SOME years ago I met a certain Russian Jew at a conference called to
discuss various problems of education. He was an immigrant who had
made his fortune through speculation in real estate, and with his rise
in fortune he had, it was evident, thrown off, one after another, the
social habits, the religious outlook, and the organization of the
daily life which were the heritage he had brought with him from
Russia. He was at that time, he told me, president of a large Jewish
congregation, whose pillars of support were men like himself. He
complained bitterly of their backwardness and illiberality. They would
not introduce an organ and refused to change the prayer book or to
secure an "advanced" rabbi. For himself, he did not care whether they
had a synagogue--I mean temple--at all. He retained no longer any of
the superstitions or narrowness of his colleagues, and if it were not
for the fact that he felt himself out of place among members of the
radically reformed temple he would have attended that long ago. He was
a member of it, of course. His wife had made him join some years ago.
It was a double expense, to be sure, but his wife wanted to be active
in the Women's Council, and the children met other nice children in
the Sunday School. He did not think anyhow that synagogal affiliation
made any difference.
"I am," he said, "a good Jew. I give charity."
The remark took me aback, yet the logical development to the point of
view that he expressed was inevitable. In an environment where the
call of ambition is generally a call toward de-Judaization, the
connection between Jews who prosper and the great masses of the
Jewish people becomes, perforce, an external and artificial one. It is
notorious that the temple has thus far had no appeal to and no message
for the Jewish masses, that its membership is recruited from the
well-to-do and the successful, and that its relation to the great
groups which are destined never to be well-to-do or successful becomes
purely a relation of philanthropy. The elements of brotherhood, of a
common consciousness and a common purpose, fade or get submerged.
Where the masses are concerned the whole corporate essence of reformed
Judaism becomes concentrated in the word "charity."
_Justice vs. Charity in the Jewish Ideal_
YET it is significant that in Hebrew there is no special word for
charity. The term צדקה (Zedakah) meant originally righteousness, and
the righteousness which the prophets advocated was the substance of
social justice. It was incorporated into the fundamental law of the
Jewish state, which differed from that of other ancient states in the
fact that its intention was to secure freedom and "life" for each
individual man. Charity, as we now understand the word, had no place
in the social conceptions of the prophets and was not acknowledged in
the Law. The three codes which are preserved to us in the Bible from
the covenant in Exodus to the extraordinarily profound legislation of
Leviticus express an evolution of the social sense founded on a right
appreciation of social justice and democracy. "Life," and its
sustenance food, and shelter were regarded as the rights of each and
every man and not as gifts from one man to another. The law concerning
the tenure of land is particularly significant for its insight into
the economic basis of social justice, and the laws concerning
indebtedness and slavery only less so. Charity appears only when the
state disintegrates. It is coincident with the decay of the social
organization and the consequent failings of the sense of corporate
responsibility, and consists substantially of the conversion of a
right into a gift. This change is registered in the new meaning which
the word "Zedakah" receives. For a state in which social justice
prevails there is no room for charity, while a social order which
involves charity is not one which maintains justice. Thus it may be
said that the prophets, because they operated in terms of the
reorganization of the whole of society and not of the incidental
correction of piecemeal evils, were humanists. Their program was
constructive and aimed at the enfranchisement of manhood. The rabbis,
on the other hand, were (relatively only) philanthropists. Their
program was remedial, and they aimed rather at the relief of suffering
than the realization and perfection of human potentialities.
To-day the term "charity" has given way to a new equivalent, with a
somewhat different connotation. This new equivalent is "social
service." That it should be urged, as Mr. Lewis urges it, upon liberal
Judaism is simply another indication of the evanescing adherence of
that sect to the corporate life of the Jewish people. Although "social
service" carries with it more of the sense of justice than the term
charity, it is still, in intention, a charitable thing. It is not a
thing done through the inevitable forms of right social organization,
but through the gracious good will of a kindly individual. It still
maintains the Christian quality of "grace" which is a condescension, a
going down, a philanthropy. It stands in contrast to _law_, which
knows no such qualities, and the call which Mr. Lewis makes to liberal
Judaists for a special kind of social service is itself a
demonstration that "liberal Judaism" thus far has little in common
with the substance of Jewish life. Indeed his whole book is a
demonstration of this fact, for of the six chapters that it contains
only one has anything to say of social service as such in the present
day, while four are analyses, not of charity, but of the law of
righteousness as it operated in the Jewish polity, both in Palestine
and in the Diaspora. Even the actual charity of the Middle Ages
carries a quality of obligation and socially ordained necessity which
is derived from the basic law of the Jewish people.
_The Hope of Liberal Judaism_
BUT to-day, while the great Jewish masses still live, more or less
adequately under the basic law and exercise such righteousness as they
may in the division of obligation which the laws of the Galuth lands
compel, the classes are divorced from its rule altogether. The call
with which Mr. Lewis closes his book,--
"We must teach the masses of our people, upon whom the
Judaism of yesterday has lost hold, that their
salvation lies in liberal Judaism, which is beginning
to find itself to-day and which will become the
Judaism of to-morrow,"
--is the best indication of this. Liberal Judaism has not touched the
minds or hearts of the masses. The radicals despise it as a
capitalistic system of compromise with the social environment. To the
rest of the working classes, it makes thus far no appeal whatever. It
is only upon the radicals that the "Judaism of yesterday" has lost its
hold, and to them liberal Judaism can have no appeal. To the rest of
the Jewish people it can be significant and really developed into the
"Judaism of to-morrow" only in so far as it can succeed in
reincorporating itself into the common life. I am an old social
service person, and I am prepared to deny categorically that such a
reincorporation is possible through social service. What is needed is
sympathetic intelligence, insight into the life and aspirations of the
masses, return of the classes to the masses, participation in their
ideals, their traditions, and their common life. It is not by a
cutting off from the past, but by a development out of it that such a
reincorporation can be consummated.
If liberal Judaism is to be a living and growing force at all, it can
become so only by accepting the inevitable conditions which govern all
life. Life is organic; religion is only one of the many organs of
human society, even Jewish society. Its health and vitality are
dependent upon the health and vitality of the social residuum. The
hope of liberal Judaism lies in a reincorporated national life for the
Jews. That alone can preserve the Jewish religion, either from
petrifying as orthodoxy through resistance against environmental
pressure, or from evaporating as reform through submission to
environmental pressure.
_University of Wisconsin_
[Illustration: Signature: H. M. Kallen]