Let us look now at a different, older and, as I think, much finer ideal
of marriage, for by this means we may find out more clearly how very far
we have wandered from happiness and freedom in marriage in our search
for those very things.
It is the Jewish ideal of marriage that I wish to bring before you. And
I would say first that the remarks I am offering are not gathered only
from what I have read and been told by others. I have learnt them from
my own experience, unconsciously and slowly, and even against my will.
My marriage with a Jew has taught me the wide separation between the
Jewish ideal of marriage and that which I had accepted: I cannot even
try to say how much I have gained and learnt.
The English ideal of marriage is concerned with rights and the
individual, the Jewish ideal is concerned with service and the race.
Their theory of marriage is one of religious duty, and has much less to
do with the accomplishments of passion; I think that is why Jewish
marriages are so happy.
Modern writers on the Jewish point of view (such as Achad-ha-Am and
Melamed) are agreed that the morality of the Jews is a collective rather
than an individual morality, aiming at race preservation rather than
individual development, practice rather than faith, the continuance and
improvement of life rather than spiritual recompense. Consequently,
wherever Jewish traditions retain their hold, the begetting and care of
children must necessarily occupy the most important portion of life.
Thus marriage is regarded as a duty to be undertaken by all, not as a
pleasure to be indulged in or to be left dependent on the individual
will. It is a sacred duty of parents to arrange a marriage for every
child; marriage and the life of the home is still deeply religious;
Jewish mothers do not go out to work in factories, they are more
concerned with the service of the home than with anything outside of the
home. They are very old-fashioned, and they are very happy: they
consider barrenness the greatest possible misfortune.
Do you see the contrast I am trying to establish? The essence of the
romantic ideal of marriage is at bottom an insupportable egoism--the
seeking of happiness by the all too insistent Self--the forgetting of
the ultimate values of life.
There are other modes of thought for Jewish women. The expression of her
own individuality is not a matter to which she can attach supreme
importance; rather is she unconsciously finding an escape from this
burdening consciousness of individuality by ever seeking identification
with her husband, with her children, with her home, with her own people
and with God. She possesses the inestimable good of being bound by a
great tradition. It is ever thus with those who are conscious of a
sufficient inner life: the modern cry for individual freedom is but one
result among many of the poverty of our lives.
The Westernized Jews, it is true, are more or less tainted with the
errors of industrial communities. It is, of course, where the early
marriages of the ghettoes prevail, where the married woman religiously
covers her own hair with a wig immediately after marriage, where
marriage, as I have said, is regarded as a duty, and love, therefore, is
not considered to be of overwhelming importance, that the full
difference between Jewish and Gentile traditions is seen.
This difference is partly due directly to religious influences.
Christianity considers marriage as a concession to human wickedness and
the continuance of the race a doubtful benefit. "A remedy for sin" as
the English Prayer Book states with such delightful frankness. When I
remember this Christian view of marriage, I am not surprised at the
corruptions into which we have fallen; it is an atmosphere rich for the
development of industrial values. The Jews have never fallen into this
hateful denial of life. Judaism still considers it a command of God to
increase and multiply: the unmarried life, not the married life, is
regarded as sinful. The ascetic view of marriage, as well as the
romantic view that love is everything, are both anti-Jewish.
The Jews, and, I think, even more strongly the women, can never be
individualists. I must again emphasize this fact, for everything else
depends upon it. Never can the Jewish wife and mother come to seek
personal pleasure as the chief aim in marriage, or delight greatly in
expressing her own individuality in spiritual union. She is not absorbed
by her own joy or engrossed by her own sorrow. She is content to be
married, and accepts any disadvantages that come from that state; she
believes in her husband, in her children, and even if these fail her,
she believes in her race, her religion, and the inheritance of her
people: this gives her a center of gravity outside of herself. For
thousands of years Jewish women have been taught the value of service;
the dedication of the Self to an ideal. At the same time, they have been
held firm to the realities of marriage by their worship. These two
influences will, I believe, forever make it impossible for Jewish women
in any numbers to accept the egoistic view of marriage and the duties of
women that has been set up in England, as also in other European lands
and in America, indeed wherever Self-assertion has been admitted as the
ruling principle of life.
For these reasons the Jewess, with her special attitude toward marriage
and to life, offers a picture of the deepest significance for the study
of all industrial races. That is why I turn to her in the hope of making
plain to us Western women our mistakes. She, in my opinion, can show us
the path wherein alone in future we can find happiness.
The Jewish women have inherited the most perfect feminist ideal that as
yet the world has known; an ideal of service within the home of which
full life she is the high-priestess; an ideal turning to foolishness the
false values of this industrial age. And this ideal of service, shared
by all, gives to the most unlearned Jewish woman the priceless knowledge
of an eternal truth: a truth that has to be learnt by each one among us
before we can find happiness--that only by losing ourselves can we find
the Self that is eternal. The Jewish woman learns this truth by living
it.
The deep reasons of life lie beyond the realm of individual advantage.
The Jewish spirit, pursuing its ends deliberately and wisely, demands of
women and of men two different devotions. It asks of women devotion to
men, to their children, to their homes; of men, devotion to ideals.
Jewish women do not wait to ask if men are worthy, their thought is of
service. They understand that in each devotion lies an equal glory, an
equal joy, and an equal honor in the sight of God and of man.
There is so much more I would like to say. I would wish to show you
something at least of the success with which religion among the Jews has
been turned to domestic uses. No detail of the home life is left
unhallowed. Even the poorest Jewish home is saved by its ceremonies from
the degrading indifference to decency and tenderness, which is the
terrible feature of the industrial homes of poverty. The sanctity of the
home is an affectionate tradition linking the Jews through the ages with
a golden chain. The purity of home life has fought and triumphed over
all the unsanitary conditions of ghetto life.
I wish that the limits of my space allowed me to write in detail of
these beautiful and happy services. The lighting of the Sabbath candles,
the joyous festivals so attractive to our children, all are used to
consecrate the daily life. The dietary laws may be said to be a religion
of the kitchen. The description of the Virtuous Woman, from the book of
Proverbs--the woman who "looks well to the ways of her household,"
whose clothing are "strength and majesty," who "laugheth at the time to
come"--is appropriately read on Friday evenings by the master of the
house to exalt the perpetual provident, charitable and joyous
house-mistress. A true Jewish home must always be a beautiful place,
because its duties are fixed by tradition and hallowed, by the symbols
of God's dealing with His people in the past.
Abundant evidence is forthcoming of the honor that was always paid by
the Jewish husband to his wife. His duties toward her are set forth in
detail in the usual form of the _Ketubah_. In the body of that
instrument he binds himself to work for her, and to honor her, to
support and maintain her. The Talmudic sayings on this subject of the
honor in which the wife is held and the husband's dependence on her are
numerous. Let me quote one or two: "Who is rich? He whose wife's actions
are comely. Who is happy? He whose wife is modest and gentle." Again: "A
man's happiness is all of his wife's creation"; and yet again: "God's
presence dwells in a pure and loving home." "Be not cruel or
discourteous to your wife," said a first century teacher, "if you
thrust her from you with your left hand, draw her back to you with your
right hand." Another says: "A man should always be careful lest he vex
his wife: for as her tears come easily, the vexation put upon her comes
near to God." A seventeenth century writer states: "Never quarrel with
your wife"; this is not to be done even "if she asks for too much
money."
Such passages extend in an unbroken series through all medieval Jewish
literature. But if the Jewish wife was held in honor by the Jewish
husband, it was because of the very practical virtues of the Jewish way
of living. The home life was everywhere serene and lovely, and if the
Jew retained any virtue at all, he displayed it in the home. The father
was the religious teacher of his family, and this duty necessarily
increased his domesticity. He took greater interest in his children
because it was his task to teach them the law, and his devotion to his
wife was directly dependent on his service to the family. One of the
Rabbis, on this question of the Jewish husband ill-treating his wife,
said in framing his regulations "This is a thing not done in Israel."
I would ask you to note that the woman does not become a nonentity by
reason of her limitation to a definite sphere of action within the
home. Such a view is entirely absent among the Jews. The rule over the
home-life held through the centuries by the Jewish wife is far more real
in its results of power than the so-called equality claimed by a modern
woman, acting under the influence of industrial ideals. What is
significant (and ought to teach us if we can be taught) is the fact that
such power is held by women in right of their position as wives and
mothers; it is never extended to young girls or to unmarried women on
account of their attraction and sexual power over men, in the way to
which we have become accustomed. That is unknown, at least, in
connection with marriage. The Jew understands that there are other ways
of loving than falling in love. Power is held universally by the house
mistress--the mother, whose desires through life are a law unto her
husband and her children.
All Jewish literature is filled with examples of reverence expressed
towards mothers who are "the teachers of all virtue." In the moral law
the command to fear the mother--that is to treat her with respect, is
placed even before the duty of fearing the father (Lev. xix. 8).
Enduring evidence remains of the spiritual status of mothers. When the
Prophet of Exiles wishes to depict God as the Comforter of his people,
he says "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you" (Is.
lxvi. 13). When the Psalmist describes his utter woe, he laments, "As
one mourning for his mother, I was bowed down with grief."
Perhaps, now as we see the mother taken as the one sufficient symbol of
Jehovah's dealing with his people, the mourning for her presence being
the completest expression of grief, we can come to understand something
of the Jewish ideal of marriage and of the high honor, _because of this
ideal_, in which women were held.