I am reminded that this day marks the one hundredth anniversary of the
signing of the Treaty of Ghent--one hundred years of peace between
English-speaking peoples. I need to be reminded of this after the
speech that has just been made, because much that was said has quite
fired my fighting spirit--but this is a day of peace and it might not
be quite in the spirit of this anniversary day to say all I might
otherwise say in answer to the points that have been made and with
which I differ radically.
There are some things in Dr. Kallen's eloquent address that I do
believe, but there are many more things with which I do not agree. But
let that be as it may, I was very much interested in his remark, that
the "Reform sect," as he is pleased to call us, harks back to the
prophets. This has been claimed frequently by the reformers
themselves, but he puts a new interpretation upon it; he says the
prophets were pre-Judaistic. This is the Christian point of view. They
claim that Judaism was the growth of the post-exilic period, but we
reformers interpret the term Judaism altogether differently.
_The Significance of Reform Judaism_
Judaism means for us the Jewish religion and all that this implies; if
the Reform movement in its beginnings went back to prophetism it was
simply for this reason--that the pioneers of the Reform movement
recognized that the Jews had fallen into the very condition that Dr.
Kallen deprecates, namely, they had gotten away from life inasmuch as
they had been confined to the ghetto where they had been excluded from
the currents of contemporary life. Judaism had become a ghetto
religion, and because of this divorce between life and religion the
Reform movement arose. The Reform movement is not simply a matter of
creed. It affects the whole life of the Jew. One of its basic
principles is that the religion of the Jew must square with his life;
the needs of the Jew in the modern environment must be taken into
consideration by Jewish leaders; Reform Judaism, far from making a
separation and raising a barrier between the Jew and life, as those
who call us reformed sectarians like to say--quite to the contrary,
reconciles the Jew to the civilization in which he is living and
wherein his children are growing up. This, to my mind, is the great
significance of the Reform movement, and I believe that all those who
truly understand it look upon it in that way.
The Reform movement, as the movement for religious emancipation, was
the accompaniment of similar emancipatory movements affecting the Jews
at the close of the eighteenth century. First there was the linguistic
emancipation when under the leadership of Moses Mendelssohn the Jews
of Germany discarded the use of the German-Jewish jargon or Yiddish,
the language of the Jew's degradation, (for there would have been no
such thing as Yiddish had the Jew not been degraded and excluded as he
was in the countries of Europe) and began the employment of pure
German. Secondly, there was the educational emancipation. The Jews had
been educated in _chedarim_ where they received instruction only in
Hebrew branches and no so-called secular education whatsoever. This
separated the Jew from the culture of the world. At the close of the
eighteenth century German Jews began to attend schools and
universities. Gradually this took place also in other countries.
Thirdly, there was the civil or political emancipation, when after the
French Revolution the countries of western Europe, one after the
other, accorded the Jews the rights of men. The Reform movement or, in
other words, the religious emancipation, is simply the result of great
world forces, as embodied in these various aspects of emancipation,
and for this reason the Reform movement, far from being simply a
matter of creed or theological belief, made the Jew a citizen of the
world and fitted him for the modern environment.
_The "Body and Soul" of Jewry_
Now there is one other point made by the previous speaker to which I
feel that I must refer and that is the matter of "body and soul."
This is a favorite phrase of Zionist writers and speakers as
emphasizing the difference between Zionists and reformers. We
reformers also believe that the body Jewish is necessary, but in a
sense different from the Zionistic claim that the Jewish nation must
be re-established. I as a reformer and a non-Zionist also use the term
"the Jewish people," but in the sense of a "religious people," not a
"political people." This involves a vital distinction--the distinction
between religionism and nationalism. Yes, I also believe that the
body, the religious community, is necessary. The reform rabbinical
conference declared against intermarriage for the very reason that it
is all important that the Jewish people, the _mamleket kohanim_, the
_goy kadosh_, be the vessel embodying the religious idea, the spirit.
But let it be understood clearly that nationally we are poles apart
from the Zionists. Nationally I am an American. I also feel that we
ought not to have hyphenated Americans, but Americans pure and simple.
In that sense I am nationally an American without a hyphen.
Religiously I am a Jew, and religiously I am part and parcel of the
Jewish people with whom my religious fortunes are intertwined.
Further, I feel very much as Dr. Kallen does in regard to our duty
towards the Jews made destitute by the murderous European war. They
have none else to look to and we must help them; for whatever may be
our differences, we must stand united in this pressing duty of the
hour, this work of mercy. But may God speed the day when the Jews in
Poland, Russia and Roumania will receive full rights so that
nationally they may be considered Poles, Russians or Roumanians as are
all others in those lands, as is the case here in free America. To my
mind this is the only effective solution to the so-called Jewish
problem in those countries.
Freedom is the Messiah that is still to come to the Jews in the lands
where they are oppressed, so that everywhere they may be at one in the
rights of citizenship with their fellow countrymen, differing from
them in their religion alone. This is the great distinction I desired
to draw between the Jew nationally and the Jew as a member of a
religious people; this "religious people" is the body of which Judaism
is the soul.