As we look ahead into the century which is now opening and cast our eye
over the forces which the Jews will bring into its life, we can easily
see that these forces tend in various directions.
We have first the Orthodox wing of the Jewish Church, which stands
upon the broad basis of what the past has evolved. It holds firmly
to the inspiration of the biblical word and the divine character
of its interpretation as handed down in the oral law; it tries to
regulate its life by Talmudic ordinances as evolved in the latest
law books, and is unwilling to make any but æsthetic concessions to
changed circumstances, believing that we must adhere strictly to all
the time-honored ceremonies of the synagogue. At its side stand the
Conservatives, who are willing to make some concession to present
demands, but believe that these concessions should be most sparingly
and grudgingly made, and who theologically, at least in theory,
occupy the same position as do the Orthodox. It is safe to say that
the greater number of Jews in the Western European states belong to
this wing of the synagogue. Between the Conservatives and the Ethical
Culturists stands the Reform party, more numerous in the United States
than anywhere else, whose position it is hard to define and in whose
midst there are various shades of opinion and of practice. All the
Reformers have openly or tacitly broken with Talmudic Judaism—the
more conservative among them seem to believe that a new Judaism can be
built up upon the Bible, only without its traditional interpretation;
while the advanced body do not even look upon the Bible as binding,
but merely as a starting-point for a further development. They do not
consider the Bible as inspired in the old accepted sense of the term;
they welcome biblical criticism as an aid to the understanding of the
early history of their people; they do not believe in the special
election of Israel, and have a well-defined abhorrence of anything
like a creed. They are practically Theists with a Jewish racial
coloring. Nor do they believe in the coming of a personal Messiah;
rather, in the advent of a Messianic time in which righteousness and
good-will shall prevail and all the earth acknowledge the one God.
To bring about this time is, according to them, the Mission of the
Jew—a phrase very current in these latter days, the fulfilling of
which has been made the pretext for dejudaizing Judaism, so as to
make it acceptable to non-Jews. Mr. Oswald John Simon, of London, has
even gone further. He believes that if the Reform party is earnest in
its pretensions, it ought—as it did once before in its history—to
become an active missionary power. A few years ago he attempted to
found a Jewish Theistic Church, which should in no way be colored by
Jewish ceremonial. The movement was, of course, a failure. The original
attempt, some nineteen hundred years ago, led to the founding of the
Christian Church, and Jews themselves have suffered too much from
missionaries of other faiths to take to this work with pleasure.
But, in addition to these, there is also a large body of Jews whose
connection with the synagogue is purely nominal, and who know of it
only when they need the services of its sanction or the respectability
of its connections. The hold which the Jewish Church has upon them is
small indeed, and many of them hope, in the twentieth century, to doff
their Jewish gaberdine. The open or concealed pressure of anti-Semitism
(particularly on the continent of Europe) which makes it impossible for
the Jew as such to attain to social distinction or political position
will drive most of these into the arms of the dominant Church of the
country in which they live. In a remarkable article published in the
_Deutsche Jahrbücher_ of October, 1900, a writer who uses the _nom
de plume_ of Benedictus Levita openly urges those of his fellow-Jews
who have become estranged from the synagogue to have their children
baptized, in order that they may not suffer as their parents have,
but may become really believing Christians, since their affiliation
with the Christian Church has become necessary in the modern Christian
state. Another German Jew at about the same time advises his brethren
to declare themselves “Confessionslos,” so as to become lost, not in
Christianity, but in “Deutschtum.” A similar request was made to the
Jews of Roumania, in 1900, by the historian Xenopol of Bucharest. There
is little fear that this advice of wholesale apostasy will find many
adherents, notwithstanding the fact that an unusually large number
of conversions have taken place in Germany and Austria, due wholly
to pressure from without rather than to conviction from within. The
defection even of comparatively large numbers can, however, hardly
affect the Jewish cause as a whole; for these numbers living on the
periphery, or even beyond it, have been of little service to the Jewish
cause; and all through the ages Jews have made just such contributions
as these to the general society in which they lived.
There can be no doubt that Zionism is a strong protest against these
weaklings, and that the coming century will witness the Jews divided
into two camps not necessarily hostile to each other, the Zionists and
the Non-Zionists—those who plead for a conservation of the old energy
and the old ideals, and those who look forward to the disintegration of
Judaism and its gradual passing away into other forces. That Judaism
can only conserve its force if that force is attached to a racial
and national basis is seen clearly in the fact that just those Jews
in Germany who have been most loudly clamorous against the Zionists
propose to have now what they call a German “Judentag,” which can
certainly mean nothing unless it become Zionist in its tendency.
Confident in this hope, we of the House of Israel look calmly into
the future. The message of the prophet of old is full of meaning for
us: “Thus saith the Lord God: behold I, even I, will both search my
sheep and seek them out, as a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the
day that he is among his flock which is scattered, and I will deliver
them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy
and dark day.” We can echo the sentiments expressed by a Christian
Zionist, George Eliot, many years ago: “Revive the organic centre;
let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its
religion be an outward reality. Looking towards a land and a polity,
our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity
of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East
and the West—which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so
that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding.
Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the
weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the
lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts
which widen feeling and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring
of beloved memories.”