ANOTHER way of showing how the Old Testament has injured the thought and conduct of the Jewish race—as it has of all other races which have accepted its authority, although, not to the same extent, for the obvious reason that they have wandered from its teaching more freely and daringly than the Jews—would be by examining Jewish religious literature, especially the Talmud.

The rank and file of the orthodox Jews regard the Talmud with almost as great a reverence as the Old Testament. Even by advanced rabbis it is regarded as the best commentary on Mosaic morals and ritual. The Talmud is to the Jews what the decisions and interpretations of church councils are to the Catholics. The Talmud has been called the "Revelation on the Lip," that is to say, the unwritten word of God. For an intelligent understanding of Judaism, a knowledge of the Talmud is as indispensable as that of the Old Testament. We will make a few quotations here to show that the Talmud goes even beyond the Old Testament, if that were possible, in regarding the Gentile as an enemy, instead of as a brother. Many among the Jews are as ignorant of the contents of the Talmud, as many among the Christians are of the contents of the bible. Let me reproduce a few of the Talmudic texts:

If the ox of an Israelite bruise the ox of a Gentile, the Israelite is exempt from paying damages; but should the ox of a Gentile bruise the ox of an Israelite, the Gentile is bound to recompense him in full. *

If one finds lost property in a locality where the majority are Israelites, he is bound to proclaim it, but he is not bound to do so if the majority be Gentiles. **

If one who intends to kill a Gentile, he slay an Israelite... he shall be free. ***

An alien forfeits the right to his own property in favor of the Jews. ****

Rabbi Shemuel says advantage may be taken of the mistakes of a Gentile. He once bought a gold plate as a copper of a Gentile for four zouzim, and then cheated him out of one zouz in the bargain. Rabbi Cahana says that he swindled a Gentile, while the Gentile assured him that he confidently trusted to his honesty. (v)

It is also expressly urged (Bava Kama, fol. 113, col. 1 ), to resort to false and adroit pretexts to secure the acquittal of a guilty Jew. Compare this from the "people of God" with the following from a Pagan Poet:

If ever called

To give thy witness in a dubious case,

Though Phalaris himself should bid thee lie

On pain of torture in his flaming bull,

Disdain to barter innocence for life,

To which life owes its luster and its worth.(vi)

Doctor Edersheim quotes the following from the Talmud:

The best of the Gentiles kill; the best among serpents, crush its head.

Now this is the book which is to the orthodox Jew in Poland and Russia what the Pope is to the Italian and Spanish peasantry. That it is binding upon the conscience of every believing Jew may be inferred from the following:

Whosoever transgresses any of the sayings of the scribes is guilty of death. *

The Talmud with its twelve large folio volumes, represents the national literature of the Jews for a long period of time. What its worth is, aside from the few scattered passages quoted above, may be seen from the following estimate:

But yet I venture to say that it would be impossible to find less wisdom, less eloquence and less high morality, imbedded in a vaster bulk of what is utterly valueless to mankind—to say nothing of those parts of it which are indelicate and even obscene—than in any other national literature of the same extent. **

But what Canon Farrar says of the Talmud could with equal truth be said of the bulk of the bible. The Jews could ask for no better illustration of the baneful influence of the bible upon their national literature for long centuries than the worthless character of the Talmudic writings.

It would have been a real miracle for the Jews to have developed a great literature, or to have created a great civilization like that of the Hellens or the Latins, with an infallible bible, and its offspring, the Talmud, blocking their progress on every side. It is interesting to note that the only races of antiquity which blossomed morally, as well as intellectually, are those which had no revelation to hamper their free movements or to stunt their growth. The unfortunate Jews went through life carrying the burden of Jehovah. The Greeks made sport of their gods; Jehovah made sport of the Jews.

If in modern times the Jews have produced first-class scholars in nearly every branch of the activities of the mind, it is because, like the glorious Spinoza, the heretic Jew who was cursed and expelled from the synagogue, they have divorced barren Judaism and "taken for spouse" science—the only redeemer that redeems. I sincerely hope—and there are many signs that this hope will be realized in the not distant future—that even as the French after centuries of submission to Rome threw off its yoke and came out of Catholicism into modern thought—not a few individuals only, but the best part of the nation—government and all; and as Spain, the most Catholic country in the world, is preparing to follow the example of France; and as noble little Portugal has just reasoned and voted itself out of the papacy into freedom of thought and action, I earnestly hope that the Jews, too, after untold centuries of intellectual bondage to an Asiatic religion, which is inimical to culture and humanity, will come out of the synagogue en masse, thereby registering their protest against both bible and Talmud, and proving, as the French have done, for instance, that they are great enough to change their religion.

The fear that the decline of Judaism will bring about national disintegration is without foundation. If the Jew is an American in America, an Englishman in England, a German in Germany—how can his withdrawal from Judaism affect his nationality? Is Judaism the name of a nation or of a religion? It is argued that the Jews are compelled to cling to one another, and to keep together in a body, because of the general prejudice against them. Will I be forgiven if I were to say that Judaism is largely responsible for this fearful prejudice. Is there a text in bible or Talmud, which any rabbi could quote, to prove that Jew and Gentile should love and respect one another and dwell together in fraternal relations, taking and giving in marriage, as though they were one people? Produce such a text! And if there be not, is it any wonder that the Gentile, the world over, and in all the ages, has looked upon the Jew as an alien? It is not true that the cause of the prejudice against the Jew is the charge that his ancestors crucified Christ. That is a foolish argument. It is invented by the rabbis to throw dust into the eyes of inquirers. Then why did the ancient Romans, long before Christ, entertain a prejudice against the Jews? The Latin authors explained the reason for the prejudice: It was the religious scruple of the Jew against mingling cordially and honestly with people other than his own. Judaism shut up the Jew in his shell. To come in contact with a non-Jew, to treat him, in every respect, as a brother, was blasphemy. Is it any wonder that Cicero, writing about the Jews, said that the Romans were better acquainted with the Hindus who lived thousands of miles away, than with the Jews who lived next door to them? It was the exclusiveness of the Jew which created and which, alas, prevents from dying, the prejudice against them. It is far from my purpose to contend that this is the only source of the ill-feeling between Jew and Christian, but I am confident that were the Jews to abandon Judaism, an Asiatic religion which will not assimilate modern thought, and abandon also such rites and ceremonies which are unbecoming to a civilized people, and enter into the most intimate domestic relations with their neighbors, in a few generations the ugly sectarian and racial prejudices, lacking their daily nourishment, will waste away and die. "Ah, but if we do that, we will lose our Judaism," says the rabbi. Keep your Judaism, if you prefer it to humanity. Of course, the Christians, too, must outgrow their exclusive religion. But my point is that the Christians, as in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and America are coming out of the old faiths en masse, while there is as yet no such definite movement among the Jews. True enough, here and there one meets a Jew who has all but repudiated Judaism. As a representative of this class is the writer of the article on Judaism in Chambers' Encyclopedia—Doctor Krauskopf, of Philadelphia. This gentleman almost completely strips Judaism of all its biblical and Talmudic features. The program put forth by him is of so very radical a character as hardly to deserve the title of Judaism. It comes near leaving out supernaturalism altogether.

"We discard," says Doctor Krauskopf, "the belief in a God who is a man magnified, who has his abode somewhere in the interstellar spaces. We discard the belief that the bible was written by God, or by man under the immediate dictation of God, and that its teachings are therefore infallible.... We discard the belief in the coming of a human Messiah who will lead us back to Palestine, establish us as the rulers of the world, and make all nations tributaries to us. We discard the belief in bodily resurrection, hell-torments, Paradisian rewards, prophecy, superstitions, all biblical and rabbinical beliefs, rites and ceremonies and institutions, which neither elevate nor sanctify our lives." * Another step, and Judaism will be swallowed up in Rationalism.

Will Judaism take that other step? The Jew will; but I fear that Judaism will not. Like Christianity and every other form of organized religion, Judaism is too aged to put forth new shoots. Abandon it, is my earnest suggestion. It has hurt the Jew. Judaism has made the Jew narrow and anti-social. At a Jewish Congress held at Basle in 1898, Doctor Mandelstam, Professor in the University of Kiev, said: "The Jews energetically reject the idea of fusion with other nationalities, and cling firmly to their historical hope—that is, of a world empire." Again, Dr. Leopold Kahn, the Vienna rabbi, in 1901 declared that "the Jew will never be able to assimilate himself; he will never adopt the customs and ways of other peoples. The Jew remains Jew under all circumstances. Every assimilation is purely exterior." **

The educated Jews everywhere should combat such bigotry. If the Jewish people desire universal respect and equality, they must fuse with other people, which they can only do by coming out of the ancient oriental wilderness. To say that the jews energetically reject the idea of "fusion with other nationalities," is to expose them to the charge that they are the sworn enemies of the human race. Rabbis, beware!

During the recent Race Congress in London, Mr. H. Snell spoke as follows on this important question:

Regarding the question from the standpoint of ethical internationalism, it is not the Jew, but Judaism, that is at fault. As a citizen pursuing his daily avocation, sharing in the duties and responsibilities of the common life, the Jew is the equal of his English neighbor, and should be so regarded. He is a reliable business man, a loyal comrade and a good friend. The Jew in the synagogue is a totally different matter. It is the curse of organized religion that it divides men from their fellows, and engenders strife rather than harmony. The moment the orthodox Jew remembers his Judaism, he ceases to be one with the nation in which he lives, and he falls back upon those racial prejudices which certainly perpetuate, even if they did not actually create, the aversion with which he is regarded. It is, I repeat, not the citizen Jew, but the theocratic Jew and the financial Jew, that constitutes the problem. No people can expect to be loved when they, through their habits and institutions, openly deride the institutions and customs of the nations under whose laws they live. The orthodox Jew is not an Englishman or a German, even though he may happen to have been born in the countries named. In so far as he obeys the Jewish law he represents a firm, isolated, yet international political unity, having as its goal the dominancy of the Jewish people. The land in which he lives does not appear to count. The Jewish people become a State within a State, living their own life, and cutting themselves off from the customs and ideals of the populations among whom they exist, and through whom they attain to material comfort. The Jew will not eat or drink with his Gentile neighbors; their marriage laws are not good enough for him; he regards marriage with any one outside his race with horror; he will not accept the day of rest enjoined by the peoples among whom he dwells for his own Sabbath, but makes one day's rest in seven practically impossible for large sections of the people by insisting upon a special day of his own. It is this senseless isolation of Judaism, and its badly concealed contempt for the Gentile, that make the change of attitude toward the Jew so difficult.

The prejudice against the Jew is one of the most degrading things in modern life. Such is the solidarity of humanity that what hurts one is bound to hurt also the other. But we see no solution of the Jewish problem except in the complete emancipation of the Jew from Judaism, and of the Christian from Christianity. Reason will unite what religion has put asunder.