This prominent role was due to the enforced isolation of the Jewish community; thanks to the Ghetto walls the Jewish group constituted a city within a city. Once the Jewish population was concentrated into separate quarters, the synagogue became to the segregated community what the home was to the individual family; it was not only a place of meeting, but also a clearing house for individual and communal joys and sorrows.
But the intimacy was broken down by the political emancipation that came to Jewry at the end of the eighteenth century. Slowly, as the old functions of the synagogue were taken over by special institutions housed in their own buildings, the synagogue began to be used purely as a house of worship; aside from this, its sole concern seemed to be the Sunday school. Applicants for charity were referred to the charity office across the street; social functions took place at the clubs; legal disputes were no longer decided by a rabbinical court. True, there were few large cities in this country in which the Jewish community did not point with pride to its magnificent house of worship; but in the majority of cases these gorgeous buildings (I am writing throughout of the synagogues of the reform wing) were dark six days and nights a week. In this respect, they differed little from the churches about them.
But the last decade, which has seen the rise of the institutional church, is witnessing the return of the synagogue to its former close relationship to communal Jewish life. The change is due to the same causes that made for the broadening of the work of city churches. The popular criterion of a social institution’s value, it was seen, is its working efficiency. Men who judged by concrete and tangible standards, and their number is legion, were becoming indifferent to religion because it appeared divorced from life. The leaders of American Judaism began to appreciate that it was insufficient to proclaim from the pulpit that religion included charity, social amelioration, good citizenship, as well as morality and reverence; they began to insist that the synagogue should “monument its claims.” It was urged that the synagogue should not only strive to touch the religious nature of the people with the conventional methods of prayer and praise and preachment, but should also bring to bear a system of institutional activities, social, educational and philanthropic which would bring it into contact with its members’ physical, mental and social nature as well.
As a result of this awakening there is hardly a synagogue in the United States which has not some form of institutionalism—be it only a sewing circle. A questionnaire sent out by the Committee on Social and Religious Union of the Central Conference of American Rabbis to its various members elicited ninety-seven replies. In these answers seventy-one report the existence of congregational libraries; eleven congregations conduct classes for the teaching of the English language and instruction in citizenship; six maintain settlements; two have labor bureaus; fifty list philanthropic activities, glee and choral societies, athletic clubs, kindergartens, industrial schools and dancing classes.
The committee in summarizing its report says: “The majority [of our colleagues] feel that all these institutional creations have helped to deepen the interest of the members in the synagogue and in each other; that they have helped to make the temple a center for Jewish communal life; ... that they religionize social functions; that they stimulate the Jewish consciousness; that they prevent disintegration....”
Once again the synagogue is playing a splendid role in Jewish communal life. Men are beginning to perceive that the ideal synagogue will be in use at practically all hours every day in the week, will never be dark and deserted. The impressive appearing edifice that was tenanted by silence and gloom on every day except the Sabbath is becoming an anachronism. Our hope is that the synagogues that continue to slumber may awaken before it is too late, and take their proper share in the work of communal uplift.
DR. HOWARD KELLY’S APPEAL FOR CHURCH CIVIC SERVICE
The demands for a better trained ministry and membership in the churches are being strongly emphasized by such statements of what the community expects of them as Dr. Howard A. Kelly of the Johns Hopkins University medical faculty recently made in an address at the annual meeting of the New York Probation and Protective Association. In giving his consent to print some of his remarks, he writes, with special reference to his efforts against the social evil:
“I feel as though my own work in this field were to bring the churches together for neighborhood social interests. If we do not get the churches actively to work, I believe all the social developments of the last thirty years are destined to failure. I fully believe that a few strong men, say five or six in a city like Baltimore, can effectively put persistent effort into the work of amalgamating our churches for the expression of the Christian life in the active service of their fellow men.”
In his address in New York, after stoutly combating, from his professional and public points of view, the policy of segregating vice, he declared that the social work of the church is indispensable to progress, and that it is the duty and the opportunity of the church to fulfil the need in this direction. He spoke substantially as follows: