IF a Jew of the Middle Ages, or even a Jew living to-day in almost medieval conditions in Poland, were present to-night,[A] he would certainly say, "What sort of a conference of rabbis is this, at which a layman is presiding, another layman is to speak on 'The Religion of the Hebrews,' and a third layman is to speak on a social movement?"
To the old-time Jew a conference of rabbis meant a conference of men learned in the law and its authoritative interpretation in the Talmud—men whose duty it was to teach this law and who would confer among themselves upon the application of its abstruse and technical rules to the daily needs of their congregations. But they could recognize no questions and no problems not fully covered by that law; consequently they could recognize no right in any person not an authority on that law to take any part in such a conference except to ask for the advice of the rabbis appointed to teach the law. That was the attitude of our ancient leaders, and it met with the full and unqualified approval of the Jewish laymen, because it fulfilled all the requirements of our medieval condition. Until recent times we were a people apart, living among the nations of the world, but not a part of them. We had no right to join in the general civic life. Our life consisted in the memory of a national past and in the dreams of a national future. So far as the present was concerned, we were perforce interested only in the maintenance of our identity and in the preservation of our ancient law, so that we might be in a position some day to realize our dreams and to reëstablish our national state, founded on this ancient law. Deprived as we were of all right to live in the present, we could justify our existence and continuance as a separate people and a separate religion only by laying stress on the importance of our ancient law, and striving to hand it down, pure and unaltered, to future generations. Therefore in those days the rabbis were naturally our only leaders, and their right to leadership depended solely upon their knowledge of the law. The observance of the Torah embraced all the limits of the life of the Jew.
New Opportunities and New Obligations
TO-DAY all this has changed. The Jew of to-day is living in the present, and the observance of the minutiæ of Jewish law is to the man active in civic and business life of slight if any importance.
Inconceivable as it would be to a medieval Jew that at a conference of Jewish rabbis a layman should preside and laymen should make formal addresses, it would be equally inconceivable to such a Jew that among the laymen who might make such addresses, there could be a professor at a great university, a worker in the general social activities of the city, and a judge. These changed conditions, this wide life now opened to the Jews, have produced new problems, and we demand of our rabbis, if they are indeed to remain the teachers and leaders in Israel, that they help us solve these problems.
As soon as opportunities were offered to us, we eagerly grasped them. We are too eager, too ambitious, too practical a people to continue to live in dreams of the past and visions of the future, when the present is thrown open to us. We have definitely and forever discarded the concept that we are a peculiar people, the "chosen of the Lord," in so far as that concept cuts us off from free participation in the life of the nations among which we live, or from serving in the cause of the general advance of humanity. We have demanded the opportunity to exercise civic rights, and as those rights have been granted, we have recognized that the opportunity confers also an obligation—the obligation to exercise those rights in no narrow spirit, but for the benefit of the whole people of which we are now a part.
Why the Jew Remains a Jew
AS a result of this change, we no longer take our Judaism for granted, but day by day perforce are asking ourselves three questions: What does Judaism mean, and why are we Jews? Will the maintenance of Judaism be of benefit to the countries in which we live and to humanity at large? How can Judaism be maintained, since now we not only live among the nations of the world, but the individual Jew has become a part of these nations?
We have discarded, as I have said and as I firmly believe, the ancient concept that Judaism means membership in a peculiar people, the chosen of the Lord, except possibly in the sense that we have a peculiar obligation imposed upon us to demonstrate to the world the power and worth of a spiritual ideal. We Reform Jews have discarded the view that in any literal sense the Lord revealed himself unto Moses and gave unto him the tablets of stone. The words "Hear, O Israel, the Eternal is One, the Lord is One," are still dear to us, but many who call themselves Jews deny even the existence of a personal God. Why then do we still remain Jews, why do not those so-called Jews, who deny the existence of the Lord, frankly join the ranks of so-called universal philosophers while the rest of us join the Unitarians?
The answer comes not only from our heads, but from our hearts. Most of us could not renounce Judaism because deep down in our consciousness, aside from reason or logic, we know we are not as other men; we know we are Jews. We hear the cry of the suffering in Belgium and we answer to that cry because we are men and nothing human is alien to us,—but when we hear the cry of the suffering Jew in Poland and Palestine, then the true Jew answers that cry as the cry not only of a fellow human being, but as the cry of a brother.