English Jewry is at ease. There are no doubt traces here and there of anti-Semitism, nor are there wanting in the inner life of the community indications of what may be called “servitude in freedom.” But when all allowances are made, the Jews enjoy a firmer and a more secure position here than in other countries, and anxiety for the future, with all that it involves, plays a smaller part in their mental life. Hence their internal development is more “normal” than elsewhere; it is less at the mercy of external and accidental influences; it is rather determined by the spiritual and cultural resources of the community itself, and corresponds at any given time to the extent of those resources. To this circumstance is due the comparatively late appearance of the Reform movement in Anglo-Jewry. True, in the heyday of the German Reform movement a few people in England attempted to follow the German example; but their small experiment never grew to considerable dimensions, or showed any capacity for development. The reason is that whereas in Germany there was an external, political impulse towards Reform—the desire to combat anti-Jewish feeling, and thus to facilitate the attainment of civil and political rights—in England this motive was less felt. For though certain political restrictions were still in force, the position of the Jews was much better, and their relations with non-Jews were much more satisfactory, than in Germany.
But in more recent years education and the circumstances of life have brought about a change in the internal, spiritual condition of the Anglo-Jewish community: a new generation has arisen, which is very far removed from the spirit of Judaism. It is this internal change in the Jews which has called into being the Reform movement which we now see developing before our eyes. To the difference in origin corresponds a difference in character. In Germany the Reform movement, practical in its motives, took a practical shape. Geiger and other Reformers endeavoured, on the one side, to alter the religious practices, and to bring them into conformity with what they conceived to be the needs of the time; but on the other side they laid stress on the grandeur of the religious and moral principles on which Judaism peculiarly was based, and tried to emphasise the difference between Judaism and Christianity. But in England the Reform movement springs from a spiritual cause—from a conviction on the part of many Jews that they are spiritually akin to their Christian environment. It is not merely the external observances of traditional Judaism that fail any longer to appeal to them; its innermost spirit, the fundamental ideas by which it is distinguished from Christianity, have lost their hold. Hence the movement here aims right at the heart; it wants to change the spirit of Judaism, and to overthrow its historical foundations, so as to reduce its distinctive features to a small compass, and to bring it as closely as possible into accord with the Christian ideas of the non-Jewish community. Thirteen years ago this movement was begun in England by a body of young men, who thus straightforwardly and clearly expressed their aim:
“... Our triumphant emancipation is now working out its natural result upon us. Constant intercourse with non-Jews and extensive secular education must materially affect our opinions. We, who are young and earnest lovers of our religion, are struggling with new ideas which we hardly dare to formulate, because they are contrary to all accepted traditions. Such are the notions that our separateness seems now merely external and artificial, our racial distinctiveness often scarcely perceptible, and our religious ideas almost identical with those of Theists and true Unitarians.”[[167]]
But as it was difficult for them, in spite of everything, to abandon Judaism altogether, and to join the “Theists and true Unitarians,” they conceived the idea of attaining their object in the reverse way. They would transform Judaism itself, until it should contain nothing but the fundamental ideas of the “Theists and true Unitarians,” and then—so they fondly imagined—these latter would come and find shelter in Judaism, and so the “external and artificial” distinction would be comfortably and pleasantly removed! This movement did not take definite shape at the time, and after a while it disappeared and was no longer heard of. But the causes which had given it birth did not cease to work silently beneath the surface; and quite recently it has come forth again into the light of day, to play its part in the visible life of Anglo-Jewry. This time it appears in a more concrete form and with a clearer consciousness of the goal for which it is making. Its promoters have come to see, after all, that even if their Judaism is to teach the very doctrine of the “liberal” Christian sects, there will still be an “external and artificial” distinction between themselves and the non-Jew, so long as they do not accept the source of that doctrine—so long as they do not admit, with the “liberal” Christians, that the New Testament is the last word in religious and moral development, and Jesus the most perfect embodiment of the religious and moral ideal. For in matters of religion men value not alone the abstract beliefs in themselves, but also—and perhaps more highly—the historical and psychological roots from which those beliefs have grown up in their hearts. It was well said many years ago by Steinthal that if ever a new religion, a philosophical religion, suited to modern times, should unite Jews and Christians, they would still be divided on the question whether the Old Testament or the Gospels had contributed in greater measure to the birth of the new religion.
Our English Reformers, therefore, have decided to remove even this stumbling-block from the path which leads to unity, and have decreed that the New Testament (or at least the Gospels) must be considered a part—and the most important part—of Judaism, and that Jesus must be regarded as a prophet—and the greatest of the prophets—in Israel. This pronouncement is certainly a step forward along a certain line of development, of which we are not yet at the end. We need not therefore be surprised if these Reformers do not realise the strangeness of their attitude, with its combination of contradictory and mutually destructive postulates. Whereas revolution overthrows the old at a single stroke, and puts the new in its place, evolution destroys and builds in sections, so that, until its work is complete, it is full of contradictions and inconsistencies—the old and the new jostling one another in confusion, and creating by their unnatural juxtaposition the impression of a caricature, which is obvious to the onlooker, but not to those who are engaged in the work. So this Reformed Judaism, which wants to be two opposites—Jewish and Evangelist—at once, has its place as a rung in the middle of the ladder, a step on the road of evolution to its final goal. At this stage of the journey our Reformers still think that it is possible to put the Gospels beside the Old Testament and the Talmud. But when they reach the next stage they will recognise that the two cannot exist side by side, but only one above the other, and that when one stands the other falls. The early Christians went through the same process: they regarded their “message” at first simply as a part of Judaism; but when they had travelled the full length of their development, they saw that the Gospels meant the overthrow of the very foundations of Judaism, and then they left it altogether.
If anybody is doubtful about the true character and tendency of this movement, let him read the commentary on the Synoptic Gospels recently published by the leader of the movement, Mr. C. G. Montefiore. The author makes no secret of the fact that the book has been written for Jewish readers, with the object of convincing them that the New Testament ought to occupy an important position in Judaism at the present time, albeit from a Jewish point of view. The claims of the “Jewish point of view” he thinks to satisfy by his frequent efforts to show that the Law of the Rabbis was not so bad as it is painted by the authors of the New Testament and its commentators, and that in many respects the old Judaism rose to the level of the Gospels, nay, had in certain details actually more of truth.[[168]] But the general atmosphere of the book is so utterly alien from the essential character of Judaism as to make one fact clear beyond a shadow of doubt to any Jew in whom Judaism is still alive—that the Gospels can be received only into a Judaism which has lost its own true spirit, and remains a mere corpse.
The author is doubtless correct in saying that a Jewish commentary on the New Testament is needed at the present time.[[169]] Living in a Christian environment, we imbibe a culture in which many Christian ideas and sentiments are inwoven, and it is therefore necessary for us to know their source, so as to be able to distinguish between them and the universal elements of culture. But this Jewish commentary must be far removed from any polemical propagandist intention on one side or the other. Its sole object must be to understand thoroughly the teaching of the Gospels, to define with scientific accuracy its character, the foundations on which it rests, and the differences which distinguish it from Judaism. What is needed is not the “scientific accuracy” of the Christian commentators (that spring from which Mr. Montefiore drinks with such avidity), who set out with the preconceived idea that the teaching of the Gospels is superior to that of Judaism, and use their “science” merely to find details in support of this general belief. When a writer claims to be “scientific,” he must recognise above all that in the field of religion and morality it is impossible to set up a universal scientific criterion, by which to measure the different teachings, and to pronounce one superior to another. In this sphere everything is relative, and the judge brings to his task a subjective standard of his own, determined by his temperament, his education and his environment. We Jews, being everywhere a minority, are always subject to various influences, which counteract and weaken each other; and we, therefore, are possibly better able than others to understand objectively ideas which are not our own. Hence it was indeed right that there should be a Jewish commentary (not a Jewish panegyric) on the New Testament. Such a commentary might perhaps have enabled Jews of our author’s stamp to recognise that it is possible to treat with seriousness and justice a religion which is strange to us, without shutting our eyes to the gulf which separates it from ourselves.
I should like to dwell for a brief space on the nature of this “gulf.” So large a subject needs a whole book for its full treatment; but something, it seems to me, ought to be said just at this moment—and perhaps the need is not confined to England.
If the heathen of the old story, who wished to learn the whole Torah standing on one leg,[[170]] had come to me, I should have told him: “‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness’—that is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary.” The essential characteristic of Judaism, which distinguishes it from other religions, is its absolute determination to make the religious and moral consciousness independent of any definite human form, and to attach it immediately to an abstract ideal which has “no likeness.” We cannot conceive Christianity without Jesus, or even Islam without Mohammed. Christianity made a god of Jesus, but that is not the important fact. Even if Jesus had remained the “son of man,” had been only a prophet, as Mohammed is to the Mussulmans, that would not have affected the thing that really matters—the attachment of the religious and moral consciousness to the figure of a particular man, who is regarded as the ideal of absolute perfection, and the goal of men’s vision; to believe in whom is an essential part of a religion inconceivable without him. Judaism, and Judaism alone, depends on no such human “likeness.” God is the only idea of absolute perfection, and He only must be kept always before the eye of man’s inner consciousness, in order that many may “cleave to his attributes.” The best of men is not free from shortcomings and sins, and cannot serve as an ideal for the religious sentiment, which strives after union with the source of perfection. Moses died in his sin, like any other man. He was simply God’s messenger, charged with the giving of His Law; his image was not worked into the very fabric of the religion, as an essential part of it. Thus the Jewish teachers of a later period found nothing to shock them in the words of one who said in all simplicity: “Ezra was worthy to be the bearer of the Law to Israel, had not Moses come before him” (Sanhedrin, 21a). Could it enter a Christian mind, let us say, to conceive the idea that Paul was worthy to be the bearer of the “message,” had not Jesus come before him? And it need scarcely be said that the individual figures of the other Prophets are not an essential part of the fabric of Judaism. Of the greatest of them—Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, and others—we do not even know who or what they were; their personalities have vanished like a shadow, and only their words have been preserved and handed down from generation to generation, because they were not their words, but “the word of the Lord that came unto them.”
This applies equally to the Messiah, who is awaited in the future. His importance lies not in himself, but in his being the messenger of God for the bringing of redemption to Israel and the world. Jewish teachers pay much more attention to “the days of the Messiah” than to the Messiah himself. One of them even disbelieved altogether in a personal Messiah, and looked forward to a redemption effected by God Himself without an intermediary; and he was not therefore regarded as a heretic.