ADON OLAM AND MODERN SCIENCE
ALONE of all religious and philosophic conceptions of man, the faith which binds together the Jews has not been harmed by the advance of research, but, on the contrary, has been vindicated in its profoundest tenets. Slowly and by degrees Science is being brought to recognize in the universe the existence of One Power, which is of no beginning and no end; which has existed before all things were formed, and will remain in its integrity when all is gone; the Source and Origin of all, in Itself beyond any conception or image that man can form and set up before his eye or mind; whereas all things perceivable as matter and force are subjected to his inquiry and designs. This sum total of the scientific discoveries of all lands and times is an approach of the world’s thought to our Adon Olam, the sublime chant, by means of which the Jew has wrought and will further work the most momentous changes in the world.
W. M. HAFFKINE, 1916.
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל
THE SHEMA
‘HEAR, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.’ That is at once the quintessential embodiment of all our philosophy, as well as chief among Israel’s contributions to the everlasting truths of religion. The first prayer of innocent child-lips, the last confession of the dying, the Shema has been the watchword and the rallying-cry of a hundred generations in Israel. By it were they welded into one Brotherhood to do the will of their Father who is in heaven. The reading of the Shema has—in rabbinic phrase—clothed Israel with invincible lion-strength, and endowed him with the double-edged sword of the spirit against the unutterable terrors of his long night of exile.
J. H. HERTZ, 1912.
WHEN men in prayer declare the Unity of the Holy Name in love and reverence, the walls of earth’s darkness are cleft in twain, and the Face of the Heavenly King is revealed, lighting up the universe.
ZOHAR.
אֱלֹהָי נְשָׁמָה
‘THE SOUL THOU HAST GIVEN ME IS PURE’
NEXT to God’s unity, the most essential and characteristic doctrine of Judaism is that concerning God’s relation to man. Heathenism degraded man by making him kneel before brutes and the works of his hand: Judaism declared man to be made in the image of God, the crown and culmination of God’s creation, the appointed ruler of the earth. In him, as the end of Creation, the earthly and the divine are singularly blended.
Judaism rejects the idea of an inherent impurity in the flesh or in matter as opposed to the spirit. Nor does Judaism accept the doctrine of Original Sin. In the words of the daily morning prayer, ‘The soul that Thou hast given me is pure, Thou hast created it, Thou hast fashioned it, and Thou hast breathed it into me, and Thou preservest it within me, and at the appointed time Thou wilt take it from me to return it within me in the future’.
K. KOHLER, 1904,
in Jewish Encyclopedia.
זְכוּת אָבוֹת
THE ‘MERIT OF THE FATHERS’
JUDAISM insists that man has an inborn impulse to virtue (‘Original Virtue’) which can overcome all temptation to sin; an impulse immeasurably strengthened through the merit of the fathers (Zechuth Aboth) which is accounted unto their children as righteousness. That man is best able to advance on the road to moral perfection who starts with the accumulated spiritual heritage of righteous ancestors.
S. LEVY, 1905.
THE old Jewish doctrine of the ‘merit of the fathers’ has a counterpart—the idea that the righteousness of the living child favourably affects the fate of the dead father. This might be called the doctrine of the ‘merit of the children’. In this way the living and the dead hold converse. The real message of the dead is—their virtue. The real response of the living is again—their virtue. Thus is a bridge built over the chasm of the tomb. Thus do the hearts of fathers and children beat in eternal unison.
I. ABRAHAMS, 1919.