Judaism prohibits revenge and the bearing of grudge, commands the assistance of an enemy in distress, but “to love one’s enemy” appears to the modern Jew a somewhat morbid philanthropy that could never have been seriously meant. To bear indignities with patience, “to be of the insulted and not of the insulters,” is a Jewish principle, but to offer the right cheek to him who slaps you on the left, to offer the undergarment to him who takes away your cloak—no, we will not and we can not do it. Hence it is that we Jews, of our modern days, speak of Jesus with that respect which all high-minded dreamers of all ages and nations inspire, even though we can not accept all their ideas and ideals, and are mindful of the fact that it is to noble dreamers that humanity is indebted for its most precious possessions.
September 4, 1899.
From ÉMILE LÉVY, Chief Rabbi, Bayonne, France:
Wide as the difference may be in certain essential points between Christianity and Judaism, yet the former approaches the latter through its origin, and a common basis which is love of God and man. In proclaiming the superiority of spirit over matter, and the principle of immortality of the soul and of a future life; in exhorting mankind in a touching and poetical language, ever trying to come nearer the divine example by a charitable, humble, modest, and pure life, Christ has rendered immense services to humanity and to the cause of progress and civilization, for he thus spread the Jewish doctrine, which aims at a continual improvement of the individual and of society, and contributes to the preparation of the Messianic era and of the brotherhood of the nations.
October 24, 1899.
From HENRY BERKOWITZ, D.D., Rabbi of Rodeph Shalom Congregation, Founder and Chancellor of the Jewish Chautauqua Society, Philadelphia, Pa.:
… To me one of the saddest and most tragic facts in history is this, that Jesus, the gentlest and noblest rabbi of them all, should have become lost to his own people by reason of the conduct of those who called themselves his followers. In Jesus there is the very flowering of Judaism. What pathos, then, in the fact that his own people have been made to shun his very name; that even to-day they speak it with bated breath, because it has been made to them a symbol and a synonym of all that is unjewish, unchristian—irreligious.…
November 1, 1899.