When, in 1876, Felix Adler returned from his studies as a rabbi in Europe, and Temple Emanu-El—the most important Jewish congregation in the United States—was ready to welcome him to its pulpit, he found that it would not coincide with his views to follow in the footsteps of his father, who had been connected with that synagogue for forty years. The son’s researches had led him to the conclusion that forms, ceremonies, and customs did not make a religion when pursued in new and entirely different surroundings. Dr. Adler hoped that the time had come when the real spiritual essentials of the Jewish religion—its system of ethics—could be developed, appreciated, and enforced, and that the American Jews could adjust themselves to the land in which they were living and drop all that they had had to adhere to in Ghettoized Europe. He came back filled with an enthusiastic desire to remedy the glaring evils, not only of the Jews, but of the entire community: he could diagnose our ills and prescribe a remedy.
This appeal found a wonderful response amongst the flower of the reformed Jews and some Christians of New York, who formed the Society for Ethical Culture, of which the then leading Jew of America, Joseph Seligman, was elected president. All these felt the need of readjustment to fit their new surroundings. Some of those religious habits were imposed upon them while their ancestors were suppressed people. Few, if any, would adopt Christianity, but all were ready to subscribe to the aims of a society which are most clearly stated in their present invitation to members:
Our Society is distinctly a religious body, interpreting the word “religion” to mean fervent devotion to the highest moral ends. But toward religion as a confession of faith in things superhuman, the attitude of our Society is neutral. Neither acceptance nor denial of any theological doctrine disqualifies for membership.
In short, the Jews in America very seriously wanted to complete their Americanization. They were honestly striving for education, for refinement, for community and public service, for devotion to art, music, and culture. Welcome, then, this prophet Adler—this great reformer! His sterling qualities as a thinker; his wonderful resourcefulness; his pure and lofty private life, and his totally uncompromising attitude toward evil, secured him the admiration of all those who had in their own modest way been hopelessly striving to reach this plane. Adler by inheritance and by studying the older prophets had mingled that knowledge with the wisdom of the present day. Here was pure ethics unencumbered by religious form, the way Emerson taught it, the way Garrison and Lincoln practised it—and this man was trying to direct this current, which led away from the old-fashioned religion into a new field tending toward agnosticism and atheism, and bring it, instead, into this new field of ethics. His sincerity could not be doubted. He had voluntarily abandoned an honourable and care-free career that had been offered him by Temple Emanu-El, and like a modern Moses had undertaken the harassing and difficult task of satisfying the unexpressed yearnings of these people, who were discontented with the existing requirements of their religion and had hopelessly sought for moral guidance.
I was among Adler’s earliest adherents. When he organized his United Relief Work, I was one of its directors; I participated in his Cherry Street experiment in model tenements—the first in America, which eventually brought about legislation to do away with the dark rooms of which there were over fifty thousand in New York City alone, and I assisted in the establishment of the first Ethical Culture School, which was started in Fifty-fourth Street, near Sixth Avenue, and was chairman of the Site Committee that secured the present location on Central Park West from Sixty-third to Sixty-fourth streets.
Above all, however, I treasure the fond remembrance of having been a member of the “Union for Higher Life”—an organization of a few of Adler’s devotees. He always maintained that, as every man expected purity from his wife, it was his duty to enter the marriage state in the same condition, and the members of this “Union” pledged themselves to celibacy during bachelorhood. We met every week at the Sherwood Studio, where he then lived. We read Lange’s “Arbeiter-Frage,” and studied the Labour question. We discussed the problems of business and professional men. I notice in my diary of April 24, ’82, that we debated the simplicity of dress and the follies of extravagance. Then, as Dr. Adler wanted us to feel that we were doing something definitely altruistic, the members of the Union jointly adopted eight children; some of them were half-orphans, and some had parents who could not support them properly; we employed a matron and hired a flat for her on the corner of Forty-fifth Street and Eighth Avenue.
We had considered starting a coöperative community for ourselves, and Adler and I devoted some time looking at various properties. Our intention was to have separate living quarters with a joint kindergarten and a joint kitchen, thereby avoiding duplication of menial labour. This would have enabled our wives to devote more of their time to community work. It was to be an urban Brook Farm. Already having big ideas about real estate, I suggested and investigated the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum property, now occupied by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine! It could then have been bought for about $3,000 a lot. Adler, however, considered it too inaccessible, as it could only be reached by the Eighth Avenue street car, and so the idea was abandoned.
As many of my close friends were not adherents of Professor Adler, and we wanted to share our intellectual developments and efforts, we organized the Emerson Society; and under the guidance of my brother Julius who had just received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Leipzig, we not only read, but thoroughly studied, a number of Emerson’s essays. I was chagrined to find that not only the college-bred men of our group, but also many of the girls were much better English scholars than I, so I determined to secure lessons from the best authority on English at that time. Richard Grant White, the annotator of Shakespeare and the author of “Words and their Uses,” was universally recognized as such, but I was told by people whom I consulted that it was useless to communicate with him as he undoubtedly would feel himself above giving private lessons. Nevertheless I wrote him for an interview, stating my age, vocation, and desire, and he answered:
“It is possible that I may be able to give you the assistance you seek in your praiseworthy plan. I will see you with pleasure.”
The interview was successful. Mr. White undertook to give us lessons in the origin and growth of language, nor shall I ever forget the delight of that instruction. We used to meet in his apartment on Stuyvesant Square, the home of an artist and scholar, and his talks on the development of tongues from the Aryan to our modern English—his readings from the classics in that beautiful, cultivated voice of his with its perfect enunciation—are still fresh in my memory.