“Faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.”
Every solid body is threatened with disintegration; and the new powers of cohesion, if such there be, have scarcely come into play. But, of all changes fraught with momentous consequences, none could well be more important than that of a stripping off of its tribal gaberdine by Judaism, and the adoption of “a law fit for law universal.” The old fable is realized. The wind and hail of persecution blew and pelted the Jew for a thousand years, and he only drew his cloak closer around him. The sunshine of prosperity and sympathy has shone upon him, and, lo! his mantle is already dropping from his shoulders.
For the present we can only treat the matter as a grand project, but we may endeavor to estimate the value of a Reformation of Judaism such as Luther accomplished for Christianity. In the first place, it is, I conceive, the sole chance for the permanent continuance of the Jewish religion that it should undergo some such regeneration. If the proposed Reform perish in the bud, Orthodox Judaism will doubtless survive for some generations, but, according to the laws which govern human institutions, its days must be numbered. In former times, when every nation in Europe held aloof from its neighbors in fear and jealousy, it was possible for alien tribes, like the Jews and gypsies, to move among all, holding rigidly to their own tribal alliances and observances; hated and mistrusted, indeed, but scarcely more so than their Christian next-door neighbors. But now that Christian nations are all blending together under the influence of perpetual intercourse, and their differences of belief, governments, costumes, habits, and ideas are effacing themselves year by year, the presence of a non-fusing, non-intermarrying, separatist race—a race brought by commerce into perpetual friction with all the rest—becomes an intolerable anomaly.
For once Mr. Goldwin Smith was in the right in this controversy, when he remarked that “the least sacred of all races would be that which should persistently refuse to come into the allegiance of humanity.”
The Jews have shown themselves the sturdiest of mankind, but the influences brought to bear on them now are wholly different from those which they met with such stubborn courage of old. Political ambition, so long utterly closed to them, but to which Lord Beaconsfield’s career must evermore prove a spur; pleasure and self-indulgence, to which their wealth is an ever ready key; the scepticism and materialism of the time, to which their acute and positive minds seem to render them even more liable than their contemporaries,—these are not the elements out of which martyrs and confessors are made. A reformed, enlightened, world-wide creed, which a cultivated gentleman may frankly avow and defend in the salons of London, Paris, Berlin, or New York, and in the progress of which he may feel some enthusiasm,—a creed which will make him free to adopt from Christianity all that he recognizes in it of spiritually lofty and morally beautiful,—such a creed may have a future before it of which no end need be foreseen. But for unreformed Judaism there can be nothing in store but the gradual dropping away of the ablest, the most cultured, the wealthiest, the men of the world and the men of the study,—the Spinozas, the Heines, the Disraelis—and the persistence only for a few generations of the more ignorant, fanatical, obscure, and poor.
Again, besides giving to Judaism a new lease of life, the Reform projected would undoubtedly do much to extinguish that passion of Judenhasse which is the disgrace of Eastern Christendom, and the source of such manifold woes to both races. The root of that passion is the newly awakened sense (to which I have just referred) of impatience at the existence of a nation within every nation, having separate interests of its own and a solidarity between its members, ramifying into every trade, profession, and concern of civil life. Were this solidarity to be relinquished, and the mutual secret co-operation of Jews[[18]] reduced to such natural and fitting friendliness as exists between Scotchmen in England, and were it to become common for Jews to marry Christians and discuss freely with Christians their respective views,—were this to happen, mutual respect and sympathy would very quickly supersede mutual prejudice and mistrust. After two generations of such Reformed Judaism, the memory of the difference of race would, I am persuaded, be reduced to that pleasant interest wherewith we trace the ancestry of some of our eminent statesmen to “fine old Quaker families,” or remark that some of our most brilliant men of letters have in their veins the marvellous Huguenot blood.[[19]]
It is superfluous to add that the Jewish people, thus thoroughly adopted into the comity of European nations, and Judaism recognized as the great and enlightened religion of that powerful and ubiquitous race, the true mission of Judaism, as taught by Bible and Talmud—that of holding up the torch of monotheistic truth to the world—would begin its practical accomplishment. The Latin nations in particular, to whom religion has presented itself hitherto in the guise of ecclesiasticism and hagiolatry, and who are fast verging into blank materialism as the sole alternative they know, would behold at last, with inevitable respect, a simple and noble worship, at once historical and philosophic, without priestly claims, and utterly at war with every form of monasticism and superstition. The impression on these, and even on the Northern nations, of such a spectacle could not be otherwise than elevating, and possibly, in the Divine order of the world, might be the means whereby the tide of faith, so long ebbing out in dismal scepticism, should flow once more up the rejoicing shores.
Even if this be too much to hope, I cannot doubt that many Christian Churches would draw valuable lessons from the presence among them of a truly reformed Judaism. Especially in these days of irreverence, of finikin Ritualism on one side and Salvation Army rowdyism on the other, it would be a measureless advantage to be summoned to revert in thought to the solemn and awe-inspired tone of Hebrew devotion which still breathes in the services of the synagogue. It has been a loss to Christians as well as to Jews that these services have hitherto been conducted in Hebrew.[[20]] Had the synagogue services in London been conducted in the English language, I believe that many of the popular misapprehensions concerning Judaism would never have existed, while the impression of profound reverence which the prayers convey would have reacted advantageously on Christian worship, too liable to oscillate between formalism and familiarity.[[21]]
I am bound to add, on the other side, that it appears to me there are some very great advantages on the side of Christianity of which it behooves reforming Jews to take account. These are not matters of dogma, but of sentiment; and not only may they be appropriated by Jews without departing by a hair’s breadth from their own religious platform, but they may every one be sanctioned (if any sanction be needed for them) by citations from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. The great difference between Judaism and Christianity on their moral and spiritual sides, in my humble judgment, lies in this: that the piety and charity, scattered like grains of gold through the rock of Judaism, were by Christ’s burning spirit fused together, and cast into golden coin to pass from hand to hand. Jews have continually challenged Christians to point to a single precept in the Gospel which has not its counterpart in the Old Testament. They are perhaps in the right, and possibly no such isolated precept can be found differentiating the two creeds; but, both by that which is left aside and by that which it chose out and emphasized, Christianity is, practically, a new system of ethics and religion.