Since this seems to be the occasion for reminiscence, I want to take
the liberty of recalling for you an episode of the formation of the
Menorah Society at Harvard. It turned on the question of the right
form of stating the object of the Society and you will remember
perhaps that the object is stated in these terms: "The Harvard Menorah
Society for the study and advancement of Hebraic culture and
ideals"--not Jewish, not Judaistic, but Hebraic. The persons who
agitated the use of the term Hebraic had certain very definite
literary and historic and social relationships in mind.
To begin with, the word Judaism, in the English language, stands
exclusively for a religion. It is co-ordinate with the word
Christianity, the word Buddhism, the word Zoroastrianism, with any
word that stands exclusively for a religion. Now in the history of the
Jewish people, there was a time when Judaism did not exist, and if I
understand the gentlemen who represent the Reform sect correctly--I
speak under correction--the intention of the Reform movement is a
reversion in fact to the religious attitude of the pre-Judaistic
period in the history of the religion of the Jewish people. It is
"prophetic" or "progressive Judaism" for which they stand, I gather,
in contrast with the "Talmudical Judaism," of the larger orthodox
sect. But the period of the great prophets is not the period of
Judaism, and strictly speaking, the term Judaism excludes the
prophetic element as an active force in Jewish life. This is
significant, and to me the significance seems tremendous, for so far
as my personal sympathies are concerned they go entirely with the
prophetic aspects of Judaism, or better, of Hebraism.
_Hebraism and Judaism_
Hebraism and Judaism are words now in the English language and their
usage is determined for us entirely by the writers who become
authoritative either by their style or through the weight of their
opinion, and this usage has given the term Hebraism a meaning such
that it stands for the entire spirit of the Jew, not only in religion
but in all that is Jewish; in English the term Hebraism covers the
total biography of the Jewish soul, while the term Judaism stands only
for a portion of it. Now the Jewish soul is the important thing, but
no one has ever met a soul without a body (at least the people who
claim they have met it are still required, for belief, to show
evidence more than they have thus far shown); generally speaking, soul
and body are co-ordinate and mutually imply each other. You cannot
have one without the other. This is even more the case when you are
dealing not with an individual but with a people. Hence it is the
history of the Jewish body-politic with which Hebraism and its
components, including Judaism, co-ordinate.
For this reason the gentlemen who stated the object of the Society in
the constitution of the Harvard Menorah Society were compelled to take
into consideration the following historic fact: There was a time in
the history of mankind when religion and life were coincident. You
know that the prophets were reformers. The orthodox religion which
they fought was the religion of the land. They were progressive
religionists, just as the gentlemen who are in the Reform sect to-day
claim to be progressive religionists. When they established their
religion, _it_ became the religion of the whole nationality, for all
ancient religion is national religion. Religion for the Greeks, and
religion for the Jews, and religion for the Syrians, and for the
Babylonians, and the Romans, was essentially national and political,
and the political nationalism of religion in the time of the Roman
Empire was the immediate basis for the persecution of the Jews by the
Romans. The latter persecuted the Jews not primarily because they
disliked the Jews, but because the Jews were a political danger in
their refusal to worship the representative of the State in the shape
of the Emperor. But in the development of civilization, religion
became detached from the totality of civilized living. In the
progressive division of labor religion became specialized. The
priestly group learned to confine itself more and more to the "things
of the spirit"--cult, ritual, dogma, while the other elements in
civilization loomed larger and larger. Religion remained social, but
society was no longer religious. Life was secularized. I think that
the representatives of the Reform sect, in one of their conferences,
declared that America is not a Christian country. In so doing they
acknowledged this fact.
_Continuity of the Jewish Spirit_
Throughout the history of the Jewish people, there is a continuity of
spirit which is very different from the continuity of form that
attends both the secular and the religious developments of Jewish
life. This is the same in both these aspects of Jewish life--in the
secular Jewish poetry and thought of the middle ages and up to the
present day. Even a Bergson, ostensibly a Frenchman, expresses in his
philosophy what is essentially the Hebraic conception of the nature of
reality and the destiny of man. From Amos through Job, through the
philosophers of the middle ages, to Ahad Ha-'Am there is a clear and
accountable continuity. Finally, there is the development of the whole
of the secular life of modern Jewry, in Yiddish and in Hebrew. Yiddish
may be unpleasant, but Yiddish is no less the speech of the Jews than
English, no less the speech of the Jews than Aramaic, and Arabic and
Ladino, and all of these have acquired literary and qualitative
characteristics which are identical as expressions of the spirit of
the Jew, of the Hebraic spirit.
This may be seen generally in the case of Yiddish alone. Yiddish, as
you know, is a German dialect; it is middle high German in its base,
and German is an inflected language; its rhythms are essentially long,
periodic, indeterminate, radically different from the rhythms of
Hebrew, involving a different kind of co-ordination and mode. But
compare Yiddish with German, and you find quite an antagonistic
literary quality. Yiddish reads like the Psalms, and the Bible, and
the Talmud; it doesn't read like German until it is Germanized. The
whole genius of the tongue has been altered by Jewish use so that its
spiritual quality has taken on the quality of the race that uses the
tongue, and its literary kinship has become Hebraic.
Again, there is this whole mass of neo-English, neo-Russian,
neo-German literatures which, written by Jews, deal with the life of
the Jews, with their interests and character. This is not religious.
What is its relation to Jewry? Yet again, there is any number of
Jewish individuals, among whom I must count myself, who find it
impossible to adjust their consciences with any official type of
theological doctrine, who are interested in discovering the truth, and
are compelled to acknowledge that no truth has been discovered
finally, once and for all; there are hundreds and thousands such. What
is to be their relation to their people if Jews are to be considered
members merely of Judaistic sects? Yet Jews they are, and if they do
not contribute directly to Judaism, they do contribute to Hebraism.
Hebraism stands not for that particular expression of the Jewish mind,
religion, but for all that has appeared in Jewish history, both
religious and secular. The term Judaism stands for that partial
expression of the Jewish genius which is religious.
_The Ethical Motive of Judaism_
It has been said that the genius of the Jew is entirely religious. I
do not think that that is historically a demonstrable proposition. For
the dominant motive even in Judaism is not a religious motive. It is
an ethical motive. Judaism does not conceive its God as requiring man
to be damned for his glory. It conceives its God as an instrument by
the worship of whom "thy days may be lengthened in the land."
Righteousness and not salvation is the aim even of the Jewish
religion. Hebraism is the name for this living spirit which demands
righteousness, expressed in all the different interests in which Jews,
as Jews, have a share--in art, science, philosophy and social
organization and in religion. Hebraism, hence, is a wider term than
religion and its continuity embraces, but is not embraced by, the
continuity of religion.
Now the Harvard Menorah Society, taking this fact into consideration,
made use, because of the tradition of English usage, of the term
"Hebraic." It recognized that since Hebraism is more comprehensive
than Judaism, many people might be Hebraists who are not and need not
be Judaists. It refused to exclude them from a share in Jewish life
and an opportunity for Jewish service. The organization goes on the
principle--both the Intercollegiate and the constituent
Societies--that nothing Jewish is alien to it. For this reason the
Menorah takes no sides; for this reason it is Hebraic and not
Judaistic. For this reason it welcomes everything Jewish without
exception--theological and secular, Russian, German, French, English.
It requires only that a thing shall be Jewish, that it shall be a
possible part of the organic total we call Hebraism.
Hebraism is the flower and fruit of the _whole_ of Jewish life. Its
root is the ethnic nationality of the Jewish people, and with this
also the secularizing reformers agree when they prohibit and
discourage the marriage of Jew with Gentile.
Many of us, however, are not content with merely the _status quo_.
Throughout the nineteenth century it has thrown us into a series of
dishonorable compromises. We want a condition--I speak now for myself
and not for the Menorah--we want a condition in which the genius of
the Jew, the Hebraic spirit, may express itself without any need of
compromise. The orthodox Jew, at least, retains his integrity with his
darkness. But we are in danger of losing our integrity. We concede to
our environment point after point. But we are not liberated in spirit
by these concessions; we are merely turned into amateur Gentiles. The
orthodox sectary makes no concession to environment, and tends to
petrify and die. The reformed sectary makes too many, and tends to
dissolve and die. This is the penalty for the _status quo_.
Life, to be sure, consists of compromise and concession. But for
integral living we must make them as masters, not serfs. There must be
one place where the ancestral spirit of the Jew will not need to adapt
itself to the world, but will, like the English or French spirit,
adapt the world to itself. That place is determined nationally, just
as the places of all European culture are determined nationally and
racially.
_The Aspiration for a Jewish State_
Pride in ancestry is not pride of race, but pride in the spirit of the
race, and pride of ancestry is not pride merely of background, but
pride in the obligations that ancestry sets. All aristocrats have one
motto--it is _noblesse oblige_. This must be the motto of the Jew. We
must hence carry our obligation in the spirit of the prophets, which
is not primarily a theological spirit, but a purely humane spirit, for
which the necessity of man determines the invocation of God; in which
the ideal of a free and happy humanity, in a just and democratic
society, is the dominating ideal; in which a righteous Jewish state is
a persistent aspiration. This is the Hebraism which must underly all
the activities of the Menorah Association.
This Hebraism, academically realized through study, must be realized
in the lives of individuals through work, as Dr. Grossmann has well
said, and in the life of the great Jewish mass in a free Jewish state.
Every ideal we acquire from the past must be turned into a fact of the
present. _Noblesse oblige!_