granted. Nothing was asked of the Jews in England other than that they be good citizens of the state; while the whole continental legislation regarding them, from the time of Napoleon on, had on the part of the legislators only one object in view—to break up the cohesion of the Jews as a body and to pave the way for their disappearance as a distinctive group. The idea that emancipation was a favor and not a right brought it about that the Jews themselves aided in their own disintegration. They believed that it was their duty to show themselves more patriotic than were the other citizens of the state in which they lived, as they were receiving greater favors. And so, even though Jews have sat in the parliaments of various continental states, they have with few exceptions steadfastly refused to acknowledge themselves to be in any way representatives of their brethren, and in some cases (notably in France) during the last few years have either remained supinely indifferent when Jewish questions were before their several parliaments, or have even aided those whose agitation was directed against their fellow-Jews. In England, on the contrary, the Jewish members of Parliament have never forgotten that, in addition to their interests as citizens of England, they have a duty to perform to the Jews, whom they also represent, and they have therefore been able, while giving their best services to the state, to be also useful to their co-religionists. It may be due to this cause that the emancipation of Jews on the continent has in no way been able to stem the recrudescence of anti-Semitism; while it has undoubtedly done this in England. The opposite effect is most clearly seen in Algiers, where the wholesale emancipation of the Jews in 1870, through the efforts of CrÉmieux, that bold champion of his people, has in a large measure contributed to make the riots possible which have in late years been witnessed in that French colony. Neither the population of Algeria nor the Jews there were at that time ready for such a measure; it did not therefore come as the result of a development among the people, but as something imposed upon them by the government.
In addition to Roumania, Russia is practically the only country which has refused to enter the European concert, and which by means of laws and ordinances represents still the dark period of the Middle Ages. It has turned the provinces on its western borders into a tremendous Ghetto, and driven the Jews to exile by making life within that pale practically impossible. Even Portugal in 1821, and Spain in 1868 (the two countries from which the Jews had been banished for a great number of years), opened their doors to them once more; though few Jews have ventured to return to the Peninsula, despite the fact that in 1886 a committee was formed in Madrid for the promotion of Jewish immigration into Spain.
THE WANDERING JEW
The Wandering Jew is not the Jew of legend, but the Jewish people of history. The dislocation of large Jewish bodies, which was characteristic of the Middle Ages, has been kept up during the nineteenth century; and this dislocation has, as in former times, profoundly modified Judaism in the various countries. From the fifteenth century on to the nineteenth, hostile legislation on the part of Western Europe had been continually driving the Jews to the East. The expulsion from Spain and Portugal, at the end of the fifteenth century, forced several hundred thousand into Turkey; while the hardships which they had to suffer in the smaller German states and in Austria caused large numbers to seek a refuge in Poland and Russia. The tide commenced to turn westward about the middle of the eighteenth century, though bands of Jews from Poland had been driven into Germany, Italy, and Holland in the terrible years of the Chmelnicki persecutions (1648–1651). The readmission of Jews into England, the relative kindness of Frederick William of Prussia and of Frederick the Great, aided a certain slow but continuous infiltration from Poland, so that at the end of the eighteenth or the first half of the nineteenth century these Polish Jews were to be found in all parts of Germany, Holland, and England. This slow migration back again to Western Europe took on, however, much larger proportions in the latter part of the nineteenth century; but before this could happen a strong movement still farther westward had already taken place. Jews were among the earliest settlers on the American continent. They were in nearly every case of Spanish or Portuguese descent, having come from Holland and England to the possessions which these powers held on the new continent. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when the tide of immigration from Germany was at its height, a large number of Jews from the southern states and the Rhine region found their way to these shores. The Russian atrocities of 1882 and the following years caused a greater shifting of the Jewish population westward than can be paralleled at any previous time. It has been estimated that between the years 1882 and 1900 fully one million Russian Jews left their homes in the pale of settlement, finding new dwelling-places in England, Germany, and France. The largest number (probably half a million) came to the United States and Canada. Untoward economic conditions existing in Galicia, and the frequent outbreaks of anti-Semitism there, forced out during the 90’s a large number of Galician Jews; and in 1899 and 1900 the hostility of the Roumanian government has made it impossible for thousands of Jews to remain in a country in which most of them had been born; and, under circumstances the like of which has hardly ever before been seen, bands of the Roumanian Jews have been wandering over Europe, seeking the means by which to come to the American continent in order there to establish themselves anew. There are between ten and eleven million Jews to-day in the world: of these, about nine million live in Europe; one million in the United States and Canada; three hundred and fifty thousand in Africa; three hundred and fifty thousand in Asia; and sixteen thousand in Australasia.
COMMUNAL ORGANIZATION
All these changed circumstances variously modified the organization of the Jewish communities. Napoleon’s attempt in 1807, as the result of the Sanhedrin which he had convened in Paris, to found this organization upon a modern basis, dividing the Jews of France into certain consistories and arrondissements, had an effect not only upon France, but also upon those countries which for a time were under his influence (Holland, Belgium, etc.), and even upon many of the German states. In 1808 such consistories were established in Westphalia and Cassel; in 1809, an Oberrath was created in Baden; and in 1828 and 1831 an Oberkirchenbehoerde in WÜrtemberg. It was due also to Napoleon that in France and Germany the Jews were obliged to adopt family names, they having, in most cases, still retained the Oriental custom of simply adding to their own prÆnomen that of their father. Prussia was the only one of the German states which was not so affected. There the state exercises a supervisory influence, compelling all the Jews to be members of the Jewish community, but in no way further regulating the communal life. When the Reform tendencies commenced to make themselves felt in the larger Jewish communities, the Orthodox members safeguarded their own interests by making use of the law passed in 1873, mainly through the efforts of the Jew Lasker, which enabled the people to declare themselves “confessionslos” and form their own synagogues, thus nearing in a measure the system followed in English-speaking countries. In England and America no such organization was effected, as the state does not there take cognizance of the religious belief of the people. In both these countries attempts have been made by the Jews themselves to organize under one head upon a purely religious basis, but without much success. In France there is a Chief Rabbi of the Jews who is recognized by the state as their rabbi and head. But the Chief Rabbi of the Jews in the British Empire, though he is nominally the head of the Jews in the kingdom, has no actual position as such, and is even not recognized by certain schools of Jews themselves. The Sefardim, or descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, have always kept themselves distinct, and have their own Chief Rabbi, or Haham. In the year 1840, the more liberal-minded element among the London Jews cut themselves loose from the United Synagogue and formed a Reform party, their example being followed in Manchester and Bradford. Neither they nor the recent immigrants from Russia, who have formed their own “Federation of Synagogues” recognize the authority of the Chief Rabbi. This more congregational system has been carried to its utmost limits in the United States, where each congregation is a law unto itself and absolutely rejects any interference on the part of any larger body. From time to time a desire has been manifested to supersede this purely congregational system by some form of union. The late Dr. Isaac M. Wise, of Cincinnati, had at various times attempted to bring the Jews of the United States together with an authoritative synod at their head. Out of this and other attempts have come the Central Conference of American Rabbis and The Union of American Congregations (founded in 1873), which now comprises about ninety-one congregations. These organizations, however, do not by any means represent either all of the Jewish ministers or all of the Jewish congregations, and the Union itself is merely a deliberative body having no power to do anything in the internal affairs of one of its constituent synagogues. Since the union of American Jewish congregations comprises only such as stand upon a Reform platform, a union of Orthodox congregations was formed in New York two or three years ago, and it is hoped that this organization will do much towards binding together the very many congregations of those who adhere strictly to traditional Judaism.
But the organization of Jews as a church has not been found sufficient. Spread over so large a portion of the earth and coming under such varying influences, it was inevitable that the theological differences which already existed should grow apace, and a great cleavage be made between the Orthodox and the Reform wing of the synagogue. It was early felt that some more secular bond must be found which should unite the Jews of various persuasions for common and concerted action. The first attempt in this direction was nobly made by Narcisse Leven, Eugene Emanuel, Charles Netter, and a few others, in founding (1880) the “Alliance IsraÉlite Universelle” in Paris, whose object it was to aid in removing Jewish disabilities wherever they might exist, and to raise the spiritual condition of their coreligionists in Northern Africa, Eastern Europe, and Western Asia by the founding of schools. From these small beginnings the Alliance has grown to be an important factor in the conservation of Jewish interests. Faithful to its programme, it has established a large number of elementary and technical schools, and has intervened actively in Algeria, Morocco, the Turkish Empire, and Persia whenever Jews or Jewish interests were in any way threatened. Its attempt, however, to represent the whole Jewish people has not been successful; for the reason that it has been allied too closely with French national interests; and side by side with the “Alliance FranÇaise” it has been an active propagandist of the French language and of French culture in the East. This one-sidedness of its work is best seen in the fact that by its side similar organizations have been created in other countries, “The Board of Delegates of American Israelites” in the United States, “The Anglo-Jewish Association” in England, “The Israeli-tisch Alliance” in Austria, and the “Deutsche Gemeindebund” in Germany. At one time it was hoped that the B’nai B’rith, established in this country in 1843, by Isidor Busch, Julius Bien, and others, would form such a union of Jews, where the theological differences would be eliminated. But though this order, which has 315 lodges in, the United States and Canada, has established itself in such countries as Germany, Roumania, Austria, Algeria, Bulgaria, and Egypt, and despite the good work it has so far done, the mere fact that it is a secret organization prevents it from standing forth as the representative of international Jewry. Where, then, and in what manner is such a body to be found?
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
The economic condition of the Jews in the large Eastern European Ghettos is, naturally, extremely bad. Huddled together, either in certain districts of large towns or in villages where they form the greater part of the population, they are compelled to live off and on each other. Crowded into certain walks of life by anti-Jewish legislation or anti-Jewish sentiment, few of them can gain more than sufficient to keep body and soul together. In Galicia it has been estimated that five thousand Jews perish every year from typhus-fever. The Jewish wax-miners in Boryslav, to take but one instance, were forced out of the mines and reduced to utter starvation, for no other reason but because they were Jews. The failure of the harvests in Southern Russia during the last few years has reduced the wage-earners in that part of the country to the position of dependants upon the charity of others; but the Jews who live there in such large numbers do not even benefit from the assistance sent by the government. Similar conditions prevail almost continually in the rest of the Russian pale and in Roumania. The standard of life has naturally been lowered among these people and their general morale has not come out of the trial unscathed.
Nor must it be forgotten that the violent dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people, such as has taken place among the Jews during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, has naturally disturbed existing economic conditions, not only among the Jews themselves, but also among those into whose midst they came. These outcasts from Eastern Europe did not come to virgin soil as did the Pilgrim Fathers, but to cities and towns which were already filled with a proletariat engaged in the eager fight for life. The Jews of Berlin, Paris, London, and New York, had their hands full with the proper care of the needy ones already in their midst.
It is a mistake to suppose that the Jews as a people are rich. The proletariat among them is proportionately much larger than it is among other people; and thus it came about that the Jewish quarters in all the large cities were already well filled when they were (almost at a moment’s notice) called upon to receive double or triple the number they already held. The actual number of the Jewish poor was thereby greatly increased; for many a family that had been wealthy or in easy circumstances in Russia, Galicia, or Roumania, had been reduced to want and been compelled to take its place among those who needed the help of their brethren. This help was freely and cheerfully given all the world over. Great sacrifices were made by the richer Jews to meet the pressing needs of the hour, and, with no help from the outside world, excepting the London Mansion House Fund in 1882, the thousands and tens of thousands of immigrants were cared for. The Jewish charitable organizations, the development of which has been during the latter half of the nineteenth century the brightest spot in Jewish communal life, rose to the demands of the occasion, and the more than princely munificence of Baron and Baroness Maurice de Hirsch, in regard to the Russian Jews, may justly be looked upon with pride.
New Ghettos, however, were formed in nearly all the cities to which these immigrants came; and this name for the habitat of the poorer Jews became again familiar, aided by the popularity which some modern novelists had given to it. In the Middle Ages and down to our own time the Jews had been forced by the state to live apart in such Ghettos; sometimes for their own protection, sometimes to preserve the outside world from contact with them. The modern Ghetto is a voluntary gathering of the Jews for the purpose of mutual help and from a feeling of reciprocal obligations. To the outside observer it presents an unsightly appearance; it is the abode of poor people, and its population is usually strange in dress, manners, and speech. The sweating system (which in one form or another is to be found in all these Ghettos) has been a dreadful incentive towards grinding the face of the poor; and the results of too great a hoarding are often quite apparent; so that the general morality of the Jews in these Ghettos has suffered in consequence. A people ignorant of the language of their new home are a prey to the evil-intended, who make use of their ignorance for their own commercial and political advancement. This has been notably seen in the city of New York, where a lax city government has permitted the vampires of society to fasten their fangs upon the Ghetto and to produce conditions which call for the active interference of all those forces which seek to stamp out crime and vice. But, on the other hand, to one who is acquainted with the inner life of the Ghetto the virtues which have hitherto characterized the Jews—industry and sobriety—are still to be found there; much more frequently than in those parts where the richer classes congregate, and whose wealth enables them to withdraw their doings from the public gaze. Its members are as industrious as bees in a hive; and though extremely litigatious, drunkenness is unknown and actual crime is comparatively rare.
In order to correct the abuses of the Ghetto, two things are absolutely necessary—the increase of the actual number of Jews there must be stopped, and the crowding into certain distinct fields of work must be brought to an end. A determined effort has already been made to force the new immigrants into less crowded parts of the land to which they come. In this country this is being done by the United Hebrew Charities, and notably by the B’nai B’rith. A distinct clannish feeling has, however, to be overcome, and a fear of venturing into an unknown country where the immigrant will be surrounded by people who do not understand his peculiar social and religious customs.
That the Jew has taken by preference to certain branches of trade and work is due to the fact that anti-Jewish legislation has for centuries closed many walks of life to him, and the guild organization excluded him rigorously from many spheres of activity. Then, too, his richly developed home life has induced a certain distaste for occupations which take the wage-earner out of his home and away from his family. That, however, these inherited instincts can easily be overcome is clearly seen whenever the occasion offers. Even in Amsterdam, where three-fourths of the diamond industry is in the hands of Jews, there are to be found Jewish cobblers, cigar-makers, plumbers, carpet-weavers, mattress-makers, watch-makers, etc. In the East End of London there are, it is true, ten thousand Jews who are engaged in the clothes-making trades, but the rest of the forty thousand Jewish wage-earners of this quarter are scattered over all possible branches of work—masonry, metal-working, textile industries, furniture-making, cap-making, and the like. The same is true of New York, where, although the number of Jews employed in the tailoring industries is disproportionately large, the following list of Hebrew unions shows how far afield the Jewish workman has gone: Cap-Makers, Cap-Blockers, Shirt-Makers, Mattress-Makers, Purse-Makers, Liberty Musical Union, Jewish Chorus Union, Jewellers’ Union, Tin-Smithers’ Union, Bill-Posters, Waiters’ Alliance, Architectural Ironworkers, Hebrew Typographical Union, Tobacco Cutters, Paper-Makers, Bookbinders. The same is relatively true of all other countries where Jews live in large numbers.
It is a popular misconception that the Jew has an innate distaste for agriculture. His continued commercial life, forced upon him for many centuries, has, it is true, disaccustomed the Jew to the life of a tiller of the soil. But the Jewish state was largely an agricultural one; the legislation of the Bible and the later Law Books was clearly intended for an agricultural people; and Jews have never shown an unwillingness to return again to the soil. In Southern Russia there are to-day 225 Jewish colonies with a population of 100,000. In Palestine there are now more than twenty colonies with a population of more than 5000, and similar agricultural colonies have been established at various times in the United States, Canada, and the Argentine Republic. In many cases, it is true, these colonies have not yet become self-supporting, but this has been due in a large measure to maladministration and to the peculiar conditions under which the colonies were founded.
It cannot be denied that a goodly part of the Jewish proletariat belongs to the Socialist party. The whole Biblical system is in itself not without a Socialist tinge; and the two great founders of the modern system, Lasalle and Marx, were Jews. It is no wonder that in Russia many of the leading anarchists were of the Jewish race, for the Jew suffered there from the evils which Nihilism was intended to correct ten times more than did his fellow-Russian. But the Jew is by nature peace-loving; and under more favorable circumstances, and with the opportunity of a greater development of his faculties, Socialism in his midst has no very active life; the Jew very soon becoming an ardent partisan of the existing state of affairs.
INTERNAL RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT
The facility with which the Jews attach themselves to changed circumstances stands out characteristically through their whole history. It might, indeed, be said with some show of truth that this pliability is the weak side in the Jewish character. The readiness of the Jew to be almost anything and not simply his own self has been one of the factors producing a certain ill will against him. Disraeli was the most jingo of all imperialists in England; Lasker, the most ardent advocate of the newly constituted German Empire. This pliability is the result of the wandering life he has led and the various civilizations of which he has been a part. He had to find his way into Hellenism in Alexandria, into Moorish culture in Spain, into Slavism in Russia and Poland. When the first wave of the modern spirit commenced to break from France eastward over the whole of Europe, it reached the Jew also. While in France the new spirit was largely political, in Germany it was more spiritual. In its political form as well as in its spiritual form it reacted not only upon the political condition of the Jew, but especially upon his mental attitude. The new spirit was intensely modern, intensely cosmopolitan, intensely Occidental, and intensely inductive. The Jew had preserved to a great degree his deductive, Oriental, particularistic, and ancient mode of thought and aspect of life. The two forces were bound to meet. As a great oak is met by the storm, so was Israel set upon by the fury of this terrible onslaught. It is of interest to see in what manner he emerged from this storm—whether he has been able to bend to its fury, to lose perhaps some of his leaves and even some of his branches, but to change only in such a way as to be able to stand upright again when the storm is past.
This great clash of ideas has produced what is known as the Reform movement. It had its origin in Germany under the spiritual influences of the regeneration of German letters produced by such men as Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing, and Mendelssohn. It was aided in a large measure by the fact that the government in Germany, although distinctly opposed to anything which militates against the established order of things, mixes itself very seldom in the internal affairs of the Jewish communities. This Reform movement has colored the religious development of Judaism during the three-quarters of the century which is past. The heat of the controversy is now wellnigh spent. Many of those who stood in the front ranks have passed away, so that a more just estimate of its value can be reached. It was a period of tremendous upheavals, of great physical as well as mental pain. Many a congregation was split in twain, many a family disrupted. At one time it looked as if two distinct bodies of Jews would emerge from the struggle, and the union of Israel be destroyed forever. A common enemy—anti-Semitism—joined the two forces together for a common defence; and the danger of such a split is now fairly a thing of the past.
The latter half of the eighteenth century found the Jews of Middle Europe at the lowest intellectual and social point they had up till then reached. The effect of the long Jewish Middle Ages was plainly visible. Few great minds lit up the darkness, and an intellectual torpor seems to have spread its pall over everything. A passive uniformity of practice prevailed in all the communities, whether Sefardic (Spanish and Portuguese) or Ashkenazic (German and Polish); a uniformity, because actual intellectual life had been made to run in one single groove. The Talmud had been the great saving of Judaism in the past. In the intellectual exercise which its study necessitated, the mind of the Jew had been given a field in which it could rove at will. Living apart from the rest of the world, with a wide jurisdiction over his own affairs, Talmudic law in its latest development was still the law supreme for the Jew. The Jewish Ghetto had everywhere the same aspect; the language in common use was, in all the Ashkenazic communities, the JudÆo-German in one of its various forms. A certain severity in evaluating those things which were part of the outside world made itself felt. There was ample time and ample occasion for the practice of all those forms and ceremonies with which the Judaism of the Middle Ages had willingly and gladly fenced in the law. There had been little occasion for the practice of the beautiful arts or for the cultivation of letters. Life in the Ghetto was not necessarily gloomy, but it was solemn. The law was not felt as a burden, but it required the whole individual attention of those who bound themselves by it, from early morn till late at night, from the cradle to the grave. There was no place for things that come from outside, because there was no time to devote to them.
But the new European spirit in its French political form was knocking hard at the gates of the Ghetto. Little by little it made its way here and there, into all sorts of nooks and corners. It was bound in time to be heard by some of those living behind these gates. The name of Moses Mendelssohn is indissolubly connected with the history of German Judaism during the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was due to him that a vehicle was found which the new spirit could use. Himself a strictly observant Jew, he felt the pulse of the new era. The friend of Lessing and of Nicolai, he entered fully into the revival which was then making itself felt. Through his translation of the Pentateuch (1778, etc.) into High-German, he prepared the way for the further introduction of German writings to the Jewish masses. This was bound to bring with it a larger culture and a greater freedom of thought. Many of his friends, such as Wessely, Hertz-Homberg, and David Friedlander, stood by his side in this work. With the introduction of the German language and German literature, better and more modern schools were needed in which secular education should go hand in hand with the former one-sided religious training. David Friedlander was the first to found a school in the modern sense of the term; and he was followed by Jacobson in 1801, at Seesen, Westphalia, and at Cassel, and by Johlson, at Frankfort, in 1814. Between the years 1783 and 1807 such modern Jewish schools arose in Germany, Austria, Denmark, France, and even in Poland. Literature was cultivated, and the first Jewish journal (though still in Hebrew) was published in KÖnigsberg, 1783 (Hameassef—the Collector). The Gesellschaft der Freunde, founded in Berlin in 1792, was distinctly intended for the spread of this modern culture; yet Mendelssohn’s own position was quite an untenable one. He was a thoroughly Orthodox Jew in practice, but his mental attitude was that of a modern German. He was and he was not a reformer. He held that it mattered little what philosophical position a Jew held, the Jew must observe all the ceremonies connected with the faith; these were binding upon him by the mere fact of his having been born into the Covenant. It is therefore no wonder that his translation was put under the bann in Hamburg, Altona, Fuerth, Posen, etc. His friend Friedlander wished to make of the synagogue a sort of Ethical Culture Society; and Jacobson’s preaching in Berlin contained very little of what was distinctly Jewish. The salons of Berlin, KÖnigsberg, and Vienna, which were presided over by brilliant women, who were more or less immediate disciples of Mendelssohn, nurtured the cosmopolitan spirit which was bound to be destructive of practical Judaism. That this fruit on the Tree of Knowledge ripened too quickly is seen from the fact that all the descendants of Mendelssohn, Friedlander, and others, led astray by this cosmopolitan spirit and the philosophic presentation of Christianity by Schleiermacher, have all become devoted members of the Lutheran Church and have been completely lost to Judaism.
It was natural that these new influences should influence also the training of the modern rabbis. Secular education had been introduced into primary schools, and in some places—as, for instance, Lombardy, in 1820—the government demanded a certain amount of secular knowledge from the candidates for rabbinical positions. The Jew also desired that his leaders should have the same training as he gave his children, that they should be educated in the same atmosphere in which he himself had grown up. The old rabbinical seminaries, or Yeshibot, in which the instruction was entirely on Talmudic lines, had already run their course; the study had been found insufficient by the pupils themselves, and the schools of Frankfort, Fuerth, Metz, Hamburg, and Halberstadt had all been closed for want of students. The need of a modern seminary was felt quite early during the century; and in 1809, a Lehrer-Seminar was founded in Cassel. The earliest regular seminary for the training of rabbis, however, was founded in Padua in 1829. In Germany attempts had been made in the year 1840, but these attempts were unsuccessful. The first modern seminary was not founded in Germany until the year 1854 (Breslau). Then followed Berlin, in 1872; Cincinnati, in 1873; Budapest, in 1876. Similar institutions exist now in London, Paris, and Vienna.
In the first convulsions of the Mendelssohn period the way was paved for the second period of the Reform movement which covers the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The real issues touched the central point of Jewish life, the synagogue. It is interesting to note that during this period the chief questions were not so much theological as Æsthetic. The Æsthetic side of life could not be largely cultivated in the Ghetto; and the form of the service had greatly degenerated. In the course of centuries, so many additional prayers and songs and hymns had been added that the ritual was largely overburdened, and often tended rather to stifle than bring out the religious sense they were intended to conserve. Contact with the outside world created and fostered this Æsthetic sense, and the influences of the writings of such men as Lessing and Mendelssohn was largely in this direction. As this Æsthetic sense made its way into the homes, so also did it carve out its way into the synagogue. Demands were heard for a shorter service; for the organ to accompany the chanting of the reader; for the German language in some of the prayers and for the German sermon. Each point was bitterly contested; for the Orthodox wing had before it the wholesale apostasy of the Salon Jews. In order to introduce the vernacular into the service and into the sermon, private synagogues were opened by small coteries in Cassel (1809), Seesen (1810), Dessau (1812), and Berlin (1815). In Southern Germany the use of the vernacular was introduced between the years 1817 and 1818, also in Hungary through the influence of Abraham Chorin. In some countries the government gave its active aid. In Vienna, in 1820, German was made obligatory, and as early as 1814 Danish in Copenhagen. The greatest changes, however, were made in the Hamburg temple (under Kley and Salomon, 1818), where not only the service was made more Æsthetic and the German language introduced, but certain prayers referring to the Messianic time were either omitted or altered. No wonder, then, that the Orthodox rabbis in Germany, with the support of the rabbis in various other countries, protested against such a course. The government even looked askance at these Reform proceedings, and in 1817 and 1823 ordered a number of these private synagogues to be closed. A further cause for displeasure was the introduction in 1814 of the confirmation of children in German, to replace or supplement the old Barmitzvah, a clear imitation of the ceremony in the Protestant Church of Germany. Despite opposition, however, the confirmation found its way into Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort, Cassel, Copenhagen, etc.
This Æsthetic revolution in the synagogue could not, however, long remain the only outward sign of the new life. The great weakness of the Reform movement has been that it has lacked a philosophic basis; and, as in its first beginnings, with the exception of Hamburg, it took little note of the changed point of view from which those who fought for reform looked at the old theological ideas. Æsthetic reform was the work largely of individual persons and individual congregations. No attempt had been made either to formulate the philosophic basis upon which the reform stood, or to provide a body which should regulate the form which the new order of things was to take on. Two attempts were made to remedy these evils, both closely related one to the other.
The first was crystallized in what is now known as the “Science of Judaism”; by which is meant the untrammelled, scientific investigation of the past history of the Jews. The want of this was severely felt just in those centres where reform had taken up its abode; and those who assisted at its birth did so with the avowed purpose of getting at the real kernel of Judaism by such investigation, and of freeing that kernel from the accretions of ages. They saw also that some means had to be found by which the result of these researches could be brought before the people. The Mendelssohn period had also felt this; but its organ had been written in Hebrew, and could not, therefore, appeal to those who wished for the intellectual advancement of the Jews upon modern lines. The Society for Culture and the Science of Judaism in Berlin (founded 1819) started a journal, with L. Zunz as editor. Though it only lived during the years 1822 and 1823, it was the forerunner and the model for many of its kind that followed after. In 1835 appeared Geiger’s Scientific Journal for Jewish Theology, and in 1837 a regular weekly was established by L. Philippson, the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums. Around these and other journals which quickly sprang up there gathered a coterie of historians, philologists, and students of literature which in the fifty years between 1830 and 1880 has built up a science which has extended its investigations into every corner of Jewish life in the past, and has followed to their sources the various lines of development which have appeared from time to time. A full estimate of what has been done will be apparent only when the great Jewish EncyclopÆdia will be ready which is now in course of publication in New York. Zunz, Geiger, Krochmal, Rapoport, Frankel, LÖw, Steinschneider, Graetz, Luzzatto, and Reggio are only a few of the names of those who gave up their lives to this work. Most of the early labor of these men was not dry-as-dust investigation pure and simple, but was intended to have a bearing upon the actual life, upon the burning questions which were then agitating Jewish thought. This is clearly seen in the journal of which Zunz was editor, and in his Gottesdienstliche Vortraege, the basis of nearly all the work done after him, but which was evidently written to give the history of preaching in the synagogue in order to justify the shortening of the ritual and the introduction of the German sermon.
The second attempt was to found or create some central body which would remove the purely personal element out of the Reform movement. In 1837 Geiger had called his friends to a conference at Wiesbaden for the purpose of formulating what they considered to be the essence of Judaism. In 1844 a second such rabbinical conference was held in Brunswick, largely at the suggestion of L. Philippson. Similar conferences were held at Frankfort in 1845, and at Breslau in 1846; for in the mean time the Reform Genossenschaft had been created at Berlin, which went beyond all previous attempts and demanded some positive statement of the theological position which it and its friends occupied. The Frankfort assembly not proving satisfactory, the Berlin society went ahead to establish its own synagogue; added a Sunday service (which in a short while became the only service), and under the guidance of S. Holdheim definitely broke with traditional Judaism, removing nearly all the Hebrew from its service, abbreviating the prayer-book still further, and diminishing the number of observances. In Europe this Reform synagogue in Berlin has gone to the furthest extreme; and though it has in a measure kept its members within the pale of Judaism, it has neither been a great power nor has it found imitators. The hope was generally expressed that a more general synod would be held, to which the previous conferences were looked upon as simply preparatory. The year 1848, however, put a stop to all normal development; and it was only after a number of years that the question was again taken up. In 1869 a synod was, indeed, held at Leipsic, attended by eighty-one members; and in 1871 at Augsburg, attended by fifty-two, both under the presidency of Prof. M. Lazarus. These synods dealt, in a spirit of moderate reform, with questions relating to the ritual, synagogue observance, the admission of proselytes, etc. The general stand there taken would to-day be looked upon as conservative; dogmatic questions were hardly touched upon excepting so far as they recognized the principle of development in Judaism both as a religious belief and as a form of religious exercise. It was fondly hoped that these synods would become a court, which would define and regulate whatever questions might arise. But it was not to be. The synod represented only a part of the Jewish world even in Germany. Not only did the large body of the Orthodox stand aside, but even the so-called Conservatives left the conferences, as they could not agree with some of the resolutions accepted there. In addition to this, the Franco-Prussian war diverted the attention of all German citizens; and ten years later the anti-Semitic movement succeeded in driving the Jew back into himself. Jewish religious life in Germany has therefore remained stationary since that time, the Orthodox and Conservative parties being largely in the ascendant, leaving to another land—America—the task of carrying further the work which it had commenced. Yet, in spite of this arrested development, the Reform movement has had a great influence also upon Orthodox Jews in Germany. It produced the so-called historical school, which has the Breslau Theological Seminary for its centre; and it called forth by way of opposition the neo-orthodoxy of S.R. Hirsch, of Frankfort, which seeks rather to understand the depths of the law than simply to follow it in compliant obedience.
The Æsthetic movement of the earlier period has also left its traces, and especially in the Conservative congregation has succeeded in introducing a service more in consonance with our modern ideas of worship.
In 1840, under the influence of the movement in Germany, the attempt was made to introduce a certain reform in the service of some of the London synagogues. The measure demanded was exceedingly small—the shortening of a few prayers and the omission of others, which were not supposed to be in consonance with present ideas. The Orthodox party did not, however, see its way to grant these requests; and, when the Reformers protested, established their own synagogue, and issued their own prayer-book, they were immediately placed under the bann both by the Sefardim and the Ashkenazim. This congregation has not been of much importance, and since its inception has made no further changes. Compared with the Reform in America, the English movement would still be classed as thoroughly conservative.
It was in the United States that the Reform movement developed its full capacity and bore its most perfect fruit. In a new land, which was untrammelled by traditions of the past, and where the congregational system became the basis of Jewish communal life, the ideas which the German Reformers had sown had a most fruitful ground in which to grow. It cannot be said that the Reform movement here was actually started by the Germans, for already, in 1825, one of the congregations in Charleston, South Carolina, made up almost entirely of Sefardic Jews, had developed “The Reformed Society of Israelites”; and the formation of the society seems to have been due, not only to the demand for an Æsthetic service, but to an attempt to formulate a creed which should omit all reference to the coming of the Messiah, the return to Palestine, and the bodily resurrection. This attempt at formulating a Theistic Church, however, was unsuccessful; and it was not until the advent from Germany in the 50’s and 60’s of rabbis who had been influenced by the movement in Germany that reform commenced to make itself felt here. Merzbacher in New York, Isaac M. Wise in Albany and Cincinnati, S. Hirsch in Philadelphia, David Einhorn in Baltimore, are only a few of the names of those who fought in the thick of the fight. About the year 1843 the first real Reform congregations were established, the Temple Emanu-el in New York and Har Sinai in Baltimore. It cannot be my purpose here to trace the history of the movement in this country; suffice it to say that the untrammelled freedom which existed here very soon played havoc with most of the institutions of the Jewish religion. Each congregation and each minister being a law to itself, shortened the service, excised prayers, and did away with observances as it thought best. Not that the leaders did not try, from time to time, to regulate the measure of reform to be introduced, and to evolve a platform upon which the movement should stand. Rabbinical conferences were held for that purpose in Cleveland (1856), Philadelphia (1869), Cincinnati (1871), and Pittsburg (1885). While in the earlier conferences the attempt was made to find some authoritative statement upon which all parties could agree, in the subsequent ones the attempt was given up. They became more and more meeting-places simply for the advanced Reform wing of the Jewish Church. The position of this wing of the Reformed synagogue may best be seen in the declaration of principles which was published by the Pittsburg conference. It declared that Judaism presents the highest conception of the God idea; that the Bible contains the record of the consecration of the Jewish people; that it is a potent instrument of religious and moral instruction; that it reveals, however, the primitive ideas of its own age; that its moral laws only are binding; and that all ceremonies therein ordained which are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization are to be rejected; that all Mosaic and rabbinical laws regulating diet, priestly functions and dress, are foreign to our present mental state; that the Jews are no longer a nation, and therefore do not expect a return to Palestine; that Judaism is a progressive religion, always striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason; that the belief in bodily resurrection, in the existence of a hell and a paradise, are to be rejected; and that it is the duty of Jews to participate in the great task of modern times to solve on the basis of justice and righteousness the problems presented by the transitions and evils of the present organization of society. Such a platform as this could not fail to arouse intense opposition on the part of the Orthodox Jews, and to lose for the conference even some of its more conservative adherents. As in Charleston, in 1825, a platform of Theism was here postulated, which was bereft of all distinctively Jewish characteristics, and which practically meant a breaking away from historic Judaism. This position of the advanced Reformers is also manifested in the stand which they have taken in regard to the necessity of the Abrahamic covenant. At a meeting of the Central Conference of American (Reformed) Rabbis, held at Baltimore in 1881, a resolution was passed to the effect that no initiatory rite or ceremony was necessary in the case of one desiring to enter the Covenant of Israel, and that such a one had merely to declare his or her intention to worship the one sole and eternal God, to be conscientiously governed in life by God’s laws, and to adhere to the sacred cause and mission of Israel as marked out in Holy Writ.
The service in Reform synagogues in the United States has kept pace with this development of doctrine, or rather with this sloughing-off of so much that is distinctively Jewish. The observance of the second-day festivals has been entirely abolished, as well as the separation of the sexes and the covering of the head in prayer. The ritual has been gradually shortened, the ancient language of prayer (Hebrew) has been pushed further and further into the background, so that in some congregations the service is altogether English; and in a few congregations an additional service on Sunday, intended for those who cannot attend upon the regular Sabbath-day, has been introduced. Only one congregation, Sinai in Chicago, has followed the old Berlin Reform synagogue and has entirely abolished the service on Friday night and Saturday morning. But whatever criticism one might like to offer on the Reform movement in the United States, it deserves great praise for the serious attempt it has made to understand its own position and to square its observance with that position. It has also been most active in its modern institutional development. It has certainly beautified and spiritualized the synagogue service; it has founded a Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and a seminary (Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati). It has published a Union Prayer-book and a Union Hymn-book, and has given great care to the development of the Confirmation and the bettering of the Sunday-school. It has tried to make the synagogue a centre for the religious and spiritual development of its members; and it cannot be denied that the very large mass of educated Jews in this country, in so far as they have any affiliation with the synagogue, belong to the Reform wing. But at the same time, it must not be forgotten that there is a very large body of Orthodox and Conservative Jews, whose number has been greatly increased during the last twenty years through the influx of Russian, Galician, and Roumanian Jews. It would be outside of my province were I to attempt to criticise either the work or the results of Reform Judaism in this country. But it is a question in the minds even of some of the leading Reformers themselves how far success has been attained in developing the religious sentiment of their people in the direction of a pure Theism uncolored by any Jewish, or, as they call it, Oriental observances. They themselves confess that the Sunday-service movement has not developed as they had hoped it would, and a number of them feel that in weakening the hold which specific Jewish observances have always had on the Jewish people, they are doing away with one of the most powerful incentives to the rekindling of the religious flame among the Reformed Jews.
Reform Judaism without some centrifugal force is bound to continue on the road it has once taken. The logical outcome of the principles formulated at the Pittsburg conference is a gradual development into an ethical Theism without any distinctive Jewish coloring. The leader of advanced Reform Judaism in this country has recently said that Judaism must be recast along the lines of a universal ethical religion; that then all distinctive Jewish elements of the synagogue symbolism will pass away, and that such a denationalized Jewish temple will seek a closer alliance with Unitarianism and Theism, and with them, perhaps in a few decades, will form a new Church and a new religion for united humanity. That such a tendency is inherent in Reform Judaism is seen also in the formation of the Society of Ethical Culture in New York. The leader of this movement is the son of a former prominent rabbi of the leading Reform congregation in this country. In seeking to bring out the underlying ethical principles of Judaism, he has gone entirely outside the pale of the ancient faith; and the movement would not concern us here were it not that nearly all the members (at least of the parent society in New York) are Jews, whose evident desire it is not to be recognized as such, at least so far as religious ceremonies and social affiliations are concerned. The society does not even bear the name Jewish, but with a certain leaning towards liberal Christianity tries to find a basis for the morality and ethics of the old synagogue outside the sphere of supernatural religion. While the Ethical Culture Society has been quite a power in certain lines of charitable and educational work, it may reasonably be questioned whether it has any future as a form of Church organization. The inborn longing of man for some hold upon things which are supernatural will lead many of its members to seek satisfaction elsewhere. That they will seek it in the Jewish synagogue is hardly probable, seeing how the racial and other ties have been broken or at least greatly loosened. They or their children will glide rather into some form of the dominant Church, possibly, in the swinging of the pendulum, into some orthodox form of that Church. I cannot help quoting the words of an intelligent outside observer of the Jewish question, the Right Hon. James Bryce, M.P.: “If Judaism becomes merely Theism, there will be little to distinguish its professors from the persons, now pretty numerous, who, while Christian in name, sit loose to Christian doctrine. The children of Jewish theists will be almost as apt as the children of other theists to be caught up by the movement which carries the sons and daughters of evangelical Anglicans and of Nonconformists towards, or all the way to, the Church of Rome.”
Where, then, is this centrifugal force to be found, which will hold together the various elements in Israel, no matter what their theological opinions may be?
ANTI-SEMITISM
Before attempting to answer this question, a word must be said in regard to the anti-Semitic movement, the recrudescence of which has so profoundly affected the Jewish people during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. A word only, because the facts are of too recent date to need a detailed statement here. The great master-mind, Zunz, writing in Germany in 1832, believed that persecution for religious belief could not withstand the onslaughts of the new era. Theodore Reinach, some fifty years later, asserted that anti-Semitism was impossible in France. How sadly has a dÉmenti been given to the hopes thus expressed, especially in these two countries!
I pass over the outbreaks against the Jews during the early years of the nineteenth century, even the Damascus blood-accusation in 1840, and the forcible baptism of little Edgar Mortara in 1858; they were believed to belong to the old order of things, with which the new, at least in that direction, had nothing in common. I confine myself simply to the modern form of anti-Judaism, which has been dignified with the name of anti-Semitism. It is hard for a Jew to speak of these things with composure or with the judicial mind of a mere chronicler of events. Neither emancipation from without nor Reform from within has been able to stay the hand of the destroyer of Israel’s peace. It has been contended that in most countries the Jews were not ready to be emancipated; that in some the non-Jewish population was not sufficiently advanced to make emancipation effective. The first may be true in regard to the Algerian Jews; the second, in regard to those in Roumania; but it is not true of the other nations on the European continent. Starting in Germany, perhaps as a political move on the part of Bismarck, it spread into Russia, Galicia, Austria, Roumania, and France. In most of these countries it not only found expression in the exclusion of the Jews from all social intercourse with their fellows, but in Russia produced the riots of 1881 and 1882; in Austria and Bohemia the turbulent scene in the Reichstag, and even the pillaging of Jewish houses and Jewish synagogues; in Roumania it received the active support of the government and reduced the Jews there to practical penury; while in France it showed itself in accusations against the Jews which for barbarity could match any that were brought against them in the Middle Ages. The charges against the Jews are varied in their character. In Germany they have been blamed for exploiting the agricultural class and for serving the interests of the Liberal party, forgetting that Leo and Stahl, the founders of the Orthodox party in Prussia, were themselves Jews, and that Disraeli in England was born of the same race. The most foolish accusations on almost every conceivable subject have been lodged against them by such men as Ahlwart, StÖcker, Lueger, and Drumont; and in late years the old and foolish charge that the Jews use the blood of Christian children in the making of Passover bread has been revived, in order to infuriate the populace; despite the fact that popes, ecclesiastics, and hosts of Christian professors have declared the accusation to be purely imaginary and malignant. The false charge that a Jewish officer in France had betrayed secrets of his government was sufficient to unloosen the most savage attacks upon the Jews which the modern world has seen.
The fact which stands out in the whole agitation is not that the charges have been made, in most cases by men who sought in some way or other to fish in troubled waters, but that these charges find a ready echo and a ready response among the people at large. It emphasizes so clearly that the Jews are a defenceless people, with no means of effectually warding off attacks; and though in Germany and Austria societies of Christians have been formed for the purpose of combating anti-Semitism, there is no power which can effectually enter the lists in their behalf. This was notably seen in the great London demonstration of 1882, when the petition signed by the foremost members of Church and state never even reached the Czar, to whom it was addressed.
Among the few bright spots on the world’s chart are those countries inhabited by the Anglo-Saxon race. Anti-Semitism is unknown in England (though the attempt has been made to fix the blame for the Boer war on the Jews); and the institutions of the United States have up till now prevented the entrance here of the disease, though in the mild form of social anti-Semitism which debars Jewish children from private schools and Jewish people from clubs and summer hotels, it has insinuated itself into some of the Eastern cities, notably into New York.
ZIONISM
There can be no doubt that next to the Reform movement the profoundest modification of the forces within Judaism has come about during the last years of the century through the rise and progress of the Zionist movement. It has been said by some that Zionism is the expression of Jewish pessimism, by others that it is the highest form of Jewish optimism. I venture to say that it is both. The emancipation of the Jews has not been able to do away with anti-Semitism; history has repeated itself time and time again. When the Jews of a country were few in number and of little influence, they led a tolerably secure existence; but as soon as their number increased and their influence commenced to be felt, anti-Semitism was the effective weapon in the hands of their opponents. In so far, then, as Zionism takes account of this fact, it is pessimistic; for conditions in the future will hardly differ from those in the past. It sees the Wandering Jew of history continuing still his dreary march through the ages, never at rest and never able to effect a quiet and even development of his own forces. It explains this phenomenon from the fact that Israel has in all the changed circumstances striven to maintain its racial identity, and as this racial identity has a religious side as well, that the two combined may well be called a separate national existence; that a people holding tenaciously to this separate existence, but having no home of its own, must become, when occasion demands, the scape-goat and the play-ball of other forces. It recognizes anti-Semitism as continually existent, and in so far the opponents of Zionism may be right in saying that its rise is the result of the anti-Jewish movement. It is the Jewish answer from the Jewish point of view. On the other hand, Zionism is optimistic in believing that real help for the Jews can only come from within their own body; and that the Jewish question will only be solved when the Jews return to that point in their history whence they set out on their wanderings, and again found a permanent home to which all the persecuted can flee and from which a light will go forth to every nook and corner of Jewry. It does not hope that all Jews will return to Palestine, but it believes that only in a national centre can the centrifugal force be found which will hold the Jews together in the various countries of their sojourn.
When Theodore Herzl, a littÉrateur in Vienna, published in 1897 his pamphlet on the Jewish state, he little imagined that it would call forth an echo in every country in which the Jews were scattered. He was not the first to attempt this solution of the problem. Far-seeing Russian Jews before him had, many years previous to that, propounded this method of dealing with the question, and it had been practically the assumption upon which the Judaism of the past had been built up. Reform Judaism, in relinquishing the hope of a return, and in cutting out from the prayer-book all mention of Palestine and the restoration, broke one of the strongest links which bound the Judaism of to-day with that of the past, and cast aside a great ideal, the realization of which had been a light to the feet of the Jews since the destruction of the Temple. The idea of a “Mission” has taken its place, the preaching of a pure Monotheism.
The Zionist congresses (which have now been held during four successive years) have found the platform, so often sought for in vain during the nineteenth century, upon which all Jews, regardless of theological opinions and of economic theories, can stand. They represent the old unity of Israel; for Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and even the purely racial Jew are to be found there as well as in the Zionist societies which have grown up in every Jewish community, whether in Europe or in Africa, in North or in South America, even in the distant Philippines. The Orthodox Jew must be, by his very profession, a Zionist; but he often doubts whether the plan as formulated by Dr. Herzl is feasible, and holds himself aloof, waiting for the realization of his hopes at the hands of others, or for some supernatural sign of divine assistance. The very fact that the Jewish opponents of Zionism (and they are the only opponents it has) come from various parts of the Jewish camp is in itself a proof of the above statement. The Orthodox complain that some of the leaders of the movement are not sufficiently Jewish; the Reform, that some are too Jewish. That this opposition is exceedingly strong cannot be denied. The demand made that the Jew should assert himself first and foremost as a Jew has been distasteful to many who were soaring in the mystic hazes of Universalism, or who had hoped to get out of Judaism as it were by the back door, without being seen by the world at large.
But even in those circles which do not formally affiliate with Zionism, or who at times even oppose it, there has of late years been a very strong revival of Jewish feeling and a movement towards a stronger expression of that feeling. Germany is honeycombed with societies for the study of Jewish literature; the Hebrew language has been revived, notably in Russia, not only as a form of literary expression, but also as a vehicle of social intercourse; France has its Society of Jewish Studies; America and England have their Jewish Historical Societies, and their Jewish Chautauqua movements; Jewish national societies have sprung up among the students of German and Austrian universities—all influences—tending in this one direction.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
As we look ahead into the century which is now opening and cast our eye over the forces which the Jews will bring into its life, we can easily see that these forces tend in various directions.
We have first the Orthodox wing of the Jewish Church, which stands upon the broad basis of what the past has evolved. It holds firmly to the inspiration of the biblical word and the divine character of its interpretation as handed down in the oral law; it tries to regulate its life by Talmudic ordinances as evolved in the latest law books, and is unwilling to make any but Æsthetic concessions to changed circumstances, believing that we must adhere strictly to all the time-honored ceremonies of the synagogue. At its side stand the Conservatives, who are willing to make some concession to present demands, but believe that these concessions should be most sparingly and grudgingly made, and who theologically, at least in theory, occupy the same position as do the Orthodox. It is safe to say that the greater number of Jews in the Western European states belong to this wing of the synagogue. Between the Conservatives and the Ethical Culturists stands the Reform party, more numerous in the United States than anywhere else, whose position it is hard to define and in whose midst there are various shades of opinion and of practice. All the Reformers have openly or tacitly broken with Talmudic Judaism—the more conservative among them seem to believe that a new Judaism can be built up upon the Bible, only without its traditional interpretation; while the advanced body do not even look upon the Bible as binding, but merely as a starting-point for a further development. They do not consider the Bible as inspired in the old accepted sense of the term; they welcome biblical criticism as an aid to the understanding of the early history of their people; they do not believe in the special election of Israel, and have a well-defined abhorrence of anything like a creed. They are practically Theists with a Jewish racial coloring. Nor do they believe in the coming of a personal Messiah; rather, in the advent of a Messianic time in which righteousness and good-will shall prevail and all the earth acknowledge the one God. To bring about this time is, according to them, the Mission of the Jew—a phrase very current in these latter days, the fulfilling of which has been made the pretext for dejudaizing Judaism, so as to make it acceptable to non-Jews. Mr. Oswald John Simon, of London, has even gone further. He believes that if the Reform party is earnest in its pretensions, it ought—as it did once before in its history—to become an active missionary power. A few years ago he attempted to found a Jewish Theistic Church, which should in no way be colored by Jewish ceremonial. The movement was, of course, a failure. The original attempt, some nineteen hundred years ago, led to the founding of the Christian Church, and Jews themselves have suffered too much from missionaries of other faiths to take to this work with pleasure. But, in addition to these, there is also a large body of Jews whose connection with the synagogue is purely nominal, and who know of it only when they need the services of its sanction or the respectability of its connections. The hold which the Jewish Church has upon them is small indeed, and many of them hope, in the twentieth century, to doff their Jewish gaberdine. The open or concealed pressure of anti-Semitism (particularly on the continent of Europe) which makes it impossible for the Jew as such to attain to social distinction or political position will drive most of these into the arms of the dominant Church of the country in which they live. In a remarkable article published in the Deutsche JahrbÜcher of October, 1900, a writer who uses the nom de plume of Benedictus Levita openly urges those of his fellow-Jews who have become estranged from the synagogue to have their children baptized, in order that they may not suffer as their parents have, but may become really believing Christians, since their affiliation with the Christian Church has become necessary in the modern Christian state. Another German Jew at about the same time advises his brethren to declare themselves “Confessionslos,” so as to become lost, not in Christianity, but in “Deutschtum.” A similar request was made to the Jews of Roumania, in 1900, by the historian Xenopol of Bucharest. There is little fear that this advice of wholesale apostasy will find many adherents, notwithstanding the fact that an unusually large number of conversions have taken place in Germany and Austria, due wholly to pressure from without rather than to conviction from within. The defection even of comparatively large numbers can, however, hardly affect the Jewish cause as a whole; for these numbers living on the periphery, or even beyond it, have been of little service to the Jewish cause; and all through the ages Jews have made just such contributions as these to the general society in which they lived.
There can be no doubt that Zionism is a strong protest against these weaklings, and that the coming century will witness the Jews divided into two camps not necessarily hostile to each other, the Zionists and the Non-Zionists—those who plead for a conservation of the old energy and the old ideals, and those who look forward to the disintegration of Judaism and its gradual passing away into other forces. That Judaism can only conserve its force if that force is attached to a racial and national basis is seen clearly in the fact that just those Jews in Germany who have been most loudly clamorous against the Zionists propose to have now what they call a German “Judentag,” which can certainly mean nothing unless it become Zionist in its tendency.
Confident in this hope, we of the House of Israel look calmly into the future. The message of the prophet of old is full of meaning for us: “Thus saith the Lord God: behold I, even I, will both search my sheep and seek them out, as a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his flock which is scattered, and I will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.” We can echo the sentiments expressed by a Christian Zionist, George Eliot, many years ago: “Revive the organic centre; let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. Looking towards a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West—which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.”
Richard J.H. Gottheil.
