I am not one of those who insist on views once maintained though later found faulty. I am rather ready to change my views, especially after what I heard today from my honored neighbor (Prof. I. L. Sharfman) and from what he said last night that the religious idea of Judaism is not ignored but is held in view.
All Jews who are Jews must believe that Judaism stands for an uncompromising monotheistic truth, while the world around us has compromised the same. Therefore we, as Jews, must always insist upon the maintenance of the pure monotheistic idea for which we suffered and struggled, and for which our fathers died. We must maintain this as the mainstay and vital principle of Judaism. For this very reason, and for no other, we insist, especially from the point of view of a Jewish theological college, that this idea of a pure Jewish religion, the pure monotheistic idea, must be held unshakenly and without any change or any concession. And for that very reason we could not and will not say that race is everything. We cannot admit that a pure race is the best, and that a pure Jew is he who has maintained solely everything Jewish and not allowed the Greek culture to be assimilated in order to sublimate and spiritualize and idealize the truth inherited. For Ruppin and the Nationalists who follow him, the poor Jews, the ghetto Jews, of Russia who speak Yiddish and live only an exclusive narrow life, are five-fifths Jews, while the Jews in free and civilized lands are only half Jews. Now against this, we of the Hebrew Union College, we who represent progressive or reformed Judaism, must protest. We must insist that the Jewish race, the Jewish people or nation, if you want to call it so, can form only the body; Judaism, the Jewish religion, is the soul. And we will always stand not merely for the body, not merely for the material side, not merely for race, which is the lowest kind of life, but for the spirit, the soul of Judaism, and that is its religious truth.
Prof. Julian Morgenstern
I BELIEVE that it is one of the positive aims of the Menorah Society to recognize the Jewish side of much that enters, or should enter, into our daily life, to develop our full consciousness of all that is essentially and fundamentally Jewish, and thus enable us to live positive and constructive Jewish lives. It is a noble aim, to which I unrestrictedly subscribe. Whenever I hear public speakers or writers pat Jews and Judaism on the back, and patronizingly tell us, "Oh, you Jews are all right," I am, as no doubt most of us are, deeply chagrined, to use a mild expression. What we want is not that others should appreciate us and tell us that we are all right. What we want, and what we need, is that we should appreciate ourselves and that we should take ourselves seriously and at our full value. Not that we should over-appreciate ourselves and think ourselves alone the salt of the earth. There is such a thing as over-appreciation that must in the end lead to futility and vanity. But equally, there is such a thing as self-depreciation, and to a certain extent I cannot but feel that we Jews have been more or less guilty of that in the past, have more or less, particularly in our college and university life, assumed a deprecating attitude, apologizing as it were for our existence as Jews, and, probably unconsciously, have kept the fact of our Judaism in the background, and suffered our education and our culture to influence almost everything but our Jewish knowledge and our Jewish life.
For right appreciation, which shall be neither over-appreciation nor under-appreciation, but true appreciation, based upon a correct estimation of all essentials, the first requisite is knowledge, thorough knowledge of all conditions, forces and influences. And the second requisite is pride, pride in this knowledge and in the object of this knowledge. And this, translated into the Menorah language, means, as I understand it, correct knowledge of Judaism, of our Jewish history, our Jewish past, our Jewish heritage, our Jewish religion, and pride in all this Judaism—a knowledge and pride that alone can enable us to know what Judaism truly is, and what its work and its mission for the present and the future must be, that alone can enable us to live positively and constructively as Jews and perpetuate our Judaism for the blessing of ourselves, our children, and all mankind. So I interpret the Menorah movement. And I heartily welcome such a movement, whose aim is the awakening of our Jewish college young men and women to a wholesome and genuine appreciation of themselves, of the Jewish side of their lives, of their Jewish consciousness and Jewish obligations, of the full meaning and responsibility imposed upon them by their subscribing to the name Jew, and their adherence to the religion of our fathers. We must look to our college-bred Jewish men and women to become the guiding spirits in our Judaism of to-morrow and of all the future. And I say, "Thank God for any movement that must surely lead to this goal."
Dr. H. M. Kallen
SINCE this seems to be the occasion for reminiscence, I want to take the liberty of recalling for you an episode of the formation of the Menorah Society at Harvard. It turned on the question of the right form of stating the object of the Society and you will remember perhaps that the object is stated in these terms: "The Harvard Menorah Society for the study and advancement of Hebraic culture and ideals"—not Jewish, not Judaistic, but Hebraic. The persons who agitated the use of the term Hebraic had certain very definite literary and historic and social relationships in mind.
To begin with, the word Judaism, in the English language, stands exclusively for a religion. It is co-ordinate with the word Christianity, the word Buddhism, the word Zoroastrianism, with any word that stands exclusively for a religion. Now in the history of the Jewish people, there was a time when Judaism did not exist, and if I understand the gentlemen who represent the Reform sect correctly—I speak under correction—the intention of the Reform movement is a reversion in fact to the religious attitude of the pre-Judaistic period in the history of the religion of the Jewish people. It is "prophetic" or "progressive Judaism" for which they stand, I gather, in contrast with the "Talmudical Judaism," of the larger orthodox sect. But the period of the great prophets is not the period of Judaism, and strictly speaking, the term Judaism excludes the prophetic element as an active force in Jewish life. This is significant, and to me the significance seems tremendous, for so far as my personal sympathies are concerned they go entirely with the prophetic aspects of Judaism, or better, of Hebraism.
Hebraism and Judaism
HEBRAISM and Judaism are words now in the English language and their usage is determined for us entirely by the writers who become authoritative either by their style or through the weight of their opinion, and this usage has given the term Hebraism a meaning such that it stands for the entire spirit of the Jew, not only in religion but in all that is Jewish; in English the term Hebraism covers the total biography of the Jewish soul, while the term Judaism stands only for a portion of it. Now the Jewish soul is the important thing, but no one has ever met a soul without a body (at least the people who claim they have met it are still required, for belief, to show evidence more than they have thus far shown); generally speaking, soul and body are co-ordinate and mutually imply each other. You cannot have one without the other. This is even more the case when you are dealing not with an individual but with a people. Hence it is the history of the Jewish body-politic with which Hebraism and its components, including Judaism, co-ordinate.