A Nation Founded on a Spiritual Ideal
IS Judaism then a matter of race? Are we after all and regardless of our beliefs and special obligations, a peculiar people, perhaps even a separate nation? The answer to this question lies, I think, in the study of our history. For centuries past the Jew has been persecuted, driven from one country to another, despoiled, massacred, and at best despised and forced to live in the Ghetto clothed in the badges of disdain. All of this the Jew has suffered and yet survived and kept his religion intact; willing at all times to remain a man apart because he knew that in the past the Jews had been a nation founded on a spiritual ideal; because his tradition taught him that on the slopes of Mount Sinai, the Lord had entered into a covenant with his fathers—and not only with them stood there that day, but also "with him that was not there that day" but who came after them; and that by virtue of this covenant, Israel became unto the Lord a kingdom of priests and a holy people; and because the value of this tradition, the force of this spiritual ideal was greater to him than the security, the right to live and work freely among his fellow men, which he could have obtained only by discarding his Judaism.
During all the centuries since the dispersal, the Jews have had a common history, a common tradition, a common spiritual ideal, and they have survived by reason of the force of this common inheritance. It is this common inheritance of a past founded on a spiritual force that to-day, in my opinion, constitutes Judaism.
America Demands Adherence to our Spiritual Ideals
RACIAL Judaism is in one sense, but in the sense of a race that has stood for a spiritual ideal and is bound together by traditions of the value of that ideal, and not simply a race that is bound together by ties of common descent. At all times and in all places a Jew meant not merely a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not merely a descendant of the people who once ruled over the promised land, but one who considered himself bound by the covenant of his fathers, at least to the extent that he would be true to his spiritual ideals, whatever these ideals might be. Judaism is in that sense a racial religion, but it is and at all times must be a religion and not simply a race. True, we now differ among ourselves as to the content of our religion. True, many of us now deny that that covenant which has kept alive our race and religion was ever in fact made, but we cannot deny our history and our past. We cannot deny that by virtue of the tradition of that covenant our fathers considered themselves under a peculiar obligation, and that by virtue of that tradition they sought to become a kingdom of priests and a holy people.
That tradition at least is our own heritage, and he only is a Jew who recognizes the force of spiritual ideals, and by virtue of that inheritance also for himself assumes the obligation involved in being a member of a nation of priests and a holy people.
If that spiritual concept and not merely race constitutes the basis and the essential content of Judaism, then surely the question of whether the maintenance of Judaism will be a benefit to the country in which we live answers itself. In all civic matters we must work and be as one with our fellow-citizens, but America demands that each citizen give to its service the best of which he is capable.
Since Judaism means the recognition of a peculiar obligation imposed upon us by our past; since Judaism is founded upon a spiritual ideal,—adherence to our ancient faith and endeavor to live up to our past must be to us a source of greater moral and spiritual strength—strength that we must bring to the service of our country.
The Spiritual Value of a New Zion
OUR problem then becomes really one of how we can maintain Judaism and keep it alive now that it has become a part and not as formerly the whole of our lives. Some say that this can be done only by recognizing that we are not simply a racial religion but actually a nation, and that we must reëstablish that nation and its capital upon the hills of Zion.