This comes rather unawares, but I wish to be very brief in stating
that, while I listened to the very interesting and suggestive remarks
that were made all along this table, and also on recalling what we
heard last night, I feel glad, after all, from the point of view of
the Hebrew Union College, that the Intercollegiate Menorah Association
has come here to make propaganda for its work, at the same time
receiving perhaps new direction and new ideas about the work they have
so nobly begun. The fact that the work--started, as we heard, at
Harvard in 1906--has made such progress shows that at least there was
something in the young Jewish student at the colleges that called for
the creation of such an association and such kind of work. Perhaps I
may say that those who had their misgivings as to the tendencies of
the Menorah Association are now at least informed that some of these
misgivings or suspicions were not well founded. I personally will say
that I had the impression that there was too much of nationalism or
Zionism behind the movement, and that the movement was not, from the
point of view of the Hebrew Union College or my humble self, one
deserving encouragement and support. I have learned to change some of
my views and some of my impressions as to the purpose and intention of
this movement. There is a well-known quotation, for those who know a
little German:
"Das sind die Weisen,
Die vom Irrtum zur Wahrheit reisen;
Das sind die Narren,
Die beim Irrtum beharren."
I am not one of those who insist on views once maintained though later
found faulty. I am rather ready to change my views, especially after
what I heard today from my honored neighbor (Prof. I. L. Sharfman) and
from what he said last night that the religious idea of Judaism is not
ignored but is held in view.
All Jews who are Jews must believe that Judaism stands for an
uncompromising monotheistic truth, while the world around us has
compromised the same. Therefore we, as Jews, must always insist upon
the maintenance of the pure monotheistic idea for which we suffered
and struggled, and for which our fathers died. We must maintain this
as the mainstay and vital principle of Judaism. For this very reason,
and for no other, we insist, especially from the point of view of a
Jewish theological college, that this idea of a pure Jewish religion,
the pure monotheistic idea, must be held unshakenly and without any
change or any concession. And for that very reason we could not and
will not say that race is everything. We cannot admit that a pure race
is the best, and that a pure Jew is he who has maintained solely
everything Jewish and not allowed the Greek culture to be assimilated
in order to sublimate and spiritualize and idealize the truth
inherited. For Ruppin and the Nationalists who follow him, the poor
Jews, the ghetto Jews, of Russia who speak Yiddish and live only an
exclusive narrow life, are _five-fifths_ Jews, while the Jews in free
and civilized lands are only half Jews. Now against this, we of the
Hebrew Union College, we who represent progressive or reformed
Judaism, must protest. We must insist that the Jewish race, the Jewish
people or nation, if you want to call it so, can form only the body;
Judaism, the Jewish religion, is the soul. And we will always stand
not merely for the body, not merely for the material side, not merely
for race, which is the lowest kind of life, but for the spirit, the
soul of Judaism, and that is its religious truth.