These were truly great steps of progress made by Israel of old; but the last of them left the nation to carry into its sorrowful exile an intolerable burden of ceremonialism and dusty superstitions, whereof the Talmud is now the lumber-room, and possessed also by an unhappy demon of anti-social pride, which forbade it to extend to or accept from other nations the right hand of human brotherhood. The Jews did not go out from Jerusalem as the little band of Christian missionaries had gone, eager to scatter their new wealth of truth among the nations, and, though stoned and crucified by those whom they sought to bless, yet ever after by their children’s children to be revered and canonized. The Jews went out as misers of truth, holding their full bags of treasure hid in their breasts. Nor in the ages following the Dispersion, while Christianity diverged further and further from pure Theism, and through Mariolatry and Hagiolatry sank well-nigh to polytheism and idolatry, do we ever once hear of an attempt by any Jewish teacher, even by such a man as Maimonides, to call back the wandering nations by proclaiming in their ears the “schema Israel”—“The Lord your God the Eternal is One.” Before the expulsion from Palestine, for a brief period, Judaism (as one of its bitterest enemies has remarked) showed promise of becoming a proselytizing creed, “when, under the influence of Greek philosophy and other liberalizing influences, it was tending from the condition of a tribal to that of a universal creed. But Plato succumbed to the Rabbins. Judaism fell back for eighteen centuries into rigid tribalism, and, as Lord Beaconsfield cynically said of it, has ever since ‘no more sought to make converts than the House of Lords.’”[[16]]
At last the long pause in the progress of Judaism, considered as a religion, seems drawing to an end; and we may hail its present advance as the continuance of that noble march which the Jewish race began to the music of Miriam’s timbrel.
This last step forward of Reformed Judaism consists, according to its latest interpreter, in “the struggle now consciously and now unconsciously maintained to emancipate the Jewish faith from every vestige of tribalism, and to enshrine its wholly catholic doctrines in a wholly catholic form.” This end is to be pursued through the “Denationalization of the Jewish religion, by setting aside all the rules and ceremonies which do not possess an essentially religious character or are maintained merely for the sake of the national, as distinct from the religious, unity.”
The following are the modes in which this programme may be followed out:—
1. Reformed Judaism abandons the Messianic hope. It neither desires nor expects the coming of Messiah, and the resettlement of the Jews in Palestine as a nation it regards as retrogression toward tribalism.[[17]] 2. It rejects the theory of the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament, nor does it recognize the perfection and immutability of the law contained within the Pentateuch. 3. It rejects the theory of a Divine tradition recorded in the Mischna, and does not admit the authority of the Talmudic laws. 4. It puts aside, as no longer binding, all the legal, hygienic, and agrarian ordinances of the Pentateuch, together with the laws relating to marriages and to the Levites. 5. It cuts down the feasts and fasts to the Sabbath, the Passover, and four others. 6. It adopts the vernacular of each country for a larger or smaller part of the service of the synagogue, instead of retaining the whole in Hebrew.
Besides these six great changes, there are two others looming in the distance. Reformed Judaism still regards the rite of circumcision as binding, though several distinguished reformers (notably Geiger) have recommended that proselytes should not be required to adopt it. Of the change of the Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday, I am informed that the transference of the holy day has already been made by one synagogue in Berlin, which holds its services on the Sunday, and by many independent Jewish men of business; and that it is very much desired in some other quarters. The difficulty attendant on this change obviously is: that it would prove so favorable to the interests of Jews in a secular sense that, if adopted, the charge of worldly motives is certain to be brought against those who advocate it.
These, then, in brief, are the negations of Reformed Judaism. On the positive side, it reaffirms those dogmas which are the kernel of Judaism,—“the Unity of God; His just judgment of the world; the free relation of every man to God; the continual progress of humanity; the immortality of the soul; and the Divine election of Israel” (understood to signify that the Jews, under the will of God, possess a specific religious mission not yet entirely fulfilled). As to the observances of Reformed Judaism, the framework of life and habit under which it proposes to exist, “they will remain distinctively Jewish, and must not bear the mere stamp of nineteenth century religious opinion.” The Jewish Reformer thus, like many another Radical, is an aristocrat at heart, and shrinks from descending to the level of a parvenue faith. In my humble judgment, he is entirely right in his decision. So long as he places the interests of truth and honesty above all, he cannot do better than hold fast by everything which reminds himself and the world of his pedigree through a hundred generations of worshippers of Jehovah.
The extent to which such reformation as that now sketched prevails at this hour among Jews is difficult to ascertain. The movement has been going on for some time, and yet counts but a moderate number of adherents, chiefly, as I have said, German and American Jews. Nay, what is most unhopeful, the disease of religious indifference, that moral phylloxera which infests the choicest spiritual vineyards, is working its evil way among the broader-minded Jews, as it works (we know too well) among the broader-minded Christians. To unite depth of conviction with width of sympathy has ever been a rare achievement. “Tout comprendre sera tout pardonner,” may be rendered, in intellectual matters, “To find truth everywhere is to contend for it nowhere.”
There is good room to hope, however, that if some fall out of the ranks, the Reformed party will yet possess enough energy, vigor, and cohesion to make its influence erelong extensively felt.
It is a startling prospect which has been thus opened before us. If anything seemed fixed in the endless flux of nations and religions, it was the half-petrified religion of the Jew. That the stern figure which we have beheld walking alone through the long procession of history should come at last and take a place beside his brothers is hard to picture. We live in a time when,