In the course of the long controversy between Jewish nationalists and
opponents of Jewish nationalism many have come to believe that those
who oppose nationalism stand for universal Judaism, especially since
the anti-nationalists call themselves Jewish universalists. After the
publication of the declaration of the British Government with regard
to Palestine the main anti-nationalistic spokesman in America, Dr.
Philipson of Cincinnati, summed up his negative attitude to Zionism
with the short sentence, "I stand by my Jewish universalism." One even
hears people from the radical camp of the left proclaiming their Jewish
universalism. The impression has thus been created that while the
nationalists stand for a petty, provincial conception of Judaism, they,
the anti-nationalists, advocate a broad-minded universalism.
We deem it opportune to examine this Jewish universalism, which is
played up today against the nationalistic efforts of our people to
re-establish a Homeland in Palestine and to see how far it is sincere
in its motives and compatible with Jewish tradition, and how far it
is intellectual camouflage. We think it rather curious that those
who claim to be Jewish universalists--the radical Reform rabbis and
assimilationists from other camps--always lay stress on American,
German, French or English Judaism, and often speak of the American
Jewish Church or the English Jewish Church, and so forth. It is
also remarkable that these Jewish universalists have always worked
for a "readjustment" of Judaism to local conditions and have tried
to Americanize Judaism in America, to Germanize it in Germany, to
Anglicize it in England, to Magyarize it in Hungary, and so forth.
On the other hand, those who were considered as standing for a petty,
provincial conception of Judaism, the nationalists, have not only
never tried to do anything of the sort but have always defended the
interritoriality and catholicity of Judaism. One never hears a Jewish
nationalist here or abroad speaking of an American Jewish Church or
an English Jewish Church, and so forth. It seems to us that in view
of these facts the sort of universal Judaism as proclaimed by the
assimilationists is of rather doubtful origin and character and that
it is everything but universal, for it is territorial and provincial
to the core. As a matter of fact, Reform Judaism as established
by the Reform rabbis in the middle of the nineteenth century, and
developed by American rabbis at the end of the nineteenth century
and the beginning of the twentieth, is the first gigantic attempt to
break the catholicism of Judaism and to territorialize it, that is
to say, to annihilate its organic unity. Reform Judaism is in fact
nothing else but territorialism in religious terms, just as Yiddishism
is a territorialism in linguistic terms. Those who divide Judaism
geographically and claim that each part has little or nothing to do
with the other, and that each part is organically connected only with
its surroundings, that there is such a thing as American Judaism,
English Judaism, German Judaism, French Judaism, and so on, stand for
the same policy as do the Yiddishists, who divide the Jewish people
into ten or fifteen separate groups, claiming that every group is
a unit by itself and has nothing to do with the others. According
to Yiddishists the Ladino-speaking Jew has scarcely anything in
common with the Judeo-German-speaking Jew, just as the Arabic or
Greek-speaking Jews have little or nothing in common with the Ladino
or Yiddish-speaking Jews. Some express their Jewish territorialism and
provincialism in terms of religion, the others in terms of language.
Both are opponents of Jewish unity and Jewish catholicism, both are
opposed to traditional Judaism, both are opposed to Jewish nationalism
that is organically connected with Hebrew, and both are, of course,
opposed to a Hebrew Palestine.
Why these people, who, as we have seen, stand for territorialistic
Judaism instead of universal, should call themselves Jewish
universalists, we are at a loss to understand. The fact that their
notion of God is as colorless and pale as that of the Unitarians, and
the fact that their conception of ethics, especially of Jewish ethics,
is as bloodless and vague as that of the rationalists of the eighteenth
century, gives them scarcely any right to call themselves Jewish
universalists and to assert that they stand for universal Judaism. Our
only consolation is that this sort of territorialistic Judaism that
goes under the false mark of universal Judaism is not the invention
of the Reform rabbis, nor that of the Yiddishists, but is as old as
Judaism itself. All who have carefully paged the history of our people
know that there always was a Jewish minority from time immemorial that
stood for a territorialistic Judaism, and if there is any difference
in principle between the Judeans and Israelites this difference
consists in that the Judeans always stood for universal Judaism, while
the Israelites stood for a territorialistic Judaism. The Judeans
were what the nationalists are today--traditional, conservative and
nationalistic, while the Israelites were reformers, assimilationists
and territorialists. The Judeans advocated a Palestinian and Hebrew
Judaism, while the Israelites always opposed it and were satisfied even
with the Temple outside of Palestine.
The first radical reformer, assimilationist and territorialist was
not Abraham Geiger, but Jeroboam Ben Nebat. The Judeans, advocating
a Palestinian and Hebrew Judaism, produced the true, great prophets,
the prophets of truth and justice, while the Israelites produced the
false prophets, who misled the people and displayed religious and
moral camouflage. The notion of a universal God, of a universal
morality and of the brotherhood of man, the fundamental teachings of
Jewish universalism, have not been created by the prophets of the
Israelites, the false universalists, but by the prophets of Judea,
the nationalistic prophets. These great nationalistic prophets, who
alone made Judaism that tremendous force in history and who, by their
genius, secured immortality for our religion and ethics, must turn in
their grave when they hear the false prophets of today claiming them
as their witnesses. The teachings of our great prophets have been
distorted and falsified by many of our enemies and opponents, but none
has falsified and distorted them more than the representatives of the
so-called universal Judaism of today, because our great prophets, who
were at the same time great Jewish statesmen, taught the doctrine of
the indestructible Jewish nation and the immortality of our people as a
people, and they were so extreme in their nationalism and nationalistic
conception of Judaism that they dreamt of the Jewish nation to be the
glory of all the peoples of the earth and the center of all that is
good and great and beautiful in humanity.
We doubt whether there are many Jewish nationalists today whose
nationalistic feelings run as high as did those of our great prophets
whom Jewish universalists claim as their chief witnesses for their
falsified Judaism. It was the great Hebrew prophets of old who first
fought against territorializing Judaism and who fought against the
attempt to Yiddishize it in one form or another. They all stood for
the pure, traditional, Palestinian and Hebrew Judaism. They were
bitter against Ephraim, because Ephraim stood for what the Israelites
stand for today: "Ubi bene, ibi patria"--Where I do well there is my
fatherland.
That the Judeans and not the Israelites were right in their conception
of Judaism can be seen from the fate of both. Israel disappeared, swept
away by the storm of history, while Judea remained. It is only a pity
that all of the Israelites did not disappear also for, if they did,
we would have no Israelites today in our midst, and God knows that
the Israelites of today are unnecessary Jews and that those who claim
a mission for Israel have no mission at all. The Jewish universalism
advocated today by all those who stand for the disintegration and
deterioration of Judaism is not universalism, and if its advocates
are anything, they are Jewish nihilists, because Judaism is nihil to
them--no people, no race, no nation, no religion, no tradition, but----