I do not know whether you have observed that Cincinnati is somewhat
akin to the city of Rome as well as to the holy city of Jerusalem--it
is a city with many hills. On this hill here, facing one another for
friendly and harmonious coöperation, the two institutions of learning
in which we especially, the Jewish community, take particular
pride--the University of Cincinnati, which so prominently and in ever
expanding proportion stands for the humanities, for classical culture,
for the professional and scientific branches of secular knowledge, and
on the other hand, the Hebrew Union College, which stands for the
mother religion of civilized humanity and for the progressive spirit
of Judaism and of Americanism. In this rather insignificant incident
the Jewish community may well find a great principle expressed. With
his face towards the East from which issues the light of day, where
was cradled the faith of Israel, the Jew, ever beholding in classical
wisdom and knowledge the sister of his faith, proceeded with the
westward march of civilization in order to make religion, by the
reason and research of the ages, a great, progressive power, ever
regenerating his spiritual heritage and rejuvenating that religion of
his own as it goes on through the centuries.
This fact, however, of a continual intellectual and spiritual progress
of Judaism, is altogether too rarely recognized by the surrounding
Christian world, even by its men of light and leading or by its seats
of learning, because the New Testament is looked upon by altogether
too many as the death warrant of the Old Testament, as if the sun of
civilization had stood still over Israel ever since its seers and
singers and sages of yore voiced the Divine message. Nor does the
Jewish man of culture and college training as a rule appreciate the
wondrous achievements of the Jewish genius since the very dawn of
history until our day, in the whole domain of learning and science, or
of ethical and religious culture.
It is therefore a highly laudable endeavor undertaken by the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association to arouse the dormant spirit of
self-respect in the academic Jewish youth, to stir in him the ambition
to study and know this matchless history and literature, and to kindle
in his soul anew that idealism which made the Jew throughout all the
ages endure and brave the onslaughts of the empires and churches and
the persecuting mobs, so that even to-day he is as young and as
vigorous as any of the youngest races and nations in the world.
_The Importance of Israel's Religion_
This past, I say, cannot but appeal to every high-minded American,
whether Christian or Jew, and your study of it will certainly meet
with our warmest support and encouragement. Only, in my opinion, one
thing you need, young as your association is, young in years and young
in experience, and that is, a full comprehension and keen realization
of the subject you have in view and a wise and right direction towards
it. No one doubts or questions the sincerity of your motives or the
praiseworthiness of your aims and purposes when you place on your
program the study of Jewish history, culture and problems, and the
advancement of Jewish ideals, but you omit that which is most
essential, which is the all-encompassing force and factor of Jewish
life, the real, peculiar and genuine product of the Jewish
genius--religion. We have got a religion which, as has been put by
Matthew Arnold, has fashioned four-fifths of the world's civilization.
In omitting the idea, as expressed by Matthew Arnold, of the power
that maketh for righteousness, in declaring your movement as being
altogether non-religious, you run the risk of making of your endeavor
an inevitable and certain failure.[G] Let me quote to you from an
address delivered recently before a Jewish society in London on
"Israel and Medicine" by Professor Osler, sentences that are
remarkable and worth repeating. He says:
"In estimating the position of Israel in the human values, one must
remember that the quest for righteousness is Oriental, the quest for
knowledge, Occidental. With the great prophets of the East--Moses,
Isaiah, Mahomet [he might have included Jesus of Nazareth], the word
was 'Thus saith the Lord.' With the seers of the West, from Aristotle
to Darwin, it was 'What says nature?' Modern civilization is the
outcome of the two great movements of the mind of man, who is to-day
ruled in heart and head by Israel and by Greece. From the one he has
learned responsibility to a Supreme Being and love for his neighbor,
in which are embraced the law and the prophets. From the other he has
gathered the promise of Eden, to have dominion over the earth in which
he lives."
Now let me add to this that whatever the Jew claims or possesses of
culture he has borrowed from the nations and civilizations around him,
whether it be architecture, the art or the mode of writing, philosophy
and science, the modes of social and industrial life, all of which he
has taken and assimilated into his own life.
Not so with his religious truth. This is all his own, his peculiar and
genuine contribution to humanity. Thereby he has given human life its
eternal value, its purpose, its goal and hope for all time.
Now it seems to me that you may as well expect of the blind to depict
for you his impressions of the prismatic glories of the rainbow, or of
the deaf to orate on the beauties of a Beethoven symphony, as to
expect of one who lacks the sense of religion, the spirit of faith, to
expound, or even to understand, the ideals of the Jew, whose history
throughout the past was but one continuous glorification of the only
one God, by the master works of its hundreds and thousands of men of
learning and the unparalleled martyrdom of the whole people, and whose
future is humanity made one by the belief in the only one God and
Father. Therefore, let me give you, delegates and members of the
Intercollegiate Menorah Association, the advice to continue as you
started, as an academic, cosmopolitan association, yet at the same
time let it be linked to the synagogue of each city as the center of
the faith. Let your watch-word be true to the symbol of קומי אורי
"arise and shine," and give light to all the nations. Let your
inspiration and your power of enlightening the world ever come fresh
from the sanctuary of faith, as of yore, and you will not only be all
the more honored for this loyalty to the spirit of the past and the
spirit of the American people which is religious, but the sweetest
delight that comes from the classic world of beauty will reflect only
the brighter light of the holiness, the beauty of holiness, that comes
from Israel's one God.