THROUGH his _Jewish Life in Modern Times_ Israel Cohen has made a
notable contribution to the literature of Jewish life and thought. In
a single volume of scarce 350 pages of text there is presented a
description and estimate of the Jewish position in the modern world
which may well be considered among the most comprehensive and the most
authoritative now available in the English language.
Taken as a whole, the volume is noteworthy because of three
commendable characteristics. It deals with Jewish life as it appears
in modern times, not as it should be in the light of the literature of
the ancient Hebrews. It presents Jewish life in all its important
aspects and complexities, not on the basis of the theory so widely
prevalent that religion, of all human activities, constitutes the sole
binding force and the only distinguishing characteristic of the
separate Jewish existence. Finally, it aims to picture the life of the
Jews in all corners of the Diaspora, and not their problems and
activities in a single country or section of the globe.
_Jewish Life Not Synonymous With Jewish Religion_
AN exposition of Jewish life as it is actually lived in modern times
helps to clarify a much-beclouded situation. It enables the Jew the
better to know himself; it presents to the outside world a clearer
outline of a figure who must ever, to some extent, remain "strange"
and "unknowable." Moreover, the reader's sense of proportion is
adjusted by a work which does not make Jewish life synonymous with
Jewish religion. Whether there is sufficient evidence of a biological
and anthropological character to support the claim of those who look
upon the Jews as a separate race, whether the Jewish people in their
dispersion may properly be considered as a distinct national group in
spite of the absence of a government and a territory of their own, it
is certainly difficult, in all intellectual honesty, to maintain that
the Jews are merely a religious community. One of our brilliant young
philosophers has strikingly said that a Jew can change his religion,
but that he cannot change his grandfather; nor, he might have added
can he destroy his more general antecedents, that complex of customs,
traditions and ideals which have manifested themselves in the course
of thirty-five centuries of recorded history and which create within
him an ineradicable historic consciousness. Jewish solidarity is not
grounded in religion alone, and the distinctiveness of the Jewish
people manifests itself in activities other than religion.
A work which like the present aims to present the Jew in every
important phase of life, which describes the social, political,
economic, and intellectual aspects of Jewish life, as well as the
religious, deserves commendation because of its mere scope and
completeness. But Mr. Cohen has gone further. He has not fallen into
the error of many of the spokesmen for the cultural or historical
unity of Jewry of denying or even minimizing the potency of religion
as a factor in Jewish survival. Indeed, he everywhere recognizes that
the primary or motor force in the organization of the Jewish
community, which is the concrete expression of Jewish solidarity, is
religious, springing from the desire for public worship. But while
religion is the underlying factor, it is not the only factor. There is
a sane coordination of the leading aspects of Jewish life, a clear
grasp of the relationship between them.
Finally, the work is significant because it seeks to represent the Jew
in all lands, to paint Jewish life in all its diversity. Mr. Cohen, an
Englishman intimately acquainted with conditions in his own country,
travelled extensively on the continent in preparation for his task.
But his knowledge of American conditions was derived from study of
American books and newspapers, and from correspondence, instead of
from personal experience. This accounts for such minor lapses, with
regard to American conditions, as the statement that the Jews are
"excluded from . . . the principal hotels on the east coast of the
United States" and hence "take their holiday in the well-known resorts
of central and southern Europe" (p. 110). On the whole, however, the
attempt to describe Jewish life in all its diversity, as it is lived
by Jews in all lands, is crowned with marked success, and the author
has ample justification for his claim that he has brought "within the
covers of a single book the fullest description yet attempted of all
the main aspects and problems of Jewish life in the present day."
_The Various Aspects of Jewish Life_
A MORE detailed statement of the scope and plan of the work may best
be given in the author's own words. "First, a General Survey is
presented, showing the dispersion and distribution of Jewry in its
countless manifestations, its diversity of composition in political
and spiritual respects, and the solidarity that unifies its disparate
elements. Then follow five main sections, in each of which a leading
aspect of life is investigated--the social, the political, the
economic, the intellectual, and the religious. Under the Social Aspect
are set forth the growth and constitution of the community, the
characteristics and customs of the home, social life and amenities,
morality and philanthropy, and racial and physical conditions. Under
the Political Aspect are related how one-half of the people acquired
civil equality, how the other half is still suffering in bondage, and
what services Israel has rendered to so many countries in both their
government and their defence. Under the Economic Aspect are reviewed
the different spheres of commercial, industrial and professional
activity in which Jews are engaged, the contrasts of material welfare
and predominance of poverty, and the ceaseless currents of migration
from the lands of bondage to the havens of refuge. Under the
Intellectual Aspect are considered the advance made by secular
education among the Jews, the nature of their national intellectual
products in modern times, and the contributions they have rendered to
the progress and culture of humanity. Under the Religious Aspect are
described their ecclesiastical organization and administration, their
traditional faith and observance and the growing divergences
therefrom, and then the drift and apostasy that are assuming ever more
alarming proportions. Finally, the resultant tendency of all the
foregoing manifestations is examined under the National Aspect, the
strength of the forces of assimilation and absorption is contrasted
with the inherent force of conservation, and the realization of the
Zionist ideal is urged as the most effective means of ensuring the
perpetuation of Israel" (pp. viii-ix).
The purpose of the author is thus seen to be, first, to present the
facts of Jewish life, and secondly, to offer an interpretation of
them--"to depict the variegated life of the Jewish people at the
present day in all its intimacy and intensity, and to trace the
evolution that is being produced by modern forces" (p. viii). He is
more successful in the first of these objects than he is in the
second.
His shortcomings in interpretation, however, are negative rather than
positive; they are due to omission rather than to commission. There is
inadequate consideration of the philosophy of Jewish life; external
description has crowded out internal analysis; the point of view is
too largely objective. While, for example, the conclusion is reached
that Zionism is the only permanent and adequate solution of the Jewish
problem--with which we do not disagree--insufficient stress is laid
upon the distinctive Jewish obligation in the Diaspora; the Jewish
contributions to general culture and progress which the author
enumerates with such concreteness and detail are not distinctively
Jewish contributions. Even if Zion is the ultimate destiny of the Jew,
he must, in the meantime, justify his separate existence among the
nations; if he is to remain a Jew as well as a citizen of the world,
his contribution must be that of a Jewish citizen; in addition to the
general obligation of his citizenship, he must fulfil the special
obligation of his Jewishness. But these deficiencies of
interpretation, like the inadequacies of description arising from the
impossibility of treating exhaustively so large a field within so
narrow a compass, but reflect the inherent limitations of the task set
himself by our author.
_University of Michigan._
[Illustration: Signature: I. Leo Sharfman]