Will Judaism take that other step? The Jew will; but I fear that Judaism will not. Like Christianity and every other form of organized religion, Judaism is too aged to put forth new shoots. Abandon it, is my earnest suggestion. It has hurt the Jew. Judaism has made the Jew narrow and anti-social. At a Jewish Congress held at Basle in 1898, Doctor Mandelstam, Professor in the University of Kiev, said: "The Jews energetically reject the idea of fusion with other nationalities, and cling firmly to their historical hope—that is, of a world empire." Again, Dr. Leopold Kahn, the Vienna rabbi, in 1901 declared that "the Jew will never be able to assimilate himself; he will never adopt the customs and ways of other peoples. The Jew remains Jew under all circumstances. Every assimilation is purely exterior." **
* On the Progress of Liberty of Thought, C. E. Plumpter,
page 71.
* Ethical World, August, 1911.
The educated Jews everywhere should combat such bigotry. If the Jewish people desire universal respect and equality, they must fuse with other people, which they can only do by coming out of the ancient oriental wilderness. To say that the jews energetically reject the idea of "fusion with other nationalities," is to expose them to the charge that they are the sworn enemies of the human race. Rabbis, beware!
During the recent Race Congress in London, Mr. H. Snell spoke as follows on this important question:
Regarding the question from the standpoint of ethical internationalism, it is not the Jew, but Judaism, that is at fault. As a citizen pursuing his daily avocation, sharing in the duties and responsibilities of the common life, the Jew is the equal of his English neighbor, and should be so regarded. He is a reliable business man, a loyal comrade and a good friend. The Jew in the synagogue is a totally different matter. It is the curse of organized religion that it divides men from their fellows, and engenders strife rather than harmony. The moment the orthodox Jew remembers his Judaism, he ceases to be one with the nation in which he lives, and he falls back upon those racial prejudices which certainly perpetuate, even if they did not actually create, the aversion with which he is regarded. It is, I repeat, not the citizen Jew, but the theocratic Jew and the financial Jew, that constitutes the problem. No people can expect to be loved when they, through their habits and institutions, openly deride the institutions and customs of the nations under whose laws they live. The orthodox Jew is not an Englishman or a German, even though he may happen to have been born in the countries named. In so far as he obeys the Jewish law he represents a firm, isolated, yet international political unity, having as its goal the dominancy of the Jewish people. The land in which he lives does not appear to count. The Jewish people become a State within a State, living their own life, and cutting themselves off from the customs and ideals of the populations among whom they exist, and through whom they attain to material comfort. The Jew will not eat or drink with his Gentile neighbors; their marriage laws are not good enough for him; he regards marriage with any one outside his race with horror; he will not accept the day of rest enjoined by the peoples among whom he dwells for his own Sabbath, but makes one day's rest in seven practically impossible for large sections of the people by insisting upon a special day of his own. It is this senseless isolation of Judaism, and its badly concealed contempt for the Gentile, that make the change of attitude toward the Jew so difficult.
The prejudice against the Jew is one of the most degrading things in modern life. Such is the solidarity of humanity that what hurts one is bound to hurt also the other. But we see no solution of the Jewish problem except in the complete emancipation of the Jew from Judaism, and of the Christian from Christianity. Reason will unite what religion has put asunder.
V. The Masterpiece of the Bible—Solomon's Temple
THE masterpiece of the bible was Jerusalem. The proudest building in the "holy city" was Solomon's temple. Both Jehovah and his people exerted themselves to do their utmost to build a temple that was to be the envy of all ages and peoples. Preparations for its erection were begun in the reign of David, to whom God gave untold wealth. It is related in the bible that—