Judaism

ISRAEL ABRAH

The Library
University of California, Los An

RELIGIONS ANCIENT AND MODERN

JUDAISM

RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN

Animism. By EDWARD CLODD, author of The Story of Creation.
Pantheism. By JAMBS AI.LAHSON PICTON, author of Tht Religion of th4

Universe.
The Religions of Ancient China. By Professor GILBS, LL.D., Professor

of Chinese in the University of Cambridge.
The Religion of Ancient Greece. By JANB HARBISON, Lecturer at

Newnham College, Cambridge, author of Prolegomena to Study of Greek

Religion.
Tfflfrtn By the Rt Hon. AMBER ALI SYED, of the Judicial Committee of Hia

Majesty's Privy Council, author of The Spirit of Islam and Ethics of Isl-am.
Magic and Fetishism. By Or. A. 0. H ADDON, F.B.S., Lecturer on

Ethnology at Cambridge University.
Th« Religion of Ancient Egypt. By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PKTRIB,

F.R.B.

The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. By THSOPHILUS Q. PINCHES,

late ot the BritUh Museum.
Early Buddhism. By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of

The Royal Asiatic Society.
Hinduism. By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental Printed

Books and M88., British Museum.
Scandinavian Religion. By WILLIAM A. CRAIOIK, Joint Editor of the

Ozfnrd English Dictionary.
Celtic Religion. By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University

College, Aberystwyth.
The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland. By CHARLES

SQOIRK, author of The Mythology of the British Islands.

Judaism. By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer In Talmudic Literature In Cam-
bridge University, author of Jewish Life in the Middle Age*.

The Religion Of Ancient Rome. By CYRIL BAILEY, M.A.

Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan. By W. O. ASTON, C. M. G.

The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru. By LEWIS SPKNCE, M.A.

Early Christianity. By 8. B. BLACK, Professor at M'Gill University.

The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion. By Professor

J. H. LECRA.

The Religion of Ancient Palestine. By STANLBY A. COOK.
Milhraism. By W. J. PUTTHIAN-ADAMB.

PHILOSOPHIES

Early Greek Philosophy. By A. W. BENH, author of The Philosophy oj

Greece, Rationaliim in the Nineteenth Century.
Stoicism. By Professor NT. QEOKOE STOCK, author of Deductive Logic,

editor of the Apology of Plato, etc.
Plato. By Professor A. B. TAYLOR, SU Andrews University, author of

Thf Problem of Cwduct.
Scholasticism. By Father RICK ABY, 8.J.
Hobbes. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
Locke. By Professor A LBZ ANDKR, of Owens College.
Cointe and Mill. By T. WHITTAKEB,, author of The Ntoplatonitti Apolte-

niu.f oj Tyiina and other Kuayi.
Herbert Spencer. By W. H. Ho MOW, author of An Introduction to

Sjiencer'i Philosophy.
Schopenhauer. By T. WHITTAKIR.
Berkeley. By Professor CAMPBBLL FBABER, D.O.L., LL.D.
Swedenborg. Bv Dr. S«W*I.L.

Nietzsche : His Life and Works. Oy ANTHONY M. LUDOYIOI.
Bergson. Hy .ii>sr.i'ii .SOLOMON.
Rationalism, liy J. M. HUUCHTSOH.
Pragmatism. i:.v l>. L. MURRAY.
Rudolf Euckon. By W. TUDOR-JONES.

EpiCUrUS. I!. I'rofossor A. K. TAM.OR.

William James. By HOWARB V. KKOX.

JUDAISM

By
ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A.

READER IN TALMUDIC AND RABBINIC LITERATURE
VN1VKR8ITT OF CAMBRIDGE

LONDON
CONSTABLE fcf COMPANY LTD

10 AND 12 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE W.C. z
1921

Fourth Imprtssion

mi

THE writer has attempted in this volume to take
up a few of the most characteristic points in
Jewish doctrine and practice, and to explain some
of the various phases through which they have
passed, since the first centuries of the Christian
era.

The presentation is probably much less detached
than is the case with other volumes in this series.
But the difference was scarcely avoidable. The
writer was not expounding a religious system
which has no relation to his own life. On the
contrary, the writer is himself a Jew, and thus
is deeply concerned personally in the matters
discussed in the book.

The reader must be warned to keep this fact in
mind throughout. On the one hand, the book
must suffer a loss of objectivity; but, on the other
hand, there may be some compensating gain of
intensity. The author trusts, at all events, that,
though he has not written with indifference, he
has escaped the pitfall of undue partiality.

I. A.

CONTENTS

CHAP. *A0X

I. THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST, ... 1

II. RELIGION AS LAW, . . . , . 13

III. ARTICLES OF FAITH, ..... 23

IV. SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM, , . . 39
V. SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM, ... 62

VI. JEWISH MYSTICISM, ..... 67

VII. ESCHATOLOGY, 78

VIII. THE SURVIVAL or JUDAISM 90

SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS ON JUDAISM,. . 106

JUDAISM

CHAPTER I

THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST

THE aim of this little book is to present in
brief outline some of the leading conceptions
of the religion familiar since the Christian Era
under the name Judaism.

The word ' Judaism ' occurs for the first time at
about 100 B.C., in the Grseco- Jewish literature.
In the second book of the Maccabees (ii. 21,
viii. 1), 'Judaism' signifies the religion of the
Jews as contrasted with Hellenism, the religion
of the Greeks. In the New Testament (Galv
i. 13) the same word seems to denote the Phari-
saic system as an antithesis to the Gentile
Christianity. In Hebrew the corresponding
noun never occurs in the Bible, and it is rare
even hi the Rabbinic books. When it does
meet us, Jahaduth implies the monotheism of
the Jews as opposed to the polytheism of the
heathen.

A I

JUDAISM

Thus the term ' Judaism ' did not pass through
quite the same transitions as did the name ' Jew.'
Judaism appears from the first as a religion tran-
scending tribal bounds. The ' Jew,' on the other
hand, was originally a Judaean, a member of the
Southern Confederacy called in the Bible Judah,
and by the Greeks and Romans Judaea. Soon,
however, ' Jew ' came to include what had earlier
been the Northern Confederacy of Israel as well,
so that in the post-exilic period Jehudi or ' Jew '
means an adherent of Judaism without regard to
local nationality.

Judaism, then, is here taken to represent that
later development of the Religion of Israel which
began with the reorganisation after the Baby-
lonian Exile (444 B.C.), and was crystallised by
the Roman Exile (during the first centuries of
the Christian Era). The exact period which will
be here seized as a starting-point is the moment
when the people of Israel were losing, never so
far to regain, their territorial association with
Palestine, and were becoming (what they have
ever since been) a community as distinct from
a nation. They remained, it is true, a distinct
race, and this is still in a sense true. Yet at
various periods a number of proselytes have
been admitted, and in other ways the purity of

2

THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST

the race has been affected. At all events terri-
torial nationality ceased from a date which may
be roughly fixed at 135 A.D., when the last despe-
rate revolt under Bar-Cochba failed, and Hadrian
drew his Roman plough over the city of Jeru-
salem and the Temple area. A new city with a
new name arose on the ruins. The ruins after-
wards reasserted themselves, and Aelia Capitolina
as a designation of Jerusalem is familiar only to
archaeologists.

But though the name of Hadrian's new city
has faded, the effect of its foundation remained.
Aelia Capitolina, with its market - places and
theatre, replaced the olden narrow-streeted town ;
a House of Venus reared its stately form in the
north, and a Sanctuary to Jupiter covered, in the
east, the site of the former Temple. Heathen
colonists were introduced, and the Jew, who was
to become in future centuries an alien every-
where, was made by Hadrian an alien in his
fatherland. For the Roman Emperor denied
to Jews the right of entry into Jerusalem. Thus
Hadrian completed the work of Titus, and
Judaism was divorced from its local habitation.
More unreservedly than during the Babylonian
Exile, Judaism in the Roman Exile perforce be-
came the religion of a community and not of a

3

JUDAISM

state ; and Israel for the first time constituted a
Church. But it was a Churcn* with no visible
home. Christianity for several centuries was to
have a centre at Rome, Islam at Mecca. But
Judaism had and has no centre at all.

It will be obvious that the aim of the present
book makes it both superfluous and inappropriate
to discuss the vexed problems connected with
the origins of the Religion of Israel, its aspects
in primitive times, its passage through a national
to an ethical monotheism, its expansion into the
universalism of the second Isaiah. What con-
cerns us here is merely the legacy which the
Religion of Israel bequeathed to Judaism as we
have defined it. This legacy and the manner in
which it was treasured, enlarged, and administered
will occupy us in the rest of this book.

But this much must be premised. If the
Religion of Israel passed through the stages of
totemism, animism, and polydemonism ; if it was
indebted to Canaanite, Kenite, Babylonian, Per-
sian, Greek, and other foreign influences ; if it
experienced a stage of monolatry or henotheism
(in which Israel recognised one God, but did not
think of that God as the only God of all men)
before' ethical monotheism of the universalistic
type was reached ; if, further, all these stages and
4

THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST

the moral and religious ideas connected with
each left a more or less clear mark in the sacred
literature of Israel; then the legacy which Judaism
received from its past was a syncretism of the
whole of the religious experiences of Israel as
interpreted in the light of Israel's latest, highest,
most approved standards. Like the Bourbon, the
Jew forgets nothing ; but unlike the Bourbon, the
Jew is always learning. The domestic stories of
the Patriarchs were not rejected as unprofitable
when Israel became deeply impregnated with the
monogamous teachings of writers like the author
of the last chapter of Proverbs ; the character of
David was idealised by the spiritual associations
of the Psalter, parts of which tradition ascribed
to him ; the earthly life was etherialised and
much of the sacred literature reinterpreted in
the light of an added belief in immortality ; God,
in the early literature a tribal non-moral deity,
was in the later literature a righteous ruler who
with Amos and Hosea loved and demanded
righteousness in man. Judaism took over as
one indivisible body of sacred teachings both
the early and the later literature in which these
varying conceptions of God were enshrined ; the
Law was accepted as the guiding rule of life, the
ritual of ceremony and sacrifice was treasured as

5

JUDAISM

a holy memory, and as a memory not contra-
dictory of the prophetic exaltation of inward
religion but as consistent with that exaltation,
as interpreting it, as but another aspect of Micah's
enunciation of the demands of God : ' What doth
the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? '

Judaism, in short, included for the Jew all
that had gone before. But for St. Paul's attitude
of hostility to the Law, but for the deep-seated
conviction that the Pauline Christianity was a
denial of the Jewish monotheism, the Jew might
have accepted much of the teaching of Jesus
as an integral part of Judaism. In the realm of
ideas which he conceived as belonging to his
tradition the Jew was not logical; he did not
pick and choose ; he absorbed the whole. In
the Jewish theology of all ages we find the most
obvious contradictions. There was no attempt at
reconciliation of such contradictions ; they were
juxtaposed in a mechanical mixture, there was no
chemical compound. The Jew was always a man
of moods, and his religion responded to those vary-
ing phases of feeling and belief and action. Hence
such varying judgments have been formed of
him and his religion. If, after the mediaeval
philosophy had attempted to systematise Judaism,
6

THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST

<%

the religion remained unsystematic, it is easy to
understand that in the earlier centuries of the
Christian Era contradictions between past and
present, between different strata of religious
thought, caused no trouble to the Jew so long
as those contradictions could be fitted into his
general scheme of life. Though he was the pro-
duct of development, development was an idea
foreign to his conception of the ways of God with
man. And to this extent he was right. For
though men's ideas of God change, God Himself
is changeless. The Jew transferred the change-
lessness of God to men's changing ideas about
him. With childlike na'ivet^ he accepted all, he
adopted all, and he syncretised it all as best he
could into the loose system on which Pharisaism
grafted itself. The legacy of the past thus was
the past.

One element in the legacy was negative. The
Temple and the Sacrificial system were gone for
ever. That this must have powerfully affected
Judaism goes without saying. Synagogue re-
placed Temple, prayer assumed the function of
sacrifice, penitence and not the blood of bulls
supplied the ritual of atonement. Events had
prepared the way for this change and had pre-
vented it attaining the character of an upheaval.

7

JUDAISM

For synagogues had grown up all over the land
soon after the fifth century B.O. ; regular services
of prayer with instruction in the Scriptures had
been established long before the Christian Era;
the inward atonement had been preferred to, or
at least associated with, the outward rite before
the outward rite was torn away. It may be that,
as Professor Burkitt has suggested, the awful ex-
periences of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruc-
tion of the Temple produced within Pharisaism a
moral reformation which drove the Jew within
and thus spiritualised Judaism. For undoubtedly
the Pharisee of the Gospels is by no means the
Pharisee as we meet him in the Jewish books.
There was always a latent power and tendency
in Judaism towards inward religion ; and it may
be that this power was intensified, this tendency
encouraged, by the loss of Temple and its Sacri-
ficial rites.

But though the Temple had gone the Covenant
remained. Not so much in name as in essence.
We do not hear much of the Covenant in the
Rabbinic books, but its spirit pervades Judaism.
Of all the legacy of the past the Covenant was
the most inspiring element. Beginning with
Abraham, the Covenant established a special
relation between God and Abraham's seed. 'I

8

THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST

have known him, that he may command his
children and his household after him, that they
may keep the way of the Lord to do righteous-
ness and judgment' (Gen. xviii. 19). Of this
Covenant, the outward sign was the rite of cir-
cumcision. Renewed with Moses, and followed
in traditional opinion by the Ten Command-
ments, the Sinaitic Covenant was a further link
in the bond between God and His people. Of
this Mosaic Covenant the outward sign was the
Sabbath. It is of no moment for our present
argument whether Abraham and Moses were
historical persons or figments of tradition. A
Gamaliel would have as little doubted their
reality as would a St. Paul. And whatever
Criticism may be doing with Abraham, it is
coming more and more to see that behind the
eighth-century prophets there must have towered
the figure of a, if not of the traditional, Moses ;
behind the prophets a, if not the, Law. Be that
as it may, to the Jew of the Christian Era,
Abraham and Moses were real and the Covenant
unalterable. By the syncretism which has been
already described Jeremiah's New Covenant was
not regarded as new. Nor was it new ; it repre-
sented a change of stress, not of contents. When
he said ( Jer. xxxi. 33), ' This is the covenant which

9

JUDAISM

[ will make with the house of Israel, after those
days, saith the Lord ; I will put my law in their
inward parts, and in their heart will I write it,'
Jeremiah, it has been held, was making Christi-
anity possible. But he was also making Judaism
possible. Here and nowhere else is to be found
the principle which enabled Judaism to survive
the loss of Temple and nationality. And the
New Covenant was in no sense inconsistent
with the Old. For not only does Jeremiah pro-
ceed to add in the self-same verse, ' I will be
their God, and they will be my people,' but the
New Covenant is specifically made with the
house of Judah and of Israel, and it is associated
with the permanence of the seed of Israel as a
separate people and with the Divine rebuilding
of Jerusalem. The Jew had no thought of
analysing these verses into the words of the
true Jeremiah and those of his editors. The
point is that over and above, in complementary
explanation of, the Abrahamic and Mosaic Cove-
nants with their external signs, over and above
the Call of the Patriarch and the Theophany of
Sinai, was the Jcremian Covenant written in
Israel's heart.

The Covenant conferred a distinction and im-
posed a duty. It was a bond between a gracious
10

THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST

God and a grateful Israel. It dignified history,
for it interpreted history in terms of providence
and purpose ; it transfigured virtue by making
virtue service; it was the salt of life, for how
could present degradation demoralise, seeing that
God was in it, to fulfil His part of the bond,
to hold Israel as His jewel, though Rome might
despise? The Covenant made 'the Jew self-con-
fident and arrogant, but these very faults were
needed to save him. It was his only defence
against the world's scorn. He forgot that the
correlative of the Covenant was Isaiah's ' Cove-
nant-People ' — missionary to the Gentiles and the
World. He relegated his world-mission (which
Christianity and Islam in part gloriously fulfilled)
to a dim Messianic future, and was content if in
his own present he remained faithful to his mission
to himself.

Above all, the legacy from the past came to
Judaism hallowed and humanised by all the
experience of redemption and suffering which
had marked Israel's course in ages past, and
was to mark his course in ages to come. The
Exodus, the Exile, the Maccabean heroism, the
Roman catastrophe; Prophet, Wise Man, Priest
and Scribe, — all had left their trace. Judaism
was a religion based on a book and on a tradi-
II

JUDAISM

tion ; but it was also a religion based on a unique
experience. The book might be misread, the
tradition encumbered, but the experience was
eternally clear and inspiring. It shone through
the Roman Diaspora as it afterwards illuminated
the Roman Ghetto, making the present tolerable
by the memory of the past and the hope of the
future.

12

CHAPTER II

RELIGION AS LAW

THE feature of Judaism which first attracts an
outsider's attention, and which claims a front
place in this survey, is its 'Nomism' or 'Legalism.'
Life was placed under the control of Law. Not
only morality, but religion also, was codified.
'Nomism/ it has been truly said, 'has always
formed a fundamental trait of Judaism, one of
whose chief aims has ever been to mould life in
all its varying relations according to the Law,
and to make obedience to the commandments
a necessity and a custom' (Lauterbach, Jewish
Encyclopedia, ix. 326). Only the latest develop-
ment of Judaism is away from this direction.
Individualism is nowadays replacing the olden
solidarity. Thus, at the Central Conference of
American Rabbis, held in July 1906 at Indian-
apolis, a project to formulate a system of laws
for modern use was promptly rejected. The
chief modern problem in Jewish life is just
13

JUDAISM

this : To what extent, and in what manner, can
Judaism still place itself under the reign of Law ?
But for many centuries, certainly up to the
French Revolution, Religion as Law was the
dominant conception in Judaism. Before ex-
amining the validity of this conception a word
is necessary as to the mode in which it expressed
itself. Conduct, social and individual, moral and
ritual, was regulated in the minutest details. As
the Dayan M. Hyamson has said, the maxim De
minimis non curat lex was not applicable to the
Jewish Law. This Law was a system of opinion
and of practice and of feeling in which the great
principles of morality, the deepest concerns of
spiritual religion, the genuinely essential require-
ments of ritual, all found a prominent place.
To assert that Pharisaism included the small
and excluded the great, that it enforced rules
and forgot principles, that it exalted the letter
and neglected the spirit, is a palpable libel.
Pharisaism was founded on God. On this
foundation was erected a structure which em-
braced the eternal principles of religion. But
the system, it must be added, went far beyond
this. It held that there was a right and a
wrong way of doing things in themselves trivial.
Prescription ruled in a stupendous array of
14

RELIGION AS LAW

matters which other systems deliberately left
to the fancy, the judgment, the conscience o<
the individual. Law seized upon the whole life,
both in its inward experiences and outward mani-
festations. Harnack characterises the system
harshly enough. Christianity did not add to
Judaism, it subtracted. Expanding a famous
epigram of Wellhausen's, Harnack admits that
everything taught in the Gospels 'was also to
be found in the Prophets, and even in the Jewish
tradition of their time. The Pharisees them-
selves were in possession of it ; but, unfortunately,
they were in possession of much else besides.
With them it was weighted, darkened, distorted,
rendered ineffective and deprived of its force by
a thousand things which they also held to be
religious, and every whit as important as mercy
and judgment. They reduced everything into
one fabric; the good and holy was only one
woof in a broad earthly warp ' ( What is Chris-
tianity? p. 47). It is necessary to qualify this
judgment, but it does bring out the all-per-
vadingness of Law in Judaism. ' And thou shalt
speak of them when thou sittest in thine house,
when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest
down and when thou risest up ' (Deut. vi. 7). The
Word of God was to occupy the Jew's thoughts
IS

JUDAISM

constantly ; in his daily employment and during
his manifold activities ; when at work and when
at rest. And as a correlative, the Law must
direct this complex life, the Code must authorise
action or forbid it, must turn the thoughts and
emotions in one direction and divert them from
another.

Nothing in the history of religions can be cited
as a complete parallel to this. But incomplete
parallels abound. A very large portion of all
men's lives is regulated from without: by the
Bible and other sacred books ; by the institutions
and rites of religion ; by the law of the land ; by
the imposed rules of accepted guides, poets,
philosophers, physicians ; and above all by social
conventions, current fashions, and popular max-
ims. Only in the rarest case is an exceptional
man the monstrosity which, we are told, every
Israelite was hi the epoch of the Judges — a law
unto himself.

But in Judaism, until the period of modern
reform, this fact of human life was not merely an
unconscious truism, it was consciously admitted.
And it was realised in a Code.

Or rather in a series of Codes. First came the
Mishnah, a Code compiled at about the year
200 A.D., but the result of a Pharisaic activity
16

RELIGION AS LAW

extending over more than two centuries. While
Christianity was producing the Gospels and the
rest of the New Testament — the work in large
part of Jews, or of men born in the circle of
Judaism — Judaism in its other manifestation was
working at the Code known as the Mishnah.
This word means 'repetition,' or 'teaching by
repetition'; it was an oral tradition reduced to
writing long after much of its contents had been
sifted in the discussions of the schools. In part
earlier and in part later than the Mishnah was
the Midrash ('inquiry,' 'interpretation'), not a
Code, but a two -fold exposition of Scripture;
homiletic with copious use of parable, and
legalistic with an eye to the regulation of con-
duct. Then came the Talmud in two recensions,
the Palestinian and the Babylonian, the latter
completed about 500 A.D. For some centuries
afterwards the Geonim (heads of the Rabbinical
Universities in Persia) continued to analyse and
define the legal prescriptions and ritual of
Judaism, adding and changing in accord with
the needs of the day ; for Tradition was a living,
fluid thing. Then in the eleventh century Isaac
of Fez (Alfasi) formulated a guide to Talmudic
Law, and about a hundred years later (1180)
Maimonides produced his Strong Hand, & Code
B 17

JUDAISM

of law and custom which influenced Jewish life
ever after. Other codifications were made; but
finally, in the sixteenth century, Joseph Caro
(mystic and legalist) compiled the Table Pre-
pared (Shulchan Aruch), which, with masterly
skill, collected the whole of the traditional law,
arranged it under convenient heads in chapters
and paragraphs, and carried down to our own day
the Rabbinic conception of life. Under this Code,
with more or less relaxation, the great bulk of
Jews still live. But the revolt against it, or
emancipation from it, is progressing every year,
for the olden Jewish conception of religion and
the old Jewish theory of life are, as hinted above,
becoming seriously undermined.

Now in what precedes there has been some
intentional ambiguity in the use of the word
Law. Much of the misunderstanding of Judaism
has arisen from this ambiguity. ' Law ' is in no
adequate sense what the Jews themselves under-
stood by the nomism of their religion. In
modern times Law and Religion tend more and
more to separate, and to speak of Judaism as
Law eo ipso implies a divorce of Judaism from
Religion. The old antithesis between letter and
spirit is but a phase of the same criticism. Law
must specify, and the lawyer interprets Acts of
18

RELIGION AS LAW

Parliament by their letter; he refuses to be
guided by the motives of the Act, he is con-
cerned with what the Act distinctly formulates
in set terms. In this sense Judaism never was a
Legal Keligion. It did most assiduously seek to
get to the underlying motives of the written laws,
and all the expansions of the Law were based on
a desire more fully to realise the meaning and
intention of the written Code. In other words,
the Law was looked upon as the expression of the
Will of God. Man was to yield to that Will for
two reasons. First, because God is the perfect
ideal of goodness. That ideal was for man to
revere, and, so far as in him lay, to imitate. ' As
I am merciful, be thou merciful; because I am
gracious, be thou gracious.' The 'Imitation of
God' is a notion which constantly meets us in
Rabbinic literature. It is based on the Scriptural
text : ' Be ye holy, for I the Lord am holy.' ' God,
the ideal of all morality, is the founder of man's
moral nature.' This is Professor Lazarus' modern
way of putting it. But in substance it is the
Jewish conception through all the ages. And
there is a second reason. The Jew would not
have understood the possibility of any other
expression of the Divine Will than the expression
which Judaism enshrined, For though he held
19

JUDAISM

that the Law was something imposed from with-
out, he identified this imposed Law with the law
which his own moral nature posited. The Rabbis
tell us that certain things in the written Law
could have been reached by man without the
Law. The Law was in large part a correspon-
dence to man's moral nature. This Rabbinic
idea Lazarus sums up in the epigram : ' Moral
laws, then, are not laws because they are written ;
they are written because they are laws.' The
moral principle is autonomous, but its archetype
is God. The ultimate reason, like the highest
aim of morality, should be in itself. The threat
of punishment and the promise of reward are the
psychologic means to secure the fulfilment of
laws, never the reasons for the laws, nor the
motives to action. It is easy and necessary
sometimes to praise and justify eudemonism,
but, as Lazarus adds, ' Not a state to be reached,
not a good to be won, not an evil to be warded
off, is the impelling force of morality, but itself
furnishes the creative impulse, the supreme com-
manding authority ' (Ethics of Judaism, I. chap,
ii.). And so the Rabbi of the third century B.C.,
Antigonos of Socho, put it in the memorable
saying: 'Be not like servants who minister to
their master upon the condition of receiving a
20

RELIGION AS LAW

reward; but be like servants who minister to
their master without the condition of receiving
a reward; and let the Fear of heaven be upon
you ' (Aboth, i. 3).

Clearly the multiplication of rules obscures
principles. The_object of codification, to ^et at,
the full meaning ofprmciples, is defeated byjits
own success. For itis always easier, to Jbllow
ruTesthantp_apply principles.^ Virtues are more
attainable than virtue, characteristics than char-
acter. And while it is false to assert that
Judaism attached more importance to ritual
than to religion, yet, the two being placed on
one and the same plane, it is possible to find in
co-existence ritual piety and moral baseness.
Such a combination is ugly, and people do not
stop to think whether the baseness would be
more or less if the ritual piety were absent
instead of present. But it is the fact that on
the whole the Jewish codification of religion did
not produce the evil results possible or even
likely to accrue. The Jew was always dis-
tinguished for his domestic virtues, his purity
of life, his sobriety, his charity, his devotion.
These were the immediate consequence of his
Law-abiding disposition and theory. Perhaps
there was some lack of enthusiasm, something

21

JUDAISM

too much of the temperate. But the facts of life
always brought their corrective. Martyrdom was
the means by which the Jewish consciousness
was kept at a glowing heat. And as the Jew was
constantly called upon to die for his religion, the
religion ennobled the life which was willingly
surrendered for the religion. The Messianic
Hope was vitalised by persecution. The Jew,
devotee of practical ideals, became also a dreamer.
His visions of God were ever present to remind
him that the law which he codified was to him
the Law of God.

22

CHAPTER III

ARTICLES OF FAITH

IT is often said that Judaism left belief free while
it put conduct into fetters. Neither half of this
assertion is strictly true. Belief was not free alto-
gether; conduct was not altogether controlled.
In the Mishnah (Sanhedrin, x. 1) certain classes
of unbelievers are pronounced portionless in the
world to come. Among those excluded from
Paradise are men who deny the resurrection of
the dead, and men who refuse assent to the doc-
trine of the Divine origin of the Torah, or Scrip-
ture. Thus it cannot be said that belief was, in
the Rabbinic system, perfectly free. Equally in-
accurate is the assertion that conduct was entirely
a matter of prescription. Not only were men
praised for works of supererogation, performance
of more than the Law required ; not only were
there important divergences in the practical
rules of conduct formulated by the various
Rabbis ; but there was a whole class of actions
described as 'matters given over to the heart/

23

JUDAISM

delicate refinements of conduct which, the law
left untouched and were a concern exclusively of
the feeling, the private judgment of the individual.
The right of private judgment -was passionately
insisted on in matters of conduct, as when Rabbi
Joshua refused to be guided as to his practical
decisions by the Daughter of the Voice, the super-
natural utterance from on high. The Law, he
contended, is on earth, not in heaven ; and man
must be his own judge in applying the Law to his
own life and time. And, the Talmud adds, God
Himself announced that Rabbi Joshua was right.

Thus there was neither complete fluidity of
doctrine nor complete rigidity of conduct. There
was freedom of conduct within the law, and there
was law within freedom of doctrine.

But Dr. Einil Hirsch puts the case fairly when
he says : ' In the same sense as Christianity or
Islam, Judaism cannot be credited with Articles
of Faith. Many attempts have indeed -been made
.at systematising and reducing to a fixed phrase-
ology and sequence the contents of the Jewish
religion. But these have always lacked the one
essential element: authoritative sanction on the
part of a supreme ecclesiastical body' (Jewish
Encyclopedia, ii. 148).

Since the epoch of the Great Sanhedrin, there
24

ARTICLES OF FAITH

has been no central authority recognised through-
out Jewry. The Jewish organisation has long
been congregational. Since the fourth century
there has been no body with any jurisdiction over
the mass of Jews. At that date the Calendar
was fixed by astronomical calculations. The
Patriarch, in Babylon, thereby voluntarily aban-
doned the hold he had previously had over the
scattered Jews, for it was no longer the fiat of the
Patriarch that settled the dates of the Festivals.
While there was something like a central autho-
rity, the Canon of Scripture had been fixed by
Synods, but there is no record of any attempt to
promulgate articles of faith. During the revolt
against Hadrian an Assembly of Rabbis was held
at Lydda. It was then decided that a Jew must
yield his life rather than accept safety from the
Roman power, if such conformity involved one of
the three offences : idolatry, murder, and unchas-
tity (including incest and adultery). But while
this decision throws a favourable light on the
Rabbinic theory of life, it can in no sense be
called a fixation of a creed. There were numer-
ous synods in the Middle Ages, but they in-
variably dealt with practical morals or with
the problems which arose from time to time in
regard to the relations between Jews and their
25

JUDAISM

Christian neighbours. It is true that we occa-
sionally read of excommunications for heresy.
But in the case, for instance, of Spinoza, the
Amsterdam Synagogue was much more anxious
to dissociate itself from the heresies of Spinoza
than to compel Spinoza to conform to the beliefs
of the Synagogue. And though this power of
excommunication might have been employed by
the mediaeval Rabbis to enforce the acceptance of a
creed, in point of fact no such step was ever taken.
Since the time of Moses Mendelssohn (1728-
1786), the chief Jewish dogma has been that
Judaism has no dogmas. In the sense assigned
above this is clearly true. Dogmas imposed by an
authority able and willing to enforce conformity
and punish dissent are non-existent in Judaism.
In olden times membership of the religion of
Judaism was almost entirely a question of birth
and race, not of confession. Proselytes were
admitted by circumcision and baptism, and
nothing beyond an acceptance of the Unity of God
and the abjuration of idolatry is even now re-
quired by way of profession from a proselyte. At
the same time the earliest passage put into the
public liturgy was the Shema' (Deuteronomy vi.
4-9), in which the unity of God and the duty to
love God are expressed. The Ten Commandments
26

ARTICLES OF FAITH

were also recited daily in the Temple. It is in-
structive to note the reason given for the subse-
quent removal of the Decalogue from the daily
liturgy. It was feared that some might assume
that the Decalogue comprised the whole of the
binding law. Hence the prominent position given
to them in the Temple service was no longer
assigned to the Ten Commandments in the ritual
of the Synagogue. In modern times, however,
there is a growing practice of reading the Deca-
logue every Sabbath day.

What we do find in Pharisaic Judaism, and
this is the real answer to Harnack (supra, p. 15),
is an attempt to reduce the whole Law to certain
fundamental principles. When a would-be pros-
elyte accosted Hillel, in the reign of Herod, with
the demand that the Rabbi should communicate
the whole of Judaism while the questioner stood
on one foot, Hillel made the famous reply: 'What
thou hatest do unto no man ; that is the whole Law,
the rest is commentary.' This recalls another
famous summarisation, that given by Jesus later
on in the Gospel. A little more than a century
later, Akiba said that the command to love one's
neighbour is the fundamental principle of the
Law. Ben Azzai chose for this distinction another
sentence : ' This is the book of the generations of
27

JUDAISM

man,' implying the equality of all men in regard
to the love borne by God for His creatures.
Another Rabbi, Simlai (third century), has this
remarkable saying: 'Six hundred and thirteen
precepts were imparted unto Moses, three hundred
and sixty-five negative (in correspondence with
the days of the solar year), and two hundred and
forty-eight positive (in correspondence with the
number of a man's limbs). David came and
established them as eleven, as it is written :
A psalm of David— Lord who shall sojourn in
Thy tent, who shall dwell in Thy holy mountain ?
(i) He that walketh uprightly and (ii) worketh
righteousness and (iii) speaketh the truth in his
heart, (iv) He that backbiteth not with his
tongue, (v) nor doeth evil to his neighbour, (vi)
nor taketh up a reproach against another ; (vii) in
whose eyes a reprobate is despised, (viii) but who
honoureth them that fear the Lord, (ix) He that
sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not;
(x) He that putteth not out his money to usury,
(xi) nor taketh a bribe against the innocent. He
that doeth these things shall never be moved.
Thus David reduced the Law to eleven principles.
Then came Micah and reduced them to three, as
it is written : ' What doth the Lord require of thee
but (i) to do justice, (ii) to 'love mercy, and (iii)
28

ARTICLES OF FAITH

to walk humbly with thy God ? ' Then came Hab-
bakuk and made the whole Law stand on one
fundamental idea, ' The righteous man liveth by
his faith ' (Makkoth, 23 b).

This desire to find one or a few general funda-
mental passages on which the whole Scripture
might be seen to base itself is, however, far re-
moved from anything of the nature of the Chris-
tian Creeds or of the Mohammedan Kalimah.
And when we remember that the Pharisees and
Sadducees differed on questions of doctrine (such
as the belief in immortality held by the former
and rejected by the latter), it becomes clear that
the absence of a formal declaration of faith must
have been deliberate. The most that was done
was to introduce into the Liturgy a paragraph in
which the assembled worshippers declared their
assent to the truth and permanent validity of the
Word of God. After the Shema' (whose contents
are summarised above), the assembled worshippers
daily recited a passage in which they said (and
still say) : ' True and firm is this Thy word unto
us for ever. . . . True is it that Thou art indeed
our God . . . and there is none beside Thee.'

After all, the difference between Pharisee and
Sadducee was political rather than theological.
It was not till Judaism came into contact, contact
29

JUDAISM

alike of attraction and repulsion, with other
systems that a desire or a need for formulating
Articles of Faith was felt. Philo, coming under
the Hellenic spirit, was thus the first to make the
attempt. In the last chapter of the tract on the
Creation (De Opifico, Ixi.), Philo enumerates what
he terms the five most beautiful lessons, superior
fo all others. These are — (i) God is; (ii) God is
One; (iii) the World was created (and is not
eternal) ; (iv) the World is one, like unto God in
singleness ; and (v) God exercises a continual pro-
vidence for the benefit of the world, caring for
His creatures like a parent for his children.

Philo's lead found no imitators. It was not for
many centuries that two causes led the Synagogue
to formulate a creed. And even then it was not
the Synagogue as a body that acted, nor was it a
creed that resulted. The first cause was the rise
of sects within the Synagogue. Of these sects the
most important was that of the Karaites or Scrip-
turalists. Rejecting tradition, the Karaites ex-
pounded their beliefs both as a justification of
themselves against the Traditionalists and pos-
sibly as a remedy against their own tendency to
divide within their own order into smaller sects.
In the middle of the twelfth century the Karaite
Judah Hadassi of Constantinople arranged the
30

whole Pentateuch under the headings of the
Decalogue, much as Philo had done long before.
And so he formulates ten dogmas of Judaism.
These are — (i) Creation (as opposed to the Aris-
totelian doctrine of the eternity of the world);
(ii) the existence of God; (iii) God is one and
incorporeal; (iv) Moses and the other canonical
prophets were called by God ; (v) the Law is the
Word of God, it is complete, and the Oral Tradi-
tion was unnecessary ; (vi) the Law must be read
by the Jew in the original Hebrew: (vii) the
Temple of Jerusalem was the place chosen by
God for His manifestation ; (viii) the Resurrection
of the dead ; (ix) the Coming of Messiah, son of
David ; (x) Final Judgment and Retribution.

Within the main body of the Synagogue we
have to wait for the same moment for a formula-
tion of Articles of Faith. Maimonides (1135-1204)
was a younger contemporary of Hadassi; he it
was that drew up the one and only set of prin-
ciples which have ever enjoyed wide authority in
Judaism. Before Maimonides there had been
some inclination towards a creed, but he is the
first to put one into set terms. Maimonides was
much influenced by Aristotelianism, and this gave
him an impulse towards a logical statement of the
tenets of Judaism. On the other side, he was
31

JUPAISM

deeply concerned by the criticism of Judaism
from the side of Mohammedan theologians. The
latter contended, in particular, that the biblical
anthropomorphisms were destructive of a belief
in the pure spirituality of God. Hence Maimo-
nides devoted much of his great treatise, Guide
for the Perplexed, to a philosophical allegorisation
of the human terms applied to God in the Hebrew
Bible. In his Commentary on the Mishnah (San-
hedrin, Introduction to Chelek), Maimonides de-
clares ' The roots of our Law and its fundamental
principles are thirteen.' These are — (i) Belief in
the existence of God, the Creator; (ii) belief in
the unity of God ; (iii) belief hi the incorporeality
of God ; (iv) belief in the priority and eternity of
God; (v) belief that to God and to God alone
worship must be offered ; (vi) belief in prophecy ;
(vii) belief that Moses was the greatest of all
prophets; (viii) belief that the Law was revealed
from heavon ; (ix) belief that the Law will never
be abrogated, and that no other Law will ever
come from God; (x) belief that God knows the
works of men ; (xi) belief in reward and punish-
ment ; (xii) belief in the coming of the Messiah ;
(xiii) belief in the resurrection of the dead.

Now here we have for the first time a set of
beliefs which were a test of Judaism. Maimonides
32

ARTICLES OF FAITH

leaves no doubt as to his meaning. For he con-
cluded by saying : ' When all these principles of
faith are in the safe keeping of a man, and his con-
viction of them is well established, he then enters
into the general body of Israel ' ; and, on the other
hand : ' When, however, a man breaks away from
any one of these fundamental principles of belief,
then of him it is said that he has gone out of the
general body of Israel and he denies the root- truths
of Judaism.' This formulation of a dogmatic test
was never confirmed by any body of Rabbis. No
Jew was ever excommunicated for declaring his
dissent from these articles. No Jew was ever called
upon formally to express his assent to them. But,
as Professor Schechter justly writes : ' Among the
Maimonists we may probably include the great ma-
jority of Jews, who accepted the Thirteen Articles
without further question. Maimonides must have
filled up a great gap in Jewish theology, a gap,
moreover, the existence of which was very gener-
ally perceived. A century had hardly lapsed before
the Thirteen Articles had become a theme for
the poets of the Synagogue. And almost every
country can show a poem or a prayer founded on
these Articles ' (Studies in Judaism, p. 301).

Yet the opposition to the Articles was both
impressive and persistent. Some denied alto-
c 33

JUDAISM

gether the admissibility of Articles, claiming that
the whole Law and nothing but the Law was the
Charter of Judaism. Others criticised the Mai-
monist Articles in detail. Certainly they are far
from logically drawn up, some paragraphs being
dictated by opposition to Islam rather than by
positive needs of the Jewish position. A favourite
condensation was a smaller list of three Articles :
(i) Existence of God; (ii) Revelation; and (iii)
Retribution. These three Articles are usually
associated with the name of Joseph Albo (1380-
1444), though they are somewhat older. There is
no doubt but that these Articles found, in recent
centuries, more acceptance than the Maimonist
Thirteen, though the latter still hold their place
in the orthodox Jewish Prayer Books. They
may be found in the Authorised Daily Prayer
Book, ed. Singer, p. 89.

Moses Mendelssohn (1728-1786), who strongly
maintained that Judaism is a life, not a creed,
made the practice of formulating Articles of
Judaism unfashionable. But not for long. More
and more, Judaic ritual has fallen into disregard
since the French Revolution. Judaism has
therefore tended to express itself as a system
of doctrines rather than as a body of practices.
And there was a special reason why the
34

ARTICLES OF FAITH

Maimonist Articles could not remain. Reference
is not meant to the fact that man)'- Jews came
to doubt the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch.
But there were lacking hi the Maimonist Creed
all emotional elements. On the one hand,
Maimonides, rationalist and anti-Mystic as he
was, makes no allowance for the doctrine of
the Immanence of God. Then, owing to his
unemotional nature, he laid no stress on all the
affecting and moving associations of the belief
in the Mission of Israel as the Chosen People.
Before Maimonides, if there had been one dogma
of Judaism at all, it was the Election of Israel.
Jehuda Halevi, the greatest of the Hebrew poets
of the Middle Ages, had at the beginning of
the twelfth century, some half century before
Maimonides, given expression to this in the
famous epigram : ' Israel is to the nations like
the heart to the limbs.'

Though, however, the Creed of Maimonides
has no position of authority hi the Synagogue,
modern times have witnessed no successful
intrusion of a rival. Most writers of treatises
on Judaism prefer to describe rather than to
define the religious tenets of the faith. In
America there have been several suggestions of
a Creed. Articles of faith have been there chiefly
35

JUDAISM

formulated for the reception of proselytes. This
purpose is a natural cause of precision in belief;
for while one who already stands within by birth
or race is rarely called upon to justify his faith,
the newcomer is under the necessity to do so.
In the pre-Christian Judaism it is probable that
there was a Catechism or short manual of in-
struction called hi Greek the Didache, in which
the Golden Rule in Hillel's negative form and
the Decalogue occupied a front place. Thus we
find, too, modern American Jews formulating
Articles of Faith as a Proselyte Confession. In
1896 the Central Conference of American Rabbis
adopted the following five principles for such a
Confession : (i) God the Only One ; (ii) Man His
Image ; (iii) Immortality of the Soul ; (iv) Retribu-
tion; (v) Israel's Mission. During the past few
months a tract, entitled ' Essentials of Judaism,'
has been issued in London by the Jewish Reli-
gious Union. The author, N. S. Joseph, is care-
ful to explain that he is not putting forth these
principles as ' dogmatic Articles of Faith/ and
that they are solely ' suggestive outlines of belief
which may be gradually imparted to children, the
outlines being afterwards filled up by the teacher.
But the eight paragraphs of these Essentials are
at once so ably compiled and so informing as to
36

ARTICLES OF FAITH

the modern trend of Jewish belief that they will
be here cited without comment.

According then to this presentation, the Essen-
tials of Judaism are : ' (i) There is One Eternal
God, who is the sole Origin of all things and
forces, and the Source of all living souls. He
rules the universe with justice, righteousness,
mercy, and love, (ii) Our souls, emanating from
God, are immortal, and will return to Him when
our life on earth ceases. While we are here, our
souls can hold direct communion with God in
prayer and praise, and in silent contemplation
and admiration of His works, (iii) Our souls are
directly responsible to God for the work of our
life on earth. God, being All-merciful, will judge
us with loving-kindness, and being All-just, will
allow for our imperfections ; and we, therefore,
need no mediator and no vicarious atonement to
ensure the future welfare of our souls, (iv) God
is the One and only God. He is Eternal and
Omnipresent. He not only pervades the entire
world, but is also within us; and His Spirit
helps and leads us towards goodness and truth,
(•v) Duty should be the moving force of our life ;
and the thought that God is always in us and
about us should incite us to lead good and
beneficent lives, ihowing our love of God by

37

JUDAISM

loving our fellow-creatures, and working for their
happiness and betterment with all our might,
(vi) In various bygone times God has revealed,
and even in our own days continues to reveal to
us, something of His nature and will, by inspiring
the best and wisest minds with noble thoughts
and new ideas, to be conveyed to us in words, so
that this world may constantly improve and grow
happier and better, (vii) Long ago some of our
forefathers were thus inspired, and they handed
down to us — and through us to the world at large
— some of God's choicest gifts, the principles of
Religion and Morality, now recorded in our Bible ;
and these spiritual gifts of God have gradually
spread among our fellow-men, so that much of
our religion and of its morality has been adopted
by them, (viii) Till the main religious and moral
principles of Judaism have been accepted by the
world at large, the maintenance by the Jews of a
separate corporate existence is a religious duty in-
cumbent upon them. They are the " witnesses "
of God, and they must adhere to their religion,
showing forth its truth and excellence to all man-
kind. This has been and is and will continue to
be their mission. Their public worship and private
virtues must be the outward manifestation of the
fulfilment of that mission.'
38

CHAPTER IV

SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM

THOUGH there are no accepted Articles of Faith in
Judaism, there is a complete consensus of opinion
that Monotheism is the basis of the religion. The
Unity of God was more than a doctrine. It was
associated with the noblest hope of Israel, with
Israel's Mission to the world

The Unity of God was even more than a hope.
It was an inspiration, a passion. For it the Jews
' passed through fire and water,' enduring tribula-
tion and death for the sake of the Unity. All
the Jewish martyrologies are written round this
text.

In one passage the Talmud actually defines the
Jew as the Monotheist. ' Whoever repudiates the
service of other gods is called a Jew ' (Megillah,
13 a).

But this all-pervading doctrine of the Unity did
not reach Judaism as an abstract philosophical
39

JUDAISM

truth. Hence, though the belief in the Unity of
God, associated as it was with the belief in the
Spirituality of God, might have been expected to
lead to the conception of an Absolute, Transcen-
dent Being such as we meet in Islam, it did not
so lead in Judaism. Judaism never attempted to
define God at all Maimonides put the seal on
the reluctance of Jewish theology to go beyond,
or to fall short of, what historic Judaism delivered.
Judaism wavers between the two opposite con-
ceptions : absolute transcendentalism and absolute
pantheism. Sometimes Judaism speaks with the
voice of Isaiah ; sometimes with the voice of
Spinoza. It found the bridge in the Psalter.
' The Lord is nigh unto all that call upon Him.'
The Law brought heaven to earth ; _Prayer raised
earth to heaven^

As was remarked above, Jewish theology never
shrank from inconsistency. It accepted at once
God's foreknowledge and man's free-will. So it
described the knowledge of God as far above
man's reach; yet it felt God near, sympathetic,
a Father and Friend. The liturgy of the
Synagogue has been well termed a ' precipitate '
of all the Jewish teaching as to God. He is the
Great, the Mighty, the Awful, the Most High,
the King. But He is also the Father, Helper,
40

SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM

Deliverer, the Peace-Maker, Supporter of the
weak, Healer of the sick. All human knowledge
is a direct manifestation of His grace. Man's
body, with all its animal functions, is His handi-
work. He created joy, and made the Bridegroom
and the Bride. He formed the fruit of the Vine,
and is the Source of all the lawful pleasures
of men. He is the Righteous Judge; but He
remembers that man is dust, He pardons sins,
and His loving-kindness is over all. He is un-
changeable, yet repentance can avert the evil
decree. He is in heaven, yet he puts the love
and fear of Him into man's very heart. He
breathed the Soul into man, and is faithful to
those that sleep in the grave. He is the Reviver
of the dead. He is Holy, and He sanctified Israel
with His commandments. And the whole is per-
vaded with the thought of God's Unity and the
consequent unity of mankind. Here again we
meet the curious syncretism which we have so
often observed. God is in a special sense the
God of Israel ; but He is unequivocally, too, the
God of all flesh.

Moses Mendelssohn said that, when hi the
company of a Christian friend, he never felt the
remotest desire to convert him to Judaism. This
is the explanation of the effect on the Jews of the

JUDAISM

combined belief in God as the God of Israel,
and also as the God of all men. At one time
Judaism was certainly a missionary religion.
But after the loss of nationality this quality
was practically dormant. Belief was not neces-
sary to salvation. ' The pious of all nations have
a part in the world to come ' may have been but
a casua utterance of an ancient Rabbi, but it rose
into a settled conviction of later Judaism. More-
over, it was dangerous for Jews to attempt any
religious propaganda in the Middle Ages, and
thus the pressure of fact came to the support of
theory. Mendelssohn even held that the same
religion was not necessarily good for all, just as
the same form of government may not fit equally
all the various national idiosyncrasies. Judaism
for the Jew may almost be claimed as a principle
of orthodox Judaism. It says to the outsider:
You may come in if you will, but we warn you
what it means. At all events it does not seek to
attract. It is not strange that this attitude has
led to unpopularity. The reason of this resent-
ment is not that men wish to be invited to join
Judaism; it lies rather in the sense that the
absence of invitation implies an arrogant reserve.
To some extent this is the case. The old-
fashioned Jew is inclined to think himself
42

SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM

superior to other men. Such a thought has its
pathos.

On the other hand, the national as contrasted
with the universal aspect of Judaism is on the
wane. Many Jewish liturgies have, for instance,
eliminated the prayers for the restoration of sacri-
fices; and several have removed or spiritualised
the petitions for the recovery of the Jewish nation-
ality. Modern reformed Judaism is a universal-
istic Judaism. It lays stress on the function of
Israel, the Servant, as a ' Light to the Nations.'
It tends to eliminate those ceremonies and beliefs
which are less compatible with a universal than
with a racial religion. Modern Zionism is not a
real reaction against this tendency. For Zionism
is either non-religious or, if religious, brings to the
front what has always been a corrective to the
nationalism of orthodox Judaism. For^jhe
separation of Israel has ever been a means to
an enoT; never an end in itself Often the end

has been forgotten in the means, but never^for
long. The end of Israel's ^separateness is the good
of tjde_wprld.^ And the religious as distinct from
the merely political Zionist who thinks that
Judaism would gain by a return to Palestine
is just the one who also thinks that return is a
necessary preliminary to the Messianic Age, when
43

JUDAISM

all men shall flow unto Zion and seek God there.
Reformed Jews would have to be Zionists also in
this sense, were it not that many of them no
longer share the belief in the national aspects of
the prophecies as to Israel's future. These may
believe that the world may become full of the
knowledge of God without any antecedent with-
drawal of Israel from the world.

If Judaism as a system of doctrine is neces-
sarily syncretistic in its conception of God, then
we may expect the same syncretism in its theory
of God's relation to man. It must be said at once
that the term 'theory' is ill-chosen. It is laid
to the charge of Judaism that it has no ' theory '
of Sin. This is true. If virtue and righteousness
are obedience, then disobedience is both vice and
sin. No further theory was required or possible.
Atonement is reversion to obedience. Now it
was said above that the doctrine of the Unity
did not reach Judaism as a philosophical truth
exactly denned and apprehended. It came as the
result of a long historic groping for the truth, and
when it came it brought with it olden anthropo-
morphic wrappings and tribal adornments which
were not easily to be discarded, if they ever were
entirely discarded. So with the relation of God
to man in general and Israel in particular. The
44

SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM

unchangeable God is not susceptible to the change
implied in Atonement. But history presented to
the Jew examples of what he could not otherwise
interpret than as reconciliation between God the
Father and Israel the wayward but always at
heart loyal Son. And this interpretation was
true to the inward experience. Man's repentance
was correlated with the sorrow of God. God as
well as man repented, the former of punishment,
the latter of sin. The process of atonement in-
cluded contrition, confession, and change of life.
Undoubtedly Jewish theology lays the greatest
stress on the active stage of the process. Jewish
moralists use the word Teshubah (literally ' turn-
ing ' or ' return,' i.e. a turning from evil or a
return to God) chiefly to mean a change of life.
Sin is evil life, atonement is the better life. The
better life was attained by fasting, prayer, and
charity, by a purification of the heart and a
cleansing of the hands. The ritual side of atone-
ment was seriously weakened by the loss of the
Temple. The sacrificial atonement was gone.
Nothing replaced it ritually. Hence the Jewish
tendency towards a practical religion was
strengthened by its almost enforced stress in
atonement on moral betterment. But this moral
betterment depended on a renewed communion
45

JUDAISM

with God. Sin estranged, atonement brought
near. Jewish theology regarded sin as a triumph
of the Yetser Ha-ra (the 'evil inclination') over
the Yetser Ha-tob (the 'good inclination '). Man
was always liable to fall a prey to his lower self.
But such a fall, though usual and universal, was
not inevitable. Man reasserted his higher self
when he curbed his passions, undid the wrong he
had wrought to others, and turned again to God
with a contrite heart. As a taint of the soul, sin
was washed away by the suppliant's tears and
confession, by his sense of loss, his bitter con-
sciousness of humiliation, but withal man was
helpless without God. God was needed for the
atonement. Israel never dreamed of putting
forward his righteousness as a claim to pardon.
' We are empty of good works ' is the constant
refrain of the Jewish penitential appeals. The
final reliance is on God and on God alone. Yet
Judaism took over from its past the anthropo-
morphic belief that God could be moved by man's
prayers, contrition, amendment — especially by
man's amendment. Atonement was only real
when the amendment began ; it only lasted while
the amendment endured. Man must not think
to throw his own burden entirely on God. God
will help him to bear it, and will lighten the
46

SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM

weight from willing shoulders. But bear it man
can and must. The shoulders must be at all
events willing.

Judaism as a theology stood or fell by its belief
that man can affect God. If, for instance, prayer
had no validity, then Judaism had no basis.
Judaism did not distinguish between the objective
and subjective efficacy of prayer. The two went
together. The acceptance of the will of God and
the inclining of God's purpose to the desire of
man were two sides of one fact. The Rabbinic
Judaism did not mechanically posit, however, the
objective validity of prayer. On the contrary,
the man who prayed expecting an answer was
regarded as arrogant and sinful. A famous
Talinudic prayer sums up the submissive aspect
of the Jew in this brief petition (Berachoth, 29 a) :
' Do Thy will in heaven above, and grant content-
ment of spirit to those that fear Thee below ; and
that which is good in Thine eyes do. Blessed art
Thou, 0 Lord, who hearest prayer.' This, be it
remembered, was the prayer of a Pharisee. So,
too, a very large portion of all Jewish prayer is
not petition but praise. Still, Judaism believed,
not that prayer would be answered, but that it
could be answered. In modern times the chief
cause of the weakening of religion all round, in
47

JUDAISM

and out of the Jewish communion, is the growing
disbelief in the objective validity of prayer. And
a similar remark applies to the belief in miracles.
But to a much less extent. All ancient religions
were based on miracle, and even to the later
religious consciousness a denial of miracle seems
to deny the divine Omnipotence. Jewish theology
from the Rabbinic age sought to evade the diffi-
culty by the mystic notion that all miracles were
latent in ordered nature at the creation. And
so the miraculous becomes interconnected with
Providence as revealed in history. But the belief
in special miracles recurs again and again in
Judaism, and though discarded by most reformed
theologies, must be admitted as a prevailing con-
cept of the older religion.

But the belief was rather in general than in
special Providence. There was a communal
solidarity which made most of the Jewish prayers
communal more than personal. It is held by
many that in the Psalter 'I' in the majority of
cases means the whole people. The sense of
brotherhood, hi other relations besides public
worship, is a perennial characteristic of Judaism.

Even more marked is this in the conception of
the family. The hallowing of home-life was one
of the best features of Judaism. Chastity was
48

SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM

the mark of men and women alike. The position
of the Jewish woman was in many ways high.
At law she enjoyed certain privileges and suffered
certain disabilities. But in the house she was
queen. Monogamy had been the rule of Jewish
life from the period of the return from the
Babylonian Exile. In the Middle Ages the cus-
tom of monogamy was legalised in Western
Jewish communities. Connected with the fra-
ternity of the Jewish communal organisation and
the incomparable affection and mutual devotion
of the home - life was the habit of charity.
Charity, in the sense both of almsgiving and of
loving-kindness, was the virtue of virtues. The
very word which in the Hebrew Bible means
righteousness means in Rabbinic Hebrew charity.
' On three things the world stands/ says a Rabbi,
' on law, on public worship, and on the bestowal
of loving-kindSiess.'

Some other concepts of Judaism and their
influence on character will be treated in a later
chapter. Here a final word must be said on the
Hallowing of Knowledge.

In one of the oldest prayers of the Synagogue,

repeated thrice daily, occurs this paragraph:

' Thou dost graciously bestow on man knowledge,

and teachest mortals understanding ; O let us be

D 49

JUDAISM

graciously endowed by Thee with knowledge,
understanding, and discernment. Blessed art
Thou, 0 Lord, gracious Giver of Knowledge.'
The intellect was to be turned to the service of
the God from whom intelligence emanated. The
Jewish estimate of intellect and learning led to
some unamiable contempt of the fool and the
ignoramus. But the evil tendency of identifying
learning with religion was more than mitigated
by the encouragement which this concept gave to
education. The ideal was, that every Jew must
be a scholar, or at all events a student. Obscur-
antism could not for any lengthy period lodge
itself in the Jewish camp. There was no learned
caste. The fact that the Bible and much of the
most admired literature was in Hebrew made most
Jews bilingual at least. But it was not merely
that knowledge was useful, that it added dig-
nity to man, and realised part of his possibilities.
The service of the Lord called for the dedication
of the reason as well as for the purification of
the heart. The Jew had to think as well as feel.
He had to serve with the mind as well as with
the body. Therefore it was that he was always
anxious to justify his religion to his reason.
Maimonides devoted a large section of his Guide
to the explanation of the motives of the com-
50

SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM

mandments. And his example was imitated.
The Law was the expression of the Will of God,
and obeyed and loved as such. But the Law
was also the expression of the Divine Reason.
Hence man had the ri^ht and the duty to ex-
amine and realise how his own human reason
was satisfied by the Law. In a sense the Jew
was a quite simple believer. But never a simple-
ton. ' Know the Lord thy God ' was the key-note
of this aspect of Jewish theology.

CHAPTER V

SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM

THE historical consciousness of Israel was vital-
ised by a unique adaptability to present con-
ditions. This is shown in the fidelity with which
a number of ancient festivals have been main-
tained through the ages. Some of these were
taken over from pre-Israelite cults. They were
nature feasts, and these are among the oldest
rites of men. But, as Maimonides wisely said
eight centuries ago, religious rites depend not so
much on their origins as on the use men make of
them. People who wish to return to the primi-
tive usages of this or that church have no grasp
of the value and significance of ceremonial. Here,
at all events, we are not concerned with origins.
The really interesting thing is that feasts, which
originated in the fields and under the free heaven,
were observed and enjoyed in the confined streets
of the Ghetto. The influence of ceremonial is
undying when it is bound up with a community's
52

SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM

life. ' It is impossible to create festivals to order
One must use those which exist, and where neces-
sary charge them with new meanings.' So writes
Mr. Montefiore in his Liberal Judaism (p. 155).

This is precisely what has happened with the
Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles.
These three festivals were originally, as has been
said, nature feasts. But they became also pil-
grim feasts. After the fall of the Temple the
pilgrimages to Jerusalem, of course, ceased, and
there was an end to the sacrificial rites connected
with them all. The only sense in which they can
still be called pilgrim feasts is that, despite the
general laxity of Sabbath observance and Syna-
gogue attendance, these three celebrations are
nowadays occasions on which, in spring, summer,
and autumn, a large section of the Jewish com-
munity contrives to wend its way to places of
public worship.

In the Jewish Liturgy the three feasts have
special designations. They are called respect-
ively ' The Season of our Freedom,' ' the Season
of the Giving of our Law,' and ' the Season of our
Joy.' These descriptions are not biblical, nor are
they found in this precise form until the fixation
of the Synagogue liturgy in the early part of the
Middle Ages. But they have had a powerful

53

JUDAISM

influence in perpetuating the hold that the three
pilgrim feasts have on the heart and conscious-
ness of Israel. Liberty, Revelation, Joy — these are
a sequence of wondrous appeal. Now it is easily
seen that these ideas have no indissoluble con-
nection with specific historical traditions. True,
' Freedom ' implies the Exodus ; ' Revelation,' the
Sinaitic theophany ; ' Joy,' the harvest merry-
makings, and perhaps some connection with the
biblical narrative of Israel's wanderings in the
wilderness. But the connection, though essential
for the construction of the association, is not
essential for its retention. ' The Passover,' says
Mr. Montefiore (Liberal Judaism, p. 155), ' practi-
cally celebrates the formation of the Jewish
people. It is also the festival of liberty. In
view of these two central features, it does not
matter that we no longer believe in the miracu-
lous incidents of the Exodus story. They are
mere trappings which can easily be dispensed
with. A festival of liberty, the formation of a
people for a religious task, a people destined to
become a purely religious community whose con-
tinued existence has no meaning or value except
on the ground of religion, — here we have ideas
which can fitly form the subject of a yearly
celebration.' Again, as to Pentecost and the Ten
54

SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM

Commandments, Mr. Montefiore writes : ' We do
not believe that any divine or miraculous voice,
still less that God Himself, audibly pronounced
the Te.n Words. But their importance lies in
themselves, not in their surroundings and origin.
Liberals as well as orthodox may therefore join
in the festival of the Ten Cpmmandments.
Pentecost celebrates the definite union of re-
ligion with morality, the inseparable conjunction
of the " service " of God with the " service " of
man. Can any religious festival have a nobler
subject?' Finally, as to tabernacles, Mr. Monte-
fiore thus expresses himself: ' For us, to-day, the
connection with the wanderings from Egypt,
which the latest [biblical] legislators attempted,
has again disappeared. Tabernacles is a harvest
festival; it is a nature festival. Should not a
religion have a festival or holy day of this kind ?
Is not the conception of God as the ruler and
sustainer of nature, the immanent and all-per-
vading spirit, one aspect of the Divine, which can
fitly be. thought of and celebrated year by year ?
Thus each of the three great Pentateuchal festi-
vals may reasonably and joyfully be observed by
liberals and orthodox alike. We have no need
or wish to make a change.' And of the actual
ceremonial rites connected with the Passover,
55

JUDAISM

Pentecost, and Tabernacles, it is apparently only
the avoidance of leaven on the first of the three
that is regarded as unimportant. But even there
Mr. Montefiore's own feeling is in favour of the
rite. 'It is/ he says, 'a matter of comparative
unimportance whether the practice of eating un-
leavened bread in the house for the seven days
of the Passover be maintained or not. Those
who appreciate the value of a pretty and ancient
symbol, both for children and adults, will not
easily abandon the custom.'

This is surely a remarkable development. In
the Christian Church it seems that certain festi-
vals are retaining their general hold because they
are becoming public, national holidays. But in
Judaism the hold is to be maintained precisely
on the ground that there is to be nothing national
about them, they are to be reinterpreted ideally and
symbolically. It remains to be seen whether this
is possible, and it is too early to predict the verdict
of experience. The process is in active incubation
in America as well as in Europe, but it cannot
be claimed that the eggs are hatched yet. On
the other hand, Zionism has so far had no effect
in the opposite direction. There has been no
nationalisation of Judaism as a result of the new
striving after political nationality. Many who
56

SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM

had previously been detached from the Jewish
community have been brought back by Zionism,
but they have not been re-attached to the
religion. There has been no perceptible in-
crease, for instance, in the number of those
who fast on the Ninth of Ab, the anniversary
of the destruction of the Temple. Hence, from
these and other considerations, of which limited
space prevents the specification, it seems on the
whole likely that, as in the past so in the future,
the Festivals of the Synagogue will survive by
changes in religious significance rather than by
any deepening of national association.

Except that the Synagogues are decked with
flowers, while the Decalogue is solemnly intoned
from the Scroll of the Pentateuch, the Feast of
Pentecost has no ceremonial trappings even with
the orthodox. Passover and Tabernacles stand
on a different footing. The abstention from
leavened bread on the former feast has led to a
closely organised system of cleansing the houses,
an interminable array of rules as to food ; while
the prescriptions of the Law as to the bearing
of palm-branches and other emblems, and the
ordinance as to dwelling in booths, have sur-
rounded the Feast of Tabernacles with a con-
siderable, if less extensive, ceremonial But
57

JUDAISM

there is this difference. The Passover is pri-
marily a festival of the Home, Tabernacles of the
Synagogue. In Europe the habit of actually
dwelling in booths has been long unusual, owing
to climatic considerations. But of late years it
has become customary for every Synagogue to
raise its communal booth, to which many Jews
pay visits of ceremony. On the other hand, the
Passover is par excellence a home rite. On the
first two evenings (or at all events on the first
evening) there takes place the Seder (literally
' service '), a service of prayer, which is at the
same time a family meal. Gathered round the
table, on which are spread unleavened cakes, bitter
herbs, and other emblems of joy and sorrow, the
family recounts in prose and song the narrative
of the Exodus. The service is in two parts,
between which comes the evening meal. The
hallowing of the home here attains its highest
point.

Unless, indeed, this distinction be allotted to
the Sabbath. The rigidity of the laws regarding
Sabbath observance is undeniable. Movement
was restricted, many acts were forbidden which
were not in themselves laborious. The Sabbath
was hedged in by a formidable array of enact-
ments. To an outside critic it is not wonderful
58

SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM

that the Jewish Sabbath has a repellent look.
But to the insider things wear another aspect.
The Sabbath was and is a day of delight. On it
the Jew had a foretaste of the happiness of the
world to come. The reader who wishes to have
a spirited, and absolutely true, picture of the
Jewish Sabbath cannot do better than turn to
Dr. Schechter's excellent Studies in Judaism
(pp. 296 seq.). As Dr. Schechter pithily puts it :
' Somebody, either the learned professors, or the
millions of the Jewish people, must be under a
delusion.' Right through the Middle Ages the
Sabbath grew deeper into the affections of the
Jews. It was not till after the French Revolu-
tion and the era of emancipation, that a change
occurred. Mixing with the world, and sharing
the world's pursuits, the Jews began to find it
hard to observe the Saturday Sabbath as of old.
In still more recent times the difficulty has in-
creased. Added to this, the growing laxity in
observances has affected the Sabbath. This is
one of the most pressing problems that face
the Jewish community to-day. Here and there
an attempt has been made by small sections of
Jews to substitute a Sunday Sabbath for the
Saturday Sabbath. But the plan has not prospered.
One of the most notable rites of the Service of
59

JUDAISM

the Passover eve is the sanctification with wine,
a ceremony common to the ordinary Sabbath eve.
This rite has perhaps had much to do with the
characteristic sobriety of Israel. Wine forms
part of almost every Jewish rite, including the
marriage ceremony. Wine thus becomes asso-
ciated with religion, and undue indulgence is a
sin as well as a vice. ' No joy without wine,' runs
an old Rabbinic prescription. Joy is the hall-
mark of Judaism ; 'Joyous Service 'its summary
of man's relation to the Law. So far is Judaism
from being a gloomy religion, that it is almost
too light-hearted, just as was the religion of
ancient Greece. But the Talmud tells us of a
class who in the early part of the first century
were known as 'lovers of sorrow.' These men
were in love with misfortune ; for to every trial of
Israel corresponded an intervention of the divine
salvation. This is the secret of the Jewish gaiety.
The resilience under tribulation was the result of
a firm confidence in the saving fidelity of God.
And the gaiety was tempered by solemnity, as
the observances, to which we now turn, will
amply show.

Far more remarkable than anything yet dis-
cussed is the change effected in two other holy
days since Bible times. The genius of Judaism
60

SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM

is nowhere more conspicuous than in the fuller
meanings which have been infused into the New
Year's Day and the Day of Atonement. The
New Year is the first day of the seventh month
(Tishri), when the ecclesiastical year began. In
the Bible the festival is only known as a ' day of
blowing the shofar' (ram's horn). In the Syna-
gogue this rite was retained after the destruction
of the Temple, and it still is universally observed.
But the day was transformed into a Day of Judg-
ment, the opening of a ten days' period of Peni-
tence which closed with the Day of Atonement.

Here, too, the change effected in a biblical rite
transformed its character. 'It needed a long
upward development before a day, originally
instituted on priestly ideas of national sin and
collective atonement, could be transformed into
the purely spiritual festival which we celebrate
to-day' (Montefiore, op. cit, p. 160). But the
day is none the less associated with a strict rite,
the fast. It is one of the few ascetic ceremonies
in the Jewish Calendar as known to most Jews.
There is a strain of asceticism in some forms of
Judaism, and on this a few words will be said
later. But, on the whole, there is in modern
Judaism a tendency to underrate somewhat the
value of asceticism in religion. Hence the fast
61

JUDAISM

has a distinct importance in and for itself, and
it is regrettable ..that the laudable desire to
spiritualise the^day is leading^ to a depreciation
ofthe fast as such.^ But the real change is due
to the cessation of sacrifices. In the Levitical

de, sacrifice had a primary importance in the
scheme of atonement. But with the loss of the
Temple, the idea of sacrifice entirely vanished,
and atonement became a matter for the personal
conscience. It was henceforth an inward sense
of sin translating itself into the better life. ' To
purify desire, to ennoble the will — this is the
essential condition of atonement. Nay, it is
atonement ' (Joseph, Judaism as Creed and Life,
p. 267 ; cf. supra, p. 45). This, in the opinion of
Christian theologians, is a shallow view of atojae-
ment. But it is at all events an attempt to
apply theology to life. And its justification lies
in its success.

Of the other festivals a word is due concerning
two of them, which differ much in significance and
in development. Purim and Chanuka are their
names. Purim was probably the ancient Baby-
lonian Saturnalia, and it is still observed as a
kind of Carnival by many Jews, though their
number is decreasing. For Purim is emphati-
cally a Ghetto feast. And this description applies
62

SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM

in more ways than one. In the first place, the
Book of Esther, with which the Jewish Puriin is
associated, is not a book that commends itself to
the modern Jewish consciousness. The historicity
of the story is doubted, and its narrow outlook
is not that of prophetic Judaism. Observed
as mediaeval Jews observed it, Purim was a
thoroughly innocent festivity. The unpleasant
taste left by the closing scenes of the book was
washed off by the geniality of temper which saw
the humours of Hamau's fall and never for a
moment rested in a feeling of vindictiveness.
But the whole book breathes so nationalistic a
spirit, so uncompromising a belief that the enemy
of Israel must be the enemy of God, that it has
become difficult for modern Judaism to retain
any affection for it. It makes its appeal to the
persecuted, no doubt : it conveys a stirring lesson
in the providential care with which God watches
over His people: it bids the sufferer hope.
Esther's splendid surrender of self, her immortal
declaration, ' If I perish, I perish,' still may legiti-
mately thrill all hearts. But the Carnival has no
place in the life of a Western city, still less the
sectional Carnival. The hobby-horse had its
opportunity and the maskers their rights in the
Ghetto, but only there. Purim thus is now
63

JUDAISM

chiefly retained as a children's feast, and still
better as a feast of charity, of the interchange of
gifts between friends, and the bestowal of alms on
the needy. This is a worthy survival.

Chanuka, on the other hand, grows every year
into greater popularity. This festival of light,
when lamps are kindled in honour of the
Maccabean heroes, has of late been rediscovered
by the liberals. For the first four centuries of
the Christian Era, the festival of Chanuka
('Dedication') was observed by the Church as
well as by the Synagogue. But for some cen-
turies afterwards the significance of the anni-
versary was obscured. It is now realised as a
momentous event in the world's history. It was
not merely a tocal triumph of Hebraism over
Hellenism, but it represents the re-entry of the
East into the civilisation of the West. Alexander
the Great had occidentalised the Orient. But
with the success of the Judseans against the
Seleucids and of the Parthians against the
Romans, the East reasserted itself. And the
newly recovered influence has never again been
surrendered. Hence this feast is a feast of ideals.
Year by year this is becoming more clearly seen.
And the symbol of the feast, light, is itself an
inspiration.

64

SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM

The Jew is really a very sentimental being.
He loves symbols. A good deal of his fondness
for ritual is due to this fact. The outward marks
of an inner state have always appealed to him.
Ancient taboos became not only consecrated but
symbolical Whether it be the rite of circum-
cision, or the use of phylacteries and fringed
praying garments, or the adfixture of little scrolls
in metal cases on the door-posts, or the glad
submission to the dietary laws, in all these
matters sentiment played a considerable part.
And the word sentiment is used in its best sense.
Abstract morality is well enough for the philo-
sopher, but men of flesh and blood want their
morality expressed in terms of feeling. Love of
God is a fine thing, but the Jew wished to do
loving acts of service. Obedience to the Will of
God, the suppression of the human desires before
that Will, is a great ideal. But the Jew wished to
realise that he was obeying, that he was making
the self-suppression. He was not satisfied with
a general law of holiness: he felt impelled to
holiness in detail, to a life in which the laws of
bodily hygiene were obeyed as part of the same
law of holiness that imposed ritual and moral
purity. Much of the intricate system of obser-
vance briefly summarised in this paragraph, a
E 65

JUDAISM

system which filled the Jew's life, is passing away.
This is largely because Jews are surrendering
their own original theory of life and religion.
Modern Judaism seems to have no use for the
ritual system. The older Judaism might retort
that, if that be so, it has no use for the modern
Judaism. It is, however, clear that modern
Judaism now realises the mistake made by the
Reformers of the mid-nineteenth century. Hence
we are hearing, and shall no doubt hear more
and more, of the modification of observances in
Judaism rather than of their abolition.

66

CHAPTER VI

JEWISH MYSTICISM

'JUDAISM is often called the religion of reason.
It is this, but it is also the religion of the soul.
It recognises the value of that mystic insight,
those indefinable intuitions which, taking up the
task at the point where the mind impotently
abandons it, carries us straight into the presence
of the King. Thus it has found room both for
the keen speculator on theological problems and
for the mystic who, because he feels God, declines
to reason about Him — for a Maimonides and a
Mendelssohn, but also for a Nachrnanides, a Vital,
and a Luria ' (M. Joseph, op. cit, p. 47). Used in
a vague way, mysticism stands for spiritual inward-
ness. Religion without mysticism, said Amiel, is
a rose without perfume. This saying is no more
precise and no more informing than Matthew
Arnold's definition of religion as morality touched
with emotion. Neither mysticism nor an emo-
tional touch makes religion. They are as often
as not concomitants of a pathological state which
67

JUDAISM

is the denial of religion. But if mysticism means
a personal attitude towards God in which the
heart is active as well as the mind, then religion
cannot exist without mysticism.

When, however, we regard mysticism as what
it very often is, as an antithesis to institutional
religion and a revolt against authority and forms,
then it may seem at first sight paradoxical to
recognise the mystic's claim to the hospitality of
Judaism. That a religion which produced the
Psalter, and not only produced it, but used it
with never a break, should be a religion, with
intensely spiritual possibilities, and its adherents
capable of a vivid sense of the nearness of God,
with an ever-felt and never-satisfied longing for
communion with Him, is what we should fully
expect. But this expectation would rather make
us look for an expression on the lines of the 119th
Psalm, in which the Law is so markedly associated
with freedom and spirituality. Judaism, after all,
allowed to authority and Law a supreme place.
But the mystic relies on his own intuitions, de-
pends on his personal experiences. Judaism, on
the other hand, is a scheme in which personal
experiences only count in so far as they are
brought into the general fund of the communal
experience.

68

JEWISH MYSTICISM

But in discussing Judaism it is always impera-
tive to discard all a priori probabilities. Judaism
is the great upsetter of the probable. Analyse a
tendency of Judaism and predict its logical con-
sequences, and then look in Judaism for con-
sequences quite other than these. Over and over
again things are not what they ought to be. The
sacrificial system should have destroyed spiritu-
ality ; in fact, it produced the Psalter, ' the hymn-
book of the second Temple.' Pharisaism ought
to have led to externalism ; in fact, it did not, for
somehow excessive scrupulosity in rite and piet-
istic exercises went hand in hand with simple
faith and religious inwardness. So, too, the ex-
pression of ethics and religion as Law ought to
have suppressed individuality; in fact, it some-
times gave an impulse to each individual to try
to impose his own concepts, norms, and acts as
a Law upon the rest. Each thought very much
for himself, and desired that others should think
likewise. We have already seen that in matters
of dogma there never was any corporate action at
all; in ancient times, as now, it is not possible to
pronounce definitely on the dogmatie teachings
of Judaism. Though there has been and is a cer-
tain consensus of opinion on many matters, yet
neither in practice nor in beliefs have the local,
69

JUDAISM

the temporal, the personal elements ever been
negligible. In order to expound or define a tenet
or rite of Judaism it is mostly necessary to go
into questions of time and place and person.

Perhaps, then, we ought to be prepared to find,
as in point of fact we do find, within the main
body of Judaism, and not merely as a freak of
occasional eccentrics, distinct mystical tendencies.
These tendencies have often been active well in-
side the sphere of the Law. Mysticism was, as
we shall see, sometimes a revolt against Law ; but
it was often, in Judaism as in the Roman Catholic
Church, the outcome of a sincere and even pas-
sionate devotion to authority. Jewish mysticism,
in particular, starts as an interpretation of the
Scriptures. Certain truths were arrived at by man
either intuitively or rationally, and these were
harmonised with the Bible by a process of lifting
the veil from the text, and thus penetrating to
the true meaning hidden beneath the letter.
Allegorical and esoteric exegesis always had this
aim: to find written what had been otherwise
found. Honour was thus done to the Scriptures,
though the latter were somewhat cavalierly treated
in the process ; Philo's doctrine (at the beginning
of the Christian era) and the great canonical book
of the mediaeval Cabbala, the Zohar (beginning of
70

JEWISH MYSTICISM

the fourteenth century), were alike in this, they
were largely commentaries on the Pentateuch.
Maimonides in the twelfth century followed the
same method, and only differed from these in the
nature of his deductions from Scripture. This
prince of rationalists agreed with the mystics in
adopting an esoteric exegesis. But he read Aris-
totle into the text, while the mystics read Plato
into it. They were alike faithful to the Law, or
rather to their own interpretations of its terms.

But further than this, — a large portion of Jewish
mfysticism was the work of lawyers. Some of the
foremost mystics were famous Talmudists, men
who were appealed to for decisions on ritual and
conduct. It is a phenomenon that constantly
meets us in Jewish theology. There were anti-
nomian mystics and legalistic opponents of mysti-
cism, but many, like Nachmanides (1195-1270)
and Joseph Caro (1488-1575), doubled the parts of
Cabbalist and Talmudist. That Jewish mysticism
comes to look like a revolt against the Talmud
is due to the course of mediaeval scholasticism.
While Aristotle was supreme, it was impossible
for man to conceive as knowable anything un-
attainable by reason. But reason must alwavs

* V

leave God as unknowable. Mysticism did not
assert that God was knowable, but it substi-

JUDAISM

»
tuted something else for this spiritual scepticism.

Mysticism started with the conviction that God
was unknowable by reason, but it held that God
was nevertheless realisable in the human ex-
perience. Accepting and adopting various Neo-
Platonic theories of emanation, elaborating thence
an intricate angelology, the mystics threw a bridge
over the gulf between God and man. Philo's
Logos, the Personified Wisdom of the Palestinian
Midrash, the demiurge of Gnosticism, the incar-
nate Christ, were all but various phases of this
same attempt to cross an otherwise impassable
chasm. Throughout its whole history, Jewish
mysticism substituted mediate creation for imme-
diate creation out of nothing, and the mediate
beings were not created but were emanations.
This view was much influenced by Solomon ibn
Gabirol (1021-1070). God is to Gabirol an abso-
lute Unity, in which form and substance are
identical. Hence He cannot be attributively de-
fined, and man can know Him only by means of
beings which emanate from Him. Nor was this
idea confined to Jewish philosophy of the GraBCo-
Arabic school. The German Cabbala, too, which
owed nothing directly to that school, held that
God was not rationally knowable. The result
must be, not merely to exalt visionary meditation
72

JEWISH MYSTICISM

over calm ratiocination, but to place reliance on
inward experience instead of on external autho-
rity, which makes its appeal necessarily to the
reason. Here we see elements of revolt. For, as
Dr. L. Ginzberg well says, ' while study of the
Law was to Talinudists the very acme of piety,
the mystics accorded the first place to prayer,
which was considered as a mystical progress to-
wards God, demanding a state of ecstasy.' The
Jewish mystic must invent means for inducing
such a state, for Judaism cannot endure a passive
waiting for the moving spirit. The mystic soul
must learn how to mount the chariot (Merkaba)
and ride into the inmost halls of Heaven. Mostly
the ecstatic state was induced by fasting and
other ascetic exercises, a necessary preliminary
being moral purity ; then there were solitary
meditations and long night vigils ; lastly, pre-
scribed ritual of proved efficacy during the veiy
act of prayer. Thus mysticism had a further
attraction for a certain class of Jews, in that it
supplied the missing element of asceticism which
is indispensable to men more austerely disposed
than the average Jew.

In the sixteenth century a very strong impetus
was given to Jewish mysticism by Isaac Luria
(1534-1572). His chief contributions to the move-
73

JUDAISM

ment were practical, though he doubtless taught a
theoretical Cabbala also. But Judaism, even in its
mystical phases, remains a religion of conduct.
Luria was convinced that man can conquer
matter ; this practical conviction was the moving
force of his whole life. His own manner of
living was saintly; and he taught his disciples
that they too could, by penitence, confession,
prayer, and charity, evade bodily trammels and
send their souls straight to God even during their
terrestrial pilgrimage. Luria taught all this not
only while submitting to Law, but under the stress
of a passionate submission to it. He added in
particular a new beauty to the Sabbath. Many
of the most fascinatingly religious rites connected
now with the Sabbath are of his devising. The
white Sabbath garb, the joyous mystical hymns
full of the Bride and of Love, the special Sabbath
foods, the notion of the 'over-Soul' — these and
many other of the Lurian rites and fancies still hold
wide sway in the Orient. The ' over-Soul ' was a
very inspiring conception, which certainly did not
originate with Luria. According to a Talmudic
Rabbi (Resh Lakish, third century), on Adam was
bestowed a higher soul on the Sabbath, which he
lost at the close of the day. Luria seized upon
this mystical idea, and used it at once to spiritualise
74

JEWISH MYSTICISM

the Sabbath and attach to it an ecstatic joyous-
ness. The ritual of the ' over-Soul ' was an elabo-
rate means by which a relation was established
between heaven and earth. But all this symbolism
had but the slightest connection with dogma. It
was practical through and through. It emerged
in a number of new rites, it based itself on and
became the cause of a deepening devotion to
morality. Luria would have looked with dismay
on the moral laxity which did later on intrude, in
consequence of unbridled emotionalism and mystic
hysteria. There comes the point when he that
interprets Law emotionally is no longer Law-
abiding. The antinomian crisis thus produced
meets us in the careers of many who, like Sabbatai
Zebi, assumed the Messianic role.

Jewish mysticism, starting as an ascetic correc-
tive to the conventional hedonism, lost its ascetic
character and degenerated into licentiousness.
This was the case with the eighteenth-century
mysticism known as Chassidism, though, as its
name (' Saintliness ') implies, it was innocent
enough at its initiation. Violent dances, and other
emotional and sensual stimulations, led to a state
of exaltation during which the line of morality was
overstepped. But there was nevertheless, as Dr.
Schechter has shown, considerable spiritual worth

75

JUDAISM

and beauty in Chassidism. It transferred the centre
of gravity from thinking to feeling ; it led away
from the worship of Scripture to the love of God.
The fresh air of religion was breathed once more,
the stars and the open sky replaced the midnight
lamp and the college. But it was destined to
raise a fog more murky than the confined atmo-
sphere of the study. The man with the book
was often nearer God than was the man of the
earth.

The opposition of Talmudism against the neo-
mysticism was thus on the whole just and salu-
tary. This opposition, no doubt, was bitter chiefly
when mysticism became revolutionary in practice,
when it invaded the established customs of legal-
istic orthodoxy. But it was also felt that mysti-
cism went dangerously near to a denial of the
absolute Unity of God. It was more difficult to
attack it on its theoretical than on its practical
side, however. The Jewish mystic did sometimes
adopt a most irritating policy of deliberately
altering customs as though for the very pleasure
of change. Now in most religious controversies
discipline counts for more than belief. As Salirn-
beno asserts of his own day : ' It was far less dan-
gerous to debate in the schools whether God really
existed, than to wear publicly and pertinaciously
76

JEWISH MYSTICISM

a frock and cowl of any but the orthodox cut.'
But the Talmudists' antagonism to mysticism was
not exclusively of this kind in the eighteenth
century. Mysticism is often mere delusion. In
the last resort man has no other guide than his
reason. It is his own reason that convinces him
of the limitations of his reason. But those limita-
tions are not to be overpassed by a visionary self-
introspection, unless this, too, is subjected to
rational criticism. Mysticism does its true part
when it applies this criticism also to the current
"forms, conventions, and institutions. Conventions,
forms, and institutions, after all, represent the
corporate wisdom, the accumulated experiences
of men throughout the ages. Mysticism is the
experience of one. Each does right to test the
corporate experience by his own experience. But
he must not elevate himself into a law even for
himself. That, in a sentence, would summarise
the attitude of Judaism towards mysticism. It is
medicine, not a food.

77

CHAPTER VII

ESCHATOLOGY

THAT the soul has a life of its own after death
was a firmly fixed idea in Judaism, though, except
in the works of philosophers and in the liberal
theology of modern Judaism, the grosser concep-
tion of a bodily Resurrection was predominant over
the purely spiritual idea of Immortality. Curi-
ously enough, Maimonides, who formulated the
belief in Resurrection as a dogma of the Syn-
agogue, himself held that the world to come is
altogether free from material factors. At a much
earlier period (in the third century) Rab had said
(Ber. 17 a): 'Not as this world is the world to
come. In the world to come there is no eating
or drinking, no sexual intercourse, no barter, no
envy, hatred, or contention. But the righteous
sit with their crowns on then- heads, enjoying the
splendour of the Shechinah (the Divine Presence).'
Commenting on this in various places, Maimonides
emphatically asserts the spirituality of the future
78

ESCHATOLOGY

life. In his Siraj he says, with reference to the
utterance of Rab just quoted: ' By the remark of
the Sages " with their crowns on their heads " is
meant the preservation of the soul in the intel-
lectual sphere, and the merging of the two into
one. ... By their remark " enjoying the splendour
of the Shechinah " is meant that those souls will
reap bliss in what they comprehend of the
Creator, just as the Angels enjoy felicity in what
they understand of His existence. And so the
felicity and the final goal consists in reaching to
this exalted company and attaining this high
pitch.' Again, in his philosophical Guide (i. xli.),
Maimonides distinguishes three kinds of 'soul':
(1) The principle of animality, (2) the principle of
humanity, and (3) the principle of intellectuality,
that part of man's individuality which can exist
independently of the body, and therefore alone
survives death. Even more remarkable is the
fact that Maimonides enunciates the same opinion
in his Code (Laws of Repentance, viii. 2). For the
Code differs from the other two of the three main
works of Maimcmides in that it is less personal,
and expresses what the author conceives to be
the general opinion of Judaism as interpreted by
its most authoritative teachers.

There can be no question but that this repeated
79

JUDAISM

insistence of Maimonides has strongly affected
all subsequent Jewish thought. To him, eternal
bliss consists in perfect spiritual communion with
God. ' He who desires to serve God from Love
must not serve to win the future world. But he
does right and eschews wrong because he is man,
and owes it to his manhood to perfect himself.
This effort brings him to the type of perfect man,
whose soul shall live in the state that befits it,
viz. in the world to come.' Thus the world to
come is a state rather than a place.

But Maimonides' view was not accepted with-
out dispute. It was indeed quite easy to cite
Rabbinic passages in which the world to come is
identified with the bodily Resurrection. Against
Maimonides were produced such Talmudic utter-
ances as the following : ' Said Rabbi Chiya b.
Joseph, the Righteous shall arise clad in their
garments, for if a grain of wheat which is
buried naked comes forth with many garments,
how much more shall the righteous arise full
garbed, seeing that they were interred with
shrouds' (Kethub. Ill b). Again, 'Rabbi Jannai
said to his children, Bury me not in white
garments or in black: not in white, lest I be
not held worthy (of heaven) and thus may be
like a bridegroom among mourners (in Gehenna) ;
80

ESCHATOLOGY

nor in black, lest if I am held worthy, I be like
a mourner among bridegrooms (in heaven). But
bury me in coloured garments (so that my appear-
ance will be partly in keeping with either fate),'
(Sabbath, 114 a). Or finally : « They arise with
their blemishes, and then are healed ' (Sanh. 91 b).
The popular fancy, in its natural longing for
a personal existence after the bodily death,
certainly seized upon the belief in Resurrection
with avidity. It had its roots partly in the
individual consciousness, partly in the communal.
For the Resurrection was closely connected with
such hopes as those expressed in Ezekiel's vision
of the re-animation of Israel's dry bones (Ezek.
xxxvil). Thus popular theology adopted many
ideas based on the Resurrection. The myth of
the Leviathan hardly belongs here, for, wide-
spread as it was, it was certainly not regarded
in a material light. The Leviathan was created
on the fifth day, and its flesh will be served as
a banquet for the righteous at the advent of
Messiah. The mediaeval poets found much attrac-
tion in this idea, and allowed their imagination
full play concerning the details of the divine
repast. Maimonides entirely spiritualised the
idea, and his example was here decisive. The
conception of the Resurrection had other con-
F 81

JUDAISM

sequences. As the scene of the Resurrection is
to be Jerusalem, there grew up a strong desire
to be buried on the western slope of Mount
Olivet. In fact, many burial and mourning
customs of the Synagogue originated from a
belief in the bodily Resurrection. But even in
the orthodox liturgy the direct references to it
are vague and idealised. Two passages of great
beauty may be cited. The first is taken from the
Authorised Daily Prayer Book (ed. Singer, p. 5) :
' 0 my God, the soul which Thou gavest me is
pure ; Thou didst create it, Thou didst form it,
Thou didst breathe it into me ; Thou preservest
it within me; and Thou wilt take it from me,
but wilt restore it unto me hereafter. So long
as the soul is within me, I will give thanks unto
Thee, O Lord my God and God of my fathers,
Sovereign of all works, Lord of all souls ! Blessed
art Thou, 0 Lord, who restorest souls unto dead
bodies.' The last phrase is also extant in another
reading in the Talmud and in some liturgies:
'Blessed art Tnou, who re vi vest the dead,' but
the meaning of the two forms is identical This
passage, be it noted, is ancient, and is recited
every morning at prayer. The second passage
is recited even more frequently, for it is said
thrice daily, and also forms part of the funeral
82

ESCHATOLOGY

service. It may be found in the Prayer Book
just quoted on p. 44 : ' Thou, 0 Lord, art mighty
for ever, Thou quickenest the dead, Thou art
mighty to save. Thou sustainest the living with
loving- kindness, quickenest the dead with great
mercy, supportest the falling, healest the sick,
loosest the bound, and keepest Thy faith to them
that sleep in the dust. Who is like unto Thee,
Lord of mighty acts, and who resembleth Thee,
O King, who killest and quickenest, and causest
salvation to spring forth ? Yea faithful art Thou
to quicken the dead.'

The later history of the doctrine in the
Synagogue may be best summarised in the words
of Dr. Kohler, whose theological articles in the
Jewish Encyclopedia deserve grateful recogni-
tion. What follows may be read at full length
in that work, vol. vi. p. 567 : ' While mediaeval
philosophy dwelt on the intellectual, moral, or
spiritual nature of the soul to prove its immor-
tality, the Cabbalists endeavoured to explain the
soul as a light from heaven, after Proverbs xx. 27,
and immortality as a return to the celestial world
of pure light. But the belief in the pre-existence
of the soul led the mystics to the adoption, with
all its weird notions and superstitions, of the
Pythagorean system of the transmigration of the

JUDAISM

soul.' Moses Mendelssohn revived the Platonic
form of the doctrine of immortality. Thence-
forth the dogma of the Resurrection was gradually
discarded until it was eliminated from the Prayer
Book of the Reform congregations. Man's future
was thought of as the realisation of those ' higher
expectations which are sown, as part of its very
nature, in every human soul' The statement of
Genesis that ' God made man in His own image,'
and the idea conveyed in the text (1 Samuel
xxv. 29), ' May the soul ... be bound up in the
bundle of life with the Lord thy God,' which as a
divine promise and a human supplication ' filled
the generations with comfort and hope, received
a new meaning from this view of man's future ;
and the Rabbinical saying (Ber. 64 a): "The
Righteous rest not, either in this or in the
future world, but go from strength to strength
until they see God in Zion," appeared to offer an
endless vista to the hope of immortality.'

But quite apart from this indefiniteness of
attitude as to the meaning of immortality, it is
scarcely possible to speak of a Jewish Eschatology
at all. The development of an Eschatology
occurred in that section of Jewish opinion which
remained on the fringe. It must be sought in
the apocalyptic literature, which has been pre-

ESCHATOLOGY

served in Greek. The whole subject had but a
small attraction for Judaism proper. Naturally
there was some curiosity and some speculation.
The Day of the Lord, with its combination of
Retribution and Salvation, was pictured in vari-
ous ways and with some elaboration of detail.
Paradise and Hell were mapped out, and the
comfortable compartments to be occupied by the
saints and the miserable quarters of sinners were
specified with the precision of an Ordnance Sur-
vey. Purgatory was an institution not limited to
the Roman Catholic Church; it had a strong hold
on the mediaeval Jewish mind. The intermediate
state was a favourite escape from the theological
necessity of condemning sinners to eternal punish-
ment. The Jewish heart could not suffer the
pain of conceiving Gehenna inevitable. So, one
by one, those who might logically be committed
there were rescued on various pretexts. In the
end the number of the individual sinners who
were to suffer eternal torture could be named on
the fingers of one hand.

By the preceding paragraph it is not implied
that Jewish literature in Hebrew has not its full
complement of fancies, horrible and beautiful,
regarding heaven and hell. But such fancies
were neither dogmatic nor popular. They never
«5

JUDAISM

found their way into the tenets of Judaism as
formulated by any authority ; they never became
a moving power in the life of the Jewish masses.
It was the poets who nourished these lurid ideas,
and poetry which has done so much for the good
of religion has also done it many a disservice.
Judaism, in its prosaic form, accepted the ideas
of Immortality, Retribution, and so forth, but
the real interest was in life here, not in life here-
after.

We can see how the two were bridged over by
the Jewish conviction of human solidarity. For
twelve months after the death of a father the son
recited daily the Kaddish prayer (Authorised
Daily Prayer Book, p. 77). This was a mere
Doxology, opening : ' Magnified and sanctified be
His great name in the world which He hath
created according to His will. May He establish
His kingdom during your life and during your
days, and during the life of all the house of Israel,
even speedily and at a near time, and say *ye
Amen.' As to the Messianic idea of the King-
dom of God, something will be said in the next
chapter. But this Doxology was believed effica-
cious to save the departed soul when uttered by
the living son. The generations were thus bound
together, and just as the merits of the fathers
86

ESCHATOLOGY

could exert benign influence over the erring child
on earth, so could the praises of the child move
the mercy of God in favour of the erring father
hi Purgatory. It was a beautiful expression of
the unbreakable chain of tradition, a tradition
whose links were human hearts. In such con-
ceptions, rather than in descriptive pictures of
Paradise and Gehenna, is the true mind of
Judaism to be discerned.

That the first formal sign of grief at the death
of a parent should be a Doxology will not have
escaped notice. God is the Righteous Judge.
Thus, in the Eschatology of Judaism, this idea
of Judgment predominates. A favourite passage
was the Mishnic utterance (second century):
' Rabbi Eleazar said : They that are born are
destined to die, and they that die to be brought
to life again, and they that live to be judged.'
(Aboth, iv. 29). But in another sense, too, there
was judgment at death. The sorrow of the
survivors, like the decease of the departed, was
to be considered as God's doing, and therefore
right. Hence in the very moment of the death
of a loved one, when grief was most poignant,
the survivor stood forth before the congrega-
tion and praised God. And so the Burial Service
is named hi Hebrew 'Zidduk Ha-din,' i.e. 'The

87

JUDAISM

Justification of the Judgment.' A few sentences
in it ran thus (Prayer Book, p. 318) : ' The Rock,
His work is perfect. . . . He ruleth below and
above, He bringeth down to the grave and
bringeth up again. . . . Blessed be the true
Judge.' And perhaps more than all attempts
to analyse beliefs and dogmas, the following
prayer, recited during the week of mourning for
the dead, will convey to the reader the real
attitude of Judaism (at least in its central
variety) to some of the questions which have
occupied us in this chapter. The quotation is
made from p. 323 of the same Prayer Book that
has been already cited several times above :

' 0 Lord and King, who art full of compassion,
in whose hand is the soul of every living thing and
the breath of all flesh, who killest and makest alive,
who bringest down to the grave and bringest up
again, receive, we beseech Thee, in Thy great
loving-kindness, the soul of our brother who hath
been gathered unto his people. Have mercy upon
him, pardon all his transgressions, for there is not
a righteous man upon earth, who doeth good and
sinneth not. Remember unto him the righteous-
ness which he wrought, and let his reward be with
him and his recompense before him. O shelter
his soul in the shadow of Thy wings. Make
88

ESCHATOLOGY

known to Him the path of life : in Thy presence is
fulness of joy ; at Thy right hand are pleasures for
evermore. Vouchsafe unto him of the abounding
happiness that is treasured up for the righteous,
as it is written, Oh how great is Thy goodness,
which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee,
which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in
Thee before the children of men !

'0 Lord, who healest the broken-hearted and
bindest up their wounds, grant Thy consolation
unto the mourners : put into their hearts the fear
and love of Thee, that they may serve Thee with
a perfect heart, and let their latter end be peace.

' Like one whom his mother comforteth, so will
I comfort you, and in Jerusalem shall ye be
comforted. Thy sun shall no more go down,
neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the
Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the
days of thy mourning shall be ended.

' He will destroy death for ever ; and the Lord
will wipe away tears from off all faces ; and the
rebuke of his people shall he take away from off
all the earth : for the Lord hath spoken it.'

89

CHAPTER VIII

THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM

THE Messianic Hope has an intimate connection
with Eschatology. Whereas, however, the latter
in so far as it affirmed a Resurrection conceived
of the immortality of Israelites, the former con-
ceived the Immortality of Israel. It is not neces-
sary here to trace the origin and history of the
Messianic idea in Judaism. That this idea had
a strong nationalistic tinge is obvious. The Mes-
siah was to be a person of Davidic descent, who
would be the restorer of Israel's greatness.
Throughout Jewish history, despite the constant
injunction to refrain ' from calculating the date
of the end,' men have arisen who have claimed to
be Messiahs, and these have mostly asserted their
claim on nationalistic pleas. They were to be
kings of Israel as well as inaugurators of a new
regime of moral and spiritual life. But though
this is true without qualification, it is equally
true that the philosophers of the Middle Ages
90

THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM

tried to remove all materialistic notions from the
Messianic idea. It is very difficult to assert
nowadays whether Judaism does or does not ex-
pect a personal Messiah. A very marked change
has undoubtedly come over the spirit of the
dream.

On the one hand the neo-Nationalists deny
any Messianic hopes. When that great leader,
Theodor Herzl, started a Zionistic movement
without claiming to be the Jewish Messiah, he
was putting the seal on a far-reaching change in
Jewish sentiment. Dr. J. H. Greenstone, who has
just published an interesting volume on the Messi-
anic Idea in Jewish History, writes (p. 276): 'After
the first Basle Congress (1897), when Zionism
assumed its present political aspect, Dr. Max
Nordau, the vice-president of the Congress, found
it necessary to address an article to the Hebrew-
reading public, in which he disclaimed all pre-
tensions of Messiahship for himself or for his col-
league Dr. Theodor Herzl.' We have thus this
extraordinary situation. Many orthodox Jews
stood aloof from the Zionistic movement because
it was not Messianic, while many unorthodox Jews
joined it just because of the movement's detach-
ment from Messianic ideas.

It may be well to cite Dr. Greenstone's verdict

JUDAISM

on the whole question, as the reader may care to
have the opinion of so competent an authority
whose view differs from that of the present writer.
' Sacred as Zionism is to many of its adherents, it
cannot and will not take the place of the Messianic
hope. Zionism aims at the establishment of a
Jewish State in Palestine under the protection of
the powers of Europe. The Messianic hope pro-
mises the establishment, by the Jews, of a world-
power in Palestine to which all the nations of the
earth will pay homage. Zionism, even in its poli-
tical aspect, will fulfil only one phase of the
Jewish Messianic hope. As such, if successful, it
may contribute toward the full realisation of the
hope. If not successful, it will not deprive the
Jews of the hope. The Messianic hope is wider
than the emancipation of the Jews, it is more com-
prehensive than the establishment of a Jewish,
politically independent State. It participates in
the larger ideals of humanity, the ideals of perfec-
tion for the human race, but it remains on Jewish
soil, and retains its peculiarly Jewish significance.
It promises universal peace, an age of justice and
of righteousness, an age in which all men will
recognise that God is One and His name One.
But this glorious age will come about through the
regeneration of the Jewish people, which in turn
92

THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM

will be effected by a man, a scion of the house of
David, sent by God to guide them on the road to
righteousness. The people chosen by God to be
His messengers to the world will then be able to
accomplish their mission of regenerating the
world. This was the Messianic hope proclaimed
by the prophets and sages, and this is the Messianic
hope of most Jews to-day, the difference between
the various sections being only a difference in the
details of the hope ' (op. tit, p. 278).

Dr. Greenstone surely cannot mean that the
question of a ' personal Messiah ' is a mere detail
of the belief. Yet it is on that point that opinion
is most divided among Jews. The older belief
undeniably was what Dr. Greenstone enunciates.
But for this belief, none of what Mr. Zangwill aptly
terms the ' Dreamers of the Ghetto ' would have
found the ready acceptance that several of them
did when they presented themselves as Messiah
or his forerunners. And no doubt there are many
Jews who still cling to this form of the belief.

On the other hand, there has been a slow but
widespread tendency to reinterpret the whole in-
tention of the Messianic hope of Judaism. In
1869, and again in 1885, American Conferences of
liberal Rabbis adopted resolutions to the follow-
ing effect: 'The Messianic aim of Israel is not
93

JUDAISM

the restoration of the old Jewish State under a
descendant of David, involving a second separa-
tion from the nations of the earth, but the union
of all children of God in the confession of the
unity of God, so as to realise the unity of all
rational creatures and their call to moral sancti-
fication.' This view sees in the destruction of
the Temple and the dispersal of Israel not a
punishment but a stage in the fulfilment of
Israel's destiny as revealed to Abraham. Israel
is High-Priest, and can only fulfil his mission in
the close neighbourhood of those to whom he is
elected to minister.

This, no less than the non-Messianic Zionism,
is a considerable change from older beliefs. As a
Messianic hope it transcends the visions of Isaiah.
The prophet looks forward to an ideal future, a
reign of peace and felicity, but the nations are to
flow to Zion. The significance of the change lies
in this. The Messianic idea now means to many
Jews a belief in human development and pro-
gress, with the Jews filling the role of the Mes-
sianic people, but only as primus inter pares. It
is the expression of a genuine optimism. ' Char-
acter, no less than Career,' said George Eliot, ' is
a process and an unfolding.' So with the Char-
acter of mankind as a whole. But this idea of
94

THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM

development, unfolding, is quite modern in the
real sense of the terms; it is something outside
the range even of the second Isaiah. Judaism
was never quite sure whether to join the ranks of
the ' laudatores temporis acti' or to believe that
man never is but always to be blest. On the one
hand, the person of Adam was endowed with per-
fections such as none of his successors matched.
On the other hand, the Golden Age of Judaism, as
Renan said, was thrown forward into the future.
That on the whole Judaism has taken the pro-
spective rather than the retrospective view, is the
sole justification for the modern conception of the
Messianic Age which is fast becoming predomi-
nant in the Synagogue. The Synagogue does not
share the Roman poet's sentiment :

' A race of men baser than their sires
Gave birth to us, a progeny more vile,
Who dower the world with offspring viler still ' ;

but the English poet's trust :

'Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose

runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of
the suns.'

Denouncing the ' Calculators of the End, ' a Rabbi

said (Sanh. 97 b) : ' All the computed terms have

passed, and the matter dependeth now on re-

95

JUDAISM

pentance and good deeds ' (cf. S. Singer, The Mes-
sianic Idea in Judaism, pp. 1 and 18)

If, however, Israel is not destined to a Restora-
tion, if the Jewish Mission is the propagation of
an idea, on what ground is the continued exist-
ence of Israel as a separate organisation defensible
or justified ? Israel is indestructible, said Jehuda
Halevi in the twelfth century ; certainly Israel is
undestroyed. When Frederick the Great asked
what should make him believe in God, he received
in answer, ' the survival of the Jews.' Dr. Gutt-
mann of Breslau not long since put forward a
similar plea in vindication of the continued
significance of Judaism. In nature all forms die
when their utility is over; in history, peoples
succumb when their work in and for the world is
complete. Shall, he asks, we recognise Judaism
as the solitary exception, as the unique instance
of the survival of the unfit and the unnecessary ?

The modern apologists for all religions rarely
belong to the rank and file. Whether it be Har-
nack for Christianity or Mr. Montefiore for Juda-
ism, the vindicators stand far above the average
of the believers whose faith they are vindicating.
The average man needs no defence for a religion
which enables him to live and thrive, materially
and spiritually. The importance of this considera-
96

tion is very great. Restricting our attention to
Judaism, it is clear that it still offers ideals to
many, prescribes and enforces a moral law, teaches
a satisfying doctrine of God. If so, then it is futile
to discuss whether Judaism is still necessary. Can
the world afford to surrender a single one of its
forces for good? If there are ten millions of
men, women, and children who live, and live not
ignobly, by Judaism, can it be contended that
Judaism is obsolete ? The first, the main justifica-
tion of Judaism is its continued efficiency, its
proved power still to control and inspire many
millions of human lives. There are more people
living as Jews to-day, than there were at any
previous moment in the world's history.

But, like many answers to questions, this reply
does not satisfy those who raise the question. I
refer exclusively to the doubters among the Jews
themselves, for if Jews were themselves con-
vinced of the justification of the Jewish separate-
ness, the. rest of the world would be convinced.
Now, the Jews who ask this question are those
who are not so completely given over to Judaism,
that they are blind to the claims of other religions.
To them the question is one not of absolute, but
of comparative truth. Judaism may still be a
power, but it may not be a desirable power. The
G 97

JUDAISM

further question therefore arises as to the mission
of Israel in history to come as well as in history
past. History seems contradicted by the claim
made by Judaism. Jews are quick enough to see
the weakness of the pretension made by certain
sects of dogmatic Christianity that it is the last
word of religion, that -all saving truth was once
for all revealed some nineteen centuries ago.
History, says the Jewish controversialist, teaches
no such lessons of finality. Forces appear, work
their destined course, and then make way for
other forces. The world does not stand still ; it
moves on. Then how can Judaism claim for itself
a permanence, a finality, which it must deny to
every other system, to every other influence which
has in its turn moulded human destiny ?

A favourite answer is : Judaism is the exception
that proves the rule. It has been a permanent force
in the world's history. It is argued that Jewish
ideals have exercised recurrent influence at all
important crises. Dr. Guttmann somewhat rhetori-
cally makes this identical claim. He points to the
birth of Christianity, the rise of Islam, the mediaeval
Scholasticism, the Italian Renaissance, the German
Reformation, the English and American Puritan-
ism, the modern humanitarian movement, as ex-
emplifications of the continued power of Judaism
98

THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM

to mould the minds and souls of men. There is a
sense in which this claim is just. It is a valuable
support to the Jew's allegiance to Judaism. But
even if Dr. Guttmann's claim were granted, and
it is considerably exaggerated, how does it help ?
We are all agreed as to the debt which the
world owes to Greece. That debt is a great one.
Is it obsolete ? Surely not. Greece has again
and again revived its ancient power to inspire
men. The world would be a poor one to-day
without all that Greek culture stands for. Greece
did not give men enough to live by ; Hebraism did
that. But Greece made life more worth living.
Hellenism is an ever-recurrent force in human
civilisation. Yet no one argues that because
Hellenism is still necessary, Hellenes are also
necessary. Who contends that for carrying on
Greek culture you need Greeks? On the con-
trary, it was the case of Greece that gave rise to
the profound observation that just as a man must
die to live, so peoples must die that men may live
through them. Renan, who, among the moderns,
gave fullest value to this truth, included Judsea
with Greece in the generalisation. Certainly as a
nation, whether temporarily or irrevocably, Judsea
perished no less than Athens, that a new world
might be born. And a new Jewish nation would
99

JUDAISM

no more be the old Judaea of Isaiah than the
Athens of to-day is the Athens of Pericles, or the
Rome of to-day the Rome of Augustus. History
does not retrace its steps.

Athens fell, and with it the Athenians. Why
then, when Judsea fell, did the Jews remain?
Greek culture does not need Greeks to carry it
on ; why does Jewish culture need Jews ? The
first suggestion to be offered is this : — Israel is
the protestant people. Every religious or moral
innovator has also been a protestant. Socrates,
Jesus, Luther ; Isaiah, Maimonides, Spinoza ; all
of them, besides their contributions — very un-
equal contributions — to the positive store of truth,
assumed also the negative attitude of protesters.
They refused to go with the multitude, to acquiesce
in current conventions. They were all unpopular
and even anti-popular. The Jews as a community
have fulfilled, and are fulfilling, this protestant
function. They have been and are unpopular
just because of their protestant function. They
refuse to go with the multitude ; they refuse to
acquiesce. Geiger used this argument very
forcibly, from the spiritual point of view, in the
early part of the nineteenth century, and Anatole
Leroy-Beaulieu (in his book Israel among the
Nations) even more forcibly used it at the end
100

THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM

of the same century, from the historical point of
view. This ingenious French observer cites a
suspicion that ' the sons of Jacob, as compared
with the rest of the human race, represent a
higher state of evolution' (p. 232). No modern
Jew would make so preposterous a claim. But
when the same writer sees in the Jew a different
stage of evolution, then he is on the right tack.
Here is a passage which deserves to be quoted
again and again: 'I have little taste, I confess,
for uniformity; I leave that to the Jacobins.
My ideal of a nation is not a monolith, nor a
bronze formed at a single casting. It is better
that a people should be composed of diverse
elements and of many races. If the Jew differs
from us, so much the better; he is the more
likely to bring a little variety into the flat
monotony of our modern civilisation' (p. 261).
And the same argument applies to religions.
There is a permanent value to the world in
Israel's determined, protestant attitude. The
handful of protestants who, in Elijah's day,
refused to bow to Baal and to kiss him, were
the real saviours of their generation. And
though the world to-day is in no need of such
salvation, still the Jew remains the finest ex-
emplification of the truth that God fulfils Hiin-

G 2 101

JUDAISM

self in many ways, lest one good custom should
corrupt the world.

Then again, Judaism seems destined to survive
because it represents at once the God-idea and
the ethical idea. The liberal Jew, as well as the
orthodox, believes that no other religion does
this in the same way as does Judaism. Putting
it crudely, the Jew would perhaps admit that
Christianity has absorbed, developed, enlarged
and purified the Hebrew ethics, but he would,
rightly or wrongly, think that it has obscured by
dogmatic accretions the Jewish Monotheism. On
the other hand, the Jew would admit that Islam
has absorbed and purified the Jewish Monotheism,
but has done less of the flattery of imitation to
the Hebrew ethics. Islam has certainly a pure
creed; it freed itself from the entanglements of
anthropomorphic metaphors and conceptions of
God, which are apparent in the early strata of the
Hebrew Bible, and from which Judaism, because
of its reverence for the Bible, has not emancipated
itself yet. But that it can emancipate itself is
becoming progressively more clear. And even if
we drop comparisons, Judaism stands for a life
in which goodness and God are the paramount
interests. *

But, beyond all, the Jew believes himself to be a
1 02

THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM

Witness to God. He thinks that on him, in some
real sense, depends the fulfilment of the purposes
of God. It may be an arrogant thought, but
unlike most boasts it at once humiliates and en-
nobles, humiliates by the consciousness of what
is, ennobles by the vision of what might be. After
enumerating certain ethical and religious ideas
which, he holds, Judaism still has to teach the
world, the Rev. M. Joseph adds: 'But to the
Jew himself, first of all, these truths are uttered.
He is to help to win the world for the highest
ideals. But if he is to succeed, he must himself
be conspicuously faithful to them. He is the
chosen, but his very election binds him to vigor-
ous service of truth and righteousness. " Be ye
clean, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord."
Only when Israel proves by the nobility of his
life that he deserves his holy vocation will the
accomplishment of his mission be at hand. When
all the peoples of the earth shall see that he is
worthily called by the name of the Lord, the
Divine name and law will be near to the attain-
ment of their destined empire over the hearts of
men' (Judaism as Creed and Life, p. 513).

A community that believes itself to fill this
place in the Divine purpose deserves to live. Its
separate existence is a means, not an end; for
103

JUDAISM

when all has been said, the one God carries with
it the idea of one humanity. The Fatherhood of
God implies the brotherhood of man. And so,
amid all its trust that the long travail of centuries
cannot fulfil itself in Israel's annihilation, amid
all its particularism, there soars aloft the belief
in the day when there will be no religions, but
only Religion, when Israel will come together
with other communions, or they with Israel.
And so, thrice daily, in most Synagogues of
Israel, this prayer is uttered : ' We therefore hope
in Thee, 0 Lord our God, that we may speedily
behold the glory of Thy might, when Thou wilt
remove the abominations from the earth, and the
idols will be utterly cut off; when the world will
be perfected under the kingdom of the Almighty,
and all the children of flesh will call upon Thy
name, when Thou wilt turn unto Thee all the
wicked of the earth. Let all the inhabitants of
the world perceive and know that unto Thee every
knee must bow, every tongue must swear. Before
Thee, 0 Lord our God, let them bow and fall ; and
unto Thy glorious name let them give honour.
Let them all accept the yoke of Thy kingdom,
and do Thou reign over them speedily, and for
ever and ever. For the Kingdom is Thine, and
to all eternity Thou wilt reign in glory ; as it is
104

THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM

written in Thy Law, The Lord shall reign for ever
and ever. And it is said, And the Lord shall be
King over all the earth ; in that day shall the
Lord be One, and His name One.'

Modern Judaism, in short, claims no finality
but what is expressed hi that hope. It holds
itself ready to develop, to modify, to absorb, to
assimilate, except in so far as such processes seem
inconsistent with this hope. Modern Jews think
that in some respects the Rabbinic Judaism was
an advance on the Biblical; they think further
that their own modern Judaism is an advance on
the Rabbinic. Judaism, as they conceive it, is
the one religion, with a great history behind it,
that does not claim the»religious doctrines of some
particular moment in its history to be the last word
on Religion. It thinks that the last word is yet
to be spoken, and is inspired with the confidence
that its own continuance will make that last word
fuller and truer when it comes, if it ever does
come.

105

SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS ON JUDAISM

[This list does not include works on the early Religion of
Israel, or articles in the standard Dictionaries of the Bible.
For the rest, only works written in English are cited, and for
the most part Jewish expositions of Judaism.]

Articles in the Jewish Encyclopedia (New York and London,
Funk and Wagnalls, 12 vols. 1901-1906). Especially
the following : ' Articles of Faith ' (B. G. Hirsch) ;
' Atonement ' (K. Kohler) ; ' Cabala ' (L. Ginzberg) ;
' Catechisms ' (E. Schreiber) ; ' Conferences ' (D. Philip-
son) ; • Ethics ' (K. Kohler, I. Broyde" :md E. G. Hirsch) ;
1 Eschatology ' (K. Kohler); 'God' (E. G. Hirsch);
'Hassidim' (S. M. Dubnow); ' Immortality ' (K. Kohler);
'Judaism' (K. Kohler) ; 'Law, Codification of (L. Ginz-
berg) ; ' Messiah ' (M. Buttenwieser) ; ' Nomism ' ( J. Z.
Lauterbach and K. Kohler) ; ' Pharisees ' (K. Kohler) ;
'Reform Judaism' (E. G. Hirsch and D. Philipson) ;
'Resurrection' (K. Kohler); 'Sabbath' (K G. Hirsch
and J. H. Greenstone); 'Theology' (J. Z. Lauterbach).

M. FRIEDLANDKR. — The Jewish Religion (Kegan Paul, 1891).

J. H. GREENBTOXE. — The Messiah Idea in Jewish History
(Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America,
190(5).

M. JOSEPH. — Judaism as Creed and Life (London, Macmillan,
1903).

I O6

LIST OF BOOKS ON JUDAISM

N. S. JOSEPH. — Religion, Natural and Revealed (London,
Macmillan, 1906).

M. LAZARUS. — The Ethics of Judaism (London, Macmillan ;
2 vols., 1900-1)

0. G. MoNTiriORE. — Hibbert Lectures (London, Williams and
Norgate, 1892, especially Lectures vn.-ix.).

Liberal Judaism (London, Macmillan, 1903).

S. SCHECHTER. — Studies in Judaism (London, A. and C. Black,
1896).

E. SOBERER. — A History of the Jewish People in the Time of
Christ (Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 1890).

S. SIKOER. — Authorised Daily Prayer Book (London, Eyre
and Spottiswoode ; many editions).

107

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